Too stern a test
Sir: I commend Oliver Lewis for his well-made points about the lack of rigour in British examinations in comparison to those of the Chinese (‘The Gaokao challenge’, 11 December). We need to up our game. The Gaokao exam is not beyond rebuke, however.
The extremely high level of academic standards in China puts terrible pressure on the nine million students who take the exam. This year, three suicides were reported on the first day of the Gaokao. The fact that such reports emerge every year suggests a balance needs to be struck between improving our academic standards and pushing the students too far.
Sebastian Payne
London SW1
Iran’s Arab enemies
Sir: Charles Moore writes that the WikiLeaks disclosures bear out the neocon belief that, for all their public anger towards Israel, ‘what really worries the Arabs is Iran’ (The Spectator’s Notes, 4 December). Neocons are usually careful to distinguish the ruler from the ruled, but Mr Moore mistakes the fabulously wealthy and unaccountable Arab potentates whose secret wish for a military attack on Iran has now been revealed with the people they govern.
It suffices to trundle around any Arab bazaar to realise that many ordinary people, in spite of their historic enmity for the Persians, regard Ahmadinejad as a Muslim hero, and his defiance of the West as a laudable contrast to the toadying of their own crowned heads. Mr Moore is wrong to think they would applaud military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. They would be angry, and now, thanks to Julian Assange, they would know whom to thank.
Christopher de Bellaigue
Tehran
Ambiguous beasts
Sir: I notice that Damian Thompson (Arts, 4 December) has been speculating about the identity of a few of the menagerie characters in my A Scotch Bestiary. Even if he has been speaking with reliable sources, I feel that I cannot confirm or deny the veracity of his claims. Some of the other movements are more difficult to pin to specific individuals though, since the titles are more generic, and therefore my other secrets may remain hidden. For example, ‘Reptiles and Big Fish (in a small pond)’ and ‘The red-handed, no-surrender howler monkey’ could refer to thousands of delightful individuals north of the border. Merry Christmas!
James MacMillan CBE
Glasgow
Bias at the Beeb
Sir: Whenever proof is produced that the BBC leans to the left, there is always some wiseacre on hand to proclaim that, as the corporation is criticised by left and right alike, it must therefore be doing something right. The latest of these is Jon Stubbings (Letters, 4 December). Oh dear.
My own experience seems to me to be definitive, but Mr Stubbings should note what was said at a BBC internal seminar in September 2006. At this event the BBC political commentator Andrew Marr said: ‘The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias — not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.’ More recently, the Director
General, Mark Thompson, recalled: ‘In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left.’ Mr Thompson asserted that this was no longer the case, though it is hard to see what has changed fundamentally since then in terms of personnel or attitudes. I should say that I have never, as Mr Stubbings implies, sought a Murdoch-dominated media. On the contrary, I support the licence fee, which places a grave duty on the BBC to speak for us all. I hope that one day it will do so.
Peter Hitchens
London W8
On your bike
Sir: By attacking our company, Sebastian O’Kelly (Letters, 4 December) dishonours those whom Pashley holds close to its heart: its customers. For it is the likes of A.N. Wilson, not Mr O’Kelly, who understand that Pashley is not some jumped-up global ‘brand’ financed by uncaring money. It is a company of real men and women who, with the support of their families, work their damnedest to demonstrate that design and manufacture — yes, even of specialist hand-built bicycles — can not only exist but prosper in the UK. In so doing Pashley contributes to the local and national economy, and puts the soul back into an otherwise dreary world. Perhaps if you were to visit us, Mr O’Kelly, you would start to understand why prejudices, if allowed to prevail, can only undeservedly damage those companies which, against all odds, manufacture quality products in the UK.
Adrian Williams
Managing director, Pashley Cycles
Troubles with being born
Sir: May I correct just a few errors in Carol Sarler’s article (‘Hard labour’, 4 December)? Childbirth is not a ‘medical endeavour’. For most women, there is no need for any medical staff, as highly qualified graduate midwives are the most appropriately skilled and experienced attendants.
In spite of her complaint that ‘successive governments have done their best to bolster the advocates of leaving well alone’, the Caesarean rate in the UK has risen from around 10 per cent in 1980 to at least 24 per cent now. There is no evidence that women who have Caesareans are healthier or happier after the experience; nor are babies, who often suffer respiratory difficulties after elective Caesarean birth, as they have been forcibly born too early to be able to use their immature lungs without assistance. Sarler describes the experts who warn against routine choice of caesarean operations as ‘unnamed’. In fact, a look at the website of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) shows that the experts do indeed warn of the dangers of having a Caesarean, such as bladder or ureteric injury, the need for further surgery, and even death.
Women may indeed wish, as she says, to have a birth that is ‘calm, swift and relatively free of pain’ but a look at the risks set out above will reveal that, with Caesareans, calmness and freedom from pain are far from guaranteed.
Elizabeth Duff
London NW3
Treasures of the Church
Sir: Charles Moore rightly points out that the selling off of their Zurbarans by the Church Commissioners is not ‘a simple equation’ as they suggest (The Spectator’s Notes, 20 November). He is too polite — it is no equation at all. We have come to understand that the Church has no regard for its heritage, but it is baffling that it cannot see that its mania for selling off its possessions precipitates its own demise.
It is the same with its traditional rectories and vicarages. When these are sold off they double in value in private hands — the Church would never be able to afford to buy them back even if it wanted to. That’s what happens when you run down your capital. Even worse, the more palaces, treasures and parsonages a diocese sells off, the more its parishes and congregations go into decline, as our studies have shown.
Anthony Jennings
Director, Save Our Parsonages
London WC1
Winnipeg the Pooh
Sir: Rod Liddle’s claim that pontificating Canadian Roman Catholic bishops and their ‘Winnipeg Statement’ provided the city’s only moment of fame is mistaken (‘I’d rather hear about condoms from the Pope than from the Spice Girls’, 27 November.) Winnipeg was also the origin for the name of A.A. Milne’s bear of very little brain, Winnie the Pooh. The original Winnie, a young female black bear, came to England during the first world war with an officer of the Winnipeg-based Fort Garry Horse, Lieutenant Harry Colebourn. When the regiment returned home at the end of the war, Winnie found a permanent home at the London Zoo, where A.A. Milne’s son saw him, adopting the name for his teddy.
William Stormont
London NW3
No mere dealer
Sir: I am at a loss to understand why Martin Vander Weyer chose to single out Robert Edmiston and to deride him as a multi-millionaire car dealer who knows his way round Glass’s Guide (Any Other Business, 27 November).
Robert Edmiston is not a car dealer, but an importer. He built his business by supporting and earning the respect of the dealers he supplied, not by abusing and exploiting them as is the norm in the industry. His greatest achievement, however, was surely the way he defended his right to distribute Isuzu vehicles by instigating and winning legal proceedings against General Motors.
Talents such as his, in understanding small businesses and standing up to America, have been sadly lacking in government for far too long.
Peter Harris-Mayes
Rickmansworth
Taki and chips
Sir: Taki asked Harvey Keitel, ‘What’s a nice little Jewish boy from Brooklyn doing in the Marine Corps instead of being down on Wall Street?’ (High life, 27 November). Why did Taki not ask, ‘What’s a nice little Jewish boy from Brooklyn doing in the Marine Corps instead of being at the forefront of science, medicine, law, literature, music or human rights?’
I wish that Keitel had replied, ‘What’s a Greek boy like you doing writing a column for The Spectator instead of running the local fish and chip shop?’
Mike Meyerson
New South Wales, Australia
Insignificance
Sir: In your report of the Spectator debate on the Special Relationship (27 November), you conclude that ‘The motion was carried with a sizeable swing to the proposition.’ You might describe 7 per cent as ‘sizeable’, I would not.
Sir Robert Worcester KBE DL
Kent
Write to us The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP; letters@spectator.co.uk
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