Press complaint
Sir: Charles Moore’s comments on the PCC last week (The Spectator’s Notes, 6 August) contained several significant inaccuracies. Lord Wakeham didn’t leave the chairmanship of the commission as a result of criticisms from the Telegraph that he wasn’t handling complaints impartially. He stood down, as a matter of honour, after he was tangentially implicated in the Enron debacle. Fleet Street does not pay the lion’s share of the chairman’s salary which, in fact, comes out of funding provided by the national, local and provincial newspapers and the magazines industry on a proportionate basis.
The appointment of Wakeham’s successor Sir Christopher Meyer was not arranged by News International and Associated Newspapers. Sir Christopher, who had the backing of all the newspaper industry’s trade bodies, was chosen as the strongest candidate from a shortlist candidates by an independent appointments commission.
Sir Christopher did not soon afterwards become a major contributor to the Daily Mail. In fact, he wrote occasional articles on diplomatic subjects some considerable time after he stood down as the commission’s chairman. His book on the Iraq war was bought by the Daily Mail in partnership with the Guardian (a paper that has been deeply critical of the PCC) in an open auction in which there were under-bidders.
There was, however, one other important fact about the PCC which Mr Moore forgot to mention. The first clause of its code of practice says: ‘The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information.’ We can only hope that his book on Margaret Thatcher is more accurate than his observations on press self-regulation.
Charles Garside
Managing Editor, The Daily Mail,
London W8
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The two nations
Sir: I read R.S. Foster’s letter (6 August) immediately after reading accounts and seeing photographs of the Tottenham riots. Foster says British wealth creators are hated ‘because they are so often and so obviously greedy, selfish and unpleasant, and because they now experience so little pressure within their own circles to behave any better’. Just like the Tottenham mob, in other words.
Alasdair Ogilvy
Iping, West Sussex
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Not in my parish
Sir: The normally spot-on Martin Vander Weyer has got it wrong this time (‘This debt fiasco makes Washington look like a parish council’, Any Other Business, 6 August). I am chairman of a parish council in Oxfordshire. We have a balanced budget and no debts. Furthermore, we have a year’s total expenditure in reserve. If Washington and other national economies, including our own, were run as prudently and expertly as this parish council, the world would not be is such a mess.
Clive Cowen
Ramsden, Oxfordshire
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In defence of Ismay
Sir: Christopher Ward repeats some notorious legends in his otherwise superb account of his grandfather’s death in the Titanic disaster (‘Titanic injustice’, 6 August). Far from being a heartless plutocrat ‘who saved his own life by jumping into a lifeboat… [and] spent the rest of his life pursuing his passions of fishing and grouse shooting’, Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, made a serious attempt to atone for his share in not preventing the disaster. He donated £11, 000 to the widows of the victims, and immediately set about ensuring that every ship in his fleet had enough lifeboats for the passengers on board (this had not been a statutory requirement). If his decision to save his life was selfish, it is unreasonable to expect any human being with the power to save his life to cast aside that temptation. The remarkable thing, surely, is that powerful individuals such as John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim did.
One further point: it is not true that the public accepted the official explanation — that the appalling loss of life resulted from an unforeseeable act of God. George Bernard Shaw, for one, published several influential letters in the press which highlighted the human element in the tragedy. His former editor, W.T. Stead — the disaster’s most famous victim — had denounced the inadequacy of lifeboat provision as early as 1886.
Will Robinson
London NW5
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Playing with fire
Sir: Bruce Anderson (Politics, 6 August) clearly knows his modern economics, but it’s a pity that the same cannot be said for his knowledge of pre-history. Fire was harnessed by Man before the last ice age and by species earlier than our own. Indeed, the survival of our own Palaeolithic forebears in northern parts during the glacial period was totally dependent on it. The controlled use of fire as well as a more digestible diet provided protection, warmth, light and a medium for sociability.
Mr Anderson’s date of 10,000 years ago would delay the harnessing of this priceless asset until the Mesolithic period, well after the last ice age.
Christopher Arthur
Durham
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What else can we do?
Sir: According to Aidan Hartley (‘The famine myth’, 6 August), I have just made the lives of starving children in Somalia worse. I recently organised a donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee based on my emotional response to pictures of starving children. I know that famines are often caused by political fighting, but what else is there to do to help the powerless caught in those struggles other than to part with some of our cash? Aidan Hartley has seen at first hand the problems — what does he suggest we do instead?
Polly Bright
London SW1
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