How to save the seas
Sir: We can predict, sadly, that the so-called management of the ocean mining described in Charles Clover’s article (‘The scramble for the seas’, 3 July), will be as poor as the current management of the oceans’ fish stocks. To save the world’s oceans, we need much better policy, coupled with credible enforcement wherever exploitation is permitted, and the establishment of large protected marine reserves where fish and ocean beds are completely protected. Large marine reserves are vital guarantors that will allow ocean resources to survive if the fishing and mineral extraction which are permitted elsewhere fail to be sustainable. The protection of the Chagos archipelago by the UK government is an enormous step in the right direction — we need many more such marine reserves if we are to hand to future generations oceans that live.
Alistair Gammell, OBE
Pew Environment Group, London SW1
Do atheists exist?
Sir: Of course Matthew Parris is right (Another Voice, 3 July): today, most professed Christians and Muslims are not genuine — probably they never were. Muslim suicide-bombers now and Christian martyrs in former times deserve the benefit of the doubt — few others do. But are professed atheists genuine either? Most are strident and intolerant moralists. Richard Dawkins has said teaching children to pray is child abuse. So he is sure that child abuse is wrong. But how can anything be wrong, if free will is an illusion — if all our thoughts and actions are meaningless accidents in a meaningless universe?
There probably are real atheists — the late Dr Shipman for example. We can expect those to be prudently quiet about their atheism. If a man proclaims himself an atheist, he’s most unlikely to be one.
David Watkins
Cardiff
Sir: I do wish Matthew Parris would leave religion alone. He is 2,000 years late in his discovery that we do not live by the standards in which we believe. ‘That which I would, I do not. The thing that I would not, that I do.’ Even Matthew could not successfully argue that St Paul, who wrote that, did not genuinely believe in what he professed.
Paul Griffin
Suffolk
Causes of misogyny
Sir: Piers Paul Read’s article (‘Misogyny is not just for men’, 3 July) is mistaken in assuming that a return to a traditional female role is feasible. It is surely too late for that.
Instead, one way of combating misogyny might be for us to recognise that men have rights too and that sometimes women have an unfair advantage. How, for instance, is it fair for women to complain about a 12 per cent (average) wage gap, when family law often grants women 75 per cent of assets following a divorce as well as full custody of the children? This sort of bias in favour of women might be the cause of at least some of the new misogyny Mr Read identifies.
Rosemary Dorman
London SW1
No Anschluss
Sir: Much as I admired the positive spirit of William Cook’s article (‘A brave new Germany’, 3 July), as a German born and raised in England, I cannot share his optimistic view that the British prejudice against Germans is fading.
In my childhood I suffered for being German. There were jibes about sauerkraut and Hitler. That hasn’t entirely disappeared as far as I can see. Last week, I watched the England vs Germany game in a pub in east London with a group of German friends. The atmosphere was far from amicable. Every time our team scored a goal, we tried to restrain our celebrations, but a group of thugs gave us menacing glares. We thought they were going to throw beer on us, and felt lucky to escape unharmed.
Lucas Klein
London EC1
Surviving the shires
Sir: The truly wonderful article by Mark Palmer (‘A social pariah in the shires’, 26 June) should be reproduced and posted through every door in our village. After five years of inviting people round, offering help and generally trying to be good neighbours, we have given up. However, Mark Palmer omits the common denominator in the social world of the village yokel: the Women’s Institute, a truly devious and viperous group who decide the fate of the village and its populace behind doors you can never open.
Phil Marshall
Near Newport, Isle of Wight
Sir: I think life in English villages is very much simpler than Mark Palmer believes. Being accepted in a village is no different to being accepted in any community in the world: you simply treat the residents with the same respect that you would like to be treated with yourself. The patronising conceit that non-weekenders belong to some scientifically interesting ancient sub-culture, too thick to get the joke themselves, isn’t going to help his cause.
Roger Grenville
West Sussex
Saved by Beryl
Sir: My father, W.H. Petty, was once told by Beryl Bainbridge that she had put a copy of his poem, ‘So Thank You, Beryl B’, on her bedroom wall. It is from his most recently published collection of prize-winning poems, But Someone Liked Them. Given that she died last week, I wondered whether you might re-print it now. It’s a nice comment about her when they were both visiting a school.
Across the Weald I journeyed
to Folkestone and the sea
and Summer School and little groups
of creativity.
The intention was to give support
also fly the flag
for writing at that Summer School
but I felt spirits sag.
I feared they’d think ‘He’s here again;
he’ll want to talk of art.
Why won’t he just leave us alone
and let our writing start?’
It very soon was ‘This way please,
this class is very good.
We’ll enter softly, put at ease
the students — as we should.’
I saw a massive turn of heads
as we pushed aside the door
and a frightening total silence
came oozing from the floor,
and from the massy windows
there came a sneer of sea.
But then a Beryl Bainbridge smile
washed glorious over me.
No doubt you’ve long forgotten
(but no, not I, not I)
how the ocean ceased its sneering
under smile-packed Kentish sky.
So thank you Beryl Bainbridge
(for effort of the will?)
That day your smile meant poetry
(it clearly means so still).
Stephen Petty
Oxfordshire
Comments