The Spectator

Feedback | 14 May 2005

Readers respond to recent articles published in <i>The Spectator</i>

Tories must be less strident

Simon Heffer tells us that what the Conservative party now needs, above all, is ‘stability’ (‘The way ahead for Conservatives’, 7 May). But it cannot have escaped his notice that the level of success we have enjoyed in the last decade has been all too ‘stable’, and that this is in no small part down to the influence of those who, like him, insist on seeing modernisation as an evil. Whilst Heffer and his friends resist change, Mr Blair is left grinning ever more manically. Mr Heffer gives him the ammunition to paint politics as a choice between those who believe the vulnerable should be helped, and those who would rather ignore them.

Heffer accuses the so-called Notting Hill Set of ‘inexperience and arrogance’, buttheir sort of Conservatism is surely about allowing people greater control over their lives and not simply offering them the ‘freedom’ to agree with Simon Heffer. Only when the Tories adopt a more liberal, less strident tone can we hope to evict the sorry cabal of window-dressers who now ‘govern’ our country.

Stuart Baran
Jesus College, Oxford

London is safer

There is a simple solution to Susan Hill’s problem (‘Sorry, the doctor can’t see you now’, 7 May). She needs to move to the city where, as she acknowledges, GPs are far more likely to attend her in an emergency. Otherwise I’m not quite sure what the answer is. If it’s the recruitment of extra GPs to make calls to isolated farmhouses, I wonder where the money will come from? Does Susan expect urbanites like me to subsidise her rural lifestyle choice?

Indeed, as she has a serious wasp allergy, the countryside is the last place she needs to be. I would counsel a move to the grubby, but safer, streets of London immediately.

Julian Joyce
Isleworth, Middlesex

Junk these machines

I sympathise with Nicola Horlick’s horror at the unappetising and unhealthy victuals she witnessed being consumed at a picnic on Bank Holiday Monday (Diary, 7 May).

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