Funny idea of fairness
Sir: Congratulations to Ed Howker and The Spectator (‘The alternative story’, 26 February) for lifting the lid on the Electoral Reform Society, an organisation that appears to thrive from a conflict of interests. It was our misfortune to encounter the ERS during a controversial campaign at the Royal Geographical Society in 2009, when the organisation was supposed to ensure fair conduct ahead of and during a special general meeting called to discuss the future of exploration. The RGS decided to include comments from the then president, Sir Gordon Conway, telling fellows how to vote on the back of the ballot paper. As Stanley Johnson reported in the Sunday Telegraph at the time, ‘even in Zimbabwe you don’t expect to find suggestions as to how to vote printed on the ballot paper’. Our legal counsel advised that this was ‘deeply unfair to the democratic process within the RGS’. When we raised this flagrant abuse of the democratic system with the ERS, its response was to close ranks and whitewash. It is disgraceful that the ERS is now looking forward to making considerably more money from its £1 million investment in the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign.
Justin Marozzi
The Beagle Campaign, Norfolk
They don’t give a damn
Sir: Dan Jones thinks we Americans have fallen for Britain again (‘Enduring love’, 5 March). For some Americans — like me, I guess — Britain possesses a certain historical charm that our country lacks. This in part explains the glossy interest in the royal wedding on our side of the pond. But the truth is that the vast majority of yanks don’t care a damn about Britain or the Brits. A more obvious national obsession is the British one of endlessly debating how much the US worships the UK. What does that say about you?
Natalie Kitchin
New York
Fostering intolerance
Sir: I was delighted to read your editorial (5 March) in defence of the Christian couple Eunice and Owen Johns. It is incomprehensible to me, a non-believer, that couples should be banned from adopting children because of their Christian views about sex. If the secular mind can no longer accept the thought Christians fostering children, how long will it tolerate the idea of Christians having families at all? It is important that we stop the equalities agenda, which in reality fosters nothing but intolerance.
Matthew Rowlands
Chichester
Weeding out porn
Sir: Charles Moore tells us that Rabbi Weiss has produced a ‘successful’ system which filters out all pornography (The Spectator’s Notes, 5 March). This may be somewhat too successful. In my book The Sex Code I divide pornography, that is explicitly sexual material, into five categories: non-erotic, perverted or debased, stimulative or erotic, educational or artistic, and political or destabilising. I add that given material may fall into more than one category. We should lose a great deal that is culturally valuable if every one of these were suppressed.
Francis Bennion
Salterton, Devon
Women at work
Sir: Matthew Lynn’s article ‘Sister Act’ (26 February) failed to mention the most important factor in most women’s careers: child care. While I don’t think quotas are the way to equality, I find it hard to believe that an article focusing on women in the workforce does not even mention the issue.
Ellie Boulstridge
By email
Thomson vs Gow
Sir: The article about my grandfather J.J. Thomson (Dirty Rotten Scholars, 26 February) does not really reflect the truth. I remember as a boy visiting him and my grandmother, Rose, when he was Master at Trinity Lodge. I also lived with my grandmother in the war after my mother died. She was then a widow in her eighties. Far from being ‘unpleasant’, she was warm-hearted, sympathetic and caring. She was meticulous to a fault and saw to it that she kept the house (rented from G.M.Trevelyan) clean and bright and welcoming. Paul Johnson quotes the Dictionary of National Biography as saying in its entry on J.J. Thomson ‘he was most casual in his attire and appearance’. Yes, he was often a somewhat dishevelled scientist, but never ‘dirty’. His wife saw to that. She was always immaculately dressed. She was not rich, as claimed in the article, but was one of the many children of the Regius Professor of Physic, Sir George Paget. However J.J. had a shrewd knowledge of the Stock Exchange, which was the source of his money. He did not leave ‘a house filthier than a pigsty’ to the college as quoted. He lived in Trinity Lodge until his death and had no house to leave.
As to J.J.’s relations with Housman, we have copies of Housman’s poems which were presented to J.J. with suitable inscriptions. What is more, Housman left J.J. his entire cellar of fine wines — not a gift one would give a man whom one disliked or despised. Gow’s comments on J.J. should be viewed with caution. Was he not the most disliked don in Trinity?
David Thomson
Oxford
Sir: In supplement to Paul Johnson, Gow’s Eton pupils included George Orwell and Cyril Connolly. His school nickname was ‘WOG’, not racialist but simple inversion of surname. Orwell penned this doggerel verse: ‘Then up waddled Wog and he squeaked in Greek: “I’ve grown another hair on my cheek.” ’ Later, they occasionally corresponded. Anthony Blunt thought highly of Gow’s knowledge of art history, which perhaps inspired the half-baked notion that he was the ‘Fifth Man’ in the Cambridge spy ring.
Barry Baldwin
Calgary, Canada
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