Balls to Gilligan
Sir: As Andrew Gilligan well knows, I abhor the anti-semitic and anti-democratic views ascribed to Hizb ut Tahrir and I take any accusations of extremist views being taught in schools very seriously (‘Minister for Hizb ut Tahrir’, 5 December).
That is why when allegations about links between Hizb ut Tahrir and the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation were first raised in 2007, I asked Ofsted to investigate both the independent schools run by the foundation. No evidence of anti-semitic or anti-Western values being taught was found — either then or in subsequent investigations.
The pamphlet which Mr Gilligan quoted from was written by one of the head teachers six years ago. I disagree with the views expressed, as would the vast majority of British Muslims. But this is not evidence of extremist views being actually taught in the classroom — and none has been found or presented.
Mr Gilligan raises an interesting analogy with the BNP. There is currently no law to prevent BNP members from being school teachers or governors, just as there is nothing to stop members of Hizb ut Tahrir from being so. What matters is not an individual’s personal views but what is taught in the classroom. The review of racism in schools, which I announced in September, is considering whether we need to go further and ban members of racist organisations from teaching.
Ed Balls
Secretary of State for Children, School and Families London SW1
All there in black and white
Sir: Basile Kotschoubey’s response (5 December) to my letter of 21 November engages in a debate about the relative odiousness of apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union, which I neither intended to start nor wish to continue. Nevertheless, he ended with a simple question: did South Africa’s friends in the British Conservative party yearn ‘to institute an apartheid-style regime in Britain?’ The easiest way to answer this question is to quote from the Monday Club pamphlet ‘Who Goes Home? Immigration and Repatriation’, published in 1969. Its author, the former MI6 officer George K. Young, predicted that coloured immigration into the UK had raised the threat of ‘widespread conflict and disruption’. He continued, ‘At best one can hope for the separation of communities to reduce points of friction. But is this possible except through repatriation?’ He concluded that it was not, and argued for the creation of regional Repatriation and Resettlement Committees, and the revision of Britain’s overseas aid programmes to support repatriation. Mr Kotschoubey should probably try to avoid rhetorical questions.
Professor Philip Murphy
University of London
Main Street UK
Sir: Charles Moore says that ‘Main Street’ is an Americanism (The Spectator’s Notes, 28 November). Has he never travelled outside of the southern counties? There are hundreds of settlements with a Main Street, as a search for that address on any internet map will show. All bar two or three are north of Leicestershire.
Richard de Lacy QC
London WC2
Warming to it
Sir: It is good to see Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt applying a bit of lateral thinking in your climate change special (5 December). I travelled by sea from Southampton to Cape Town in August 1991 and remarked on the fact that the temperature at the equator was lower than I had expected. The captain replied that both air and sea temperatures were noticeably reduced because of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines a couple of months earlier.
The amount of SO2 injected into the stratosphere by the eruption must have been very considerable; but if as a result of a single eruption the whole earth could be cooled for two years or more by 0.5˚C (and it seemed to be a lot more than that at the equator), the Dubner-Levitt solution of geoengineering must be worth seriously following up. I have not heard anyone, scientist or politician, even mention it on the radio or TV. With the carbon already in the atmosphere having a half-life of 100 years, the reduction of carbon emissions, by however much, seems unlikely to have much effect on the melting of ice at the poles or in glaciers for the rest of this century.
May research into the Dubner-Levitt solution please be pursued energetically and without further delay, without prejudice, of course, to any steps that can reasonably be taken at the same time to reduce carbon emissions and other causes of global warming?
Edward Nugee QC
London WC2
Sir: Two questions that might usefully have been asked in your excellent extra on global warming:
1. If the government is so keen on carbon issues, why has the United Kingdom the lowest proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources among developed nations? Targets, intentions and speeches cannot compare with achievements.
2. If the Met Office is to be taken seriously in terms of its predictions of global warming decades ahead, why has nobody ever accepted my invitation to bet £1,000 on the accuracy of the weather forecast two weeks ahead?
Sidney Perera
Hertfordshire
Guilt by association
Sir: I imagine Mrs Blair can look after herself (she always has) but she has surely been defamed by her solicitors, Atkins Thomson, who claim association with her in their illiterate letter that you published last week.
Simon Cawkwell
London SW10
Sir: Does Mrs Blair really take herself so seriously and is her attitude to a harmless piece in your magazine (The Spectator’s Notes, 28 November) so off the mark that it must be met with a pompous long letter from the lawyers? I’m 75 and have not had such a good laugh for a week or two. It has put me right into the spirit of Christmas.
Pat Park
County Durham
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