Too cosy with the KGB
Sir: Denis MacShane (‘Welcome to the Vlad and Dave show’, 12 January) is right to imply that the attitude of the Conservative party to the Russian KGB state is reminiscent of the attitude of the same party to Germany in 1938. Only about a year ago the Russian services brought illegally a forceful radioactive material to this country, and then killed a British citizen. I can’t remember the Conservative party actively protesting against it in the European and other international bodies, particularly in the Nato.
With such foreign policy, that party will never shine on the international arena.
Oleg Gordievsky
London WC1
Sir: Denis MacShane’s insightful revelations of British Conservatives and Russian diplomats cosying up to each other in the Council of Europe stirred nostalgic memories of over half a century ago.
At a Labour party parliamentary dinner for visiting Soviet leaders, Khrushchev and Bulganin in the 1950s, the future foreign minister George Brown wound up Mr K to such a degree that the Communist boss fumed he found it easier to talk with British Conservatives than with Labour leaders. The following day he added for good measure that if the Labour party was the face of British socialism, he’d prefer to be a Tory. The faces and ideologies may change, but it seems that Russo–Conservative affections die hard — albeit nourished by mutual agendas.
Maurice Jones
Rossendale Valley, Lancashire
The problem with choice
Sir: I agree with Charles Moore that the British are simply not healthier and better treated by the NHS than patients in neighbouring countries (The Spectator’s Notes, 12 January) but I wonder whether we all really want a choice of services.
A recent GP referral, instead of offering me an appointment (which I could have changed or cancelled if I so wished) sent me four A4 pages of instructions. They included a booking reference number, a password, warnings about legal action, a choice of four hospitals (three unknown and only one within reach), eight possible telephone contacts and several textphone and internet contacts.
The old-fashioned alternative of requesting a specific referral from one’s GP and responding to a proposed appointment seems a great deal more convenient, more economical and less confusing.
If this is ‘choice’, I should gladly forego it and save an awful lot of paper and administrative time.
Pauline Holroyd
West Winterslow, Wiltshire
The speed of time
Sir: In response to Toby Young’s search for an explanation as to why time speeds up as we get older (Status anxiety, 5 January), I have my own (non-scientific) theory. When I was 20, five years was one quarter of my life. When I will be 80, five years will be only one 16th of my life. The smaller the fraction, the faster it passes.
Barbara Day
Prague
Tudors: not very Welsh
Sir: Your correspondent Mr Williams objects to my description of Henry VIII as the ‘English Stalin’ on the grounds that the Tudor dynasty was Welsh (Letters, 5 January). It is true that its founder, Henry VII, had a Welsh grandfather. But his grandmother was Flemish and Bavarian, his mother was English and his father a mixture of English, French and Welsh. As S.B. Chrimes, author of the best life of Henry VII, writes, ‘the Welshness of Henry Tudor can be, and often is, exaggerated.’ As he married an Englishwoman his son Henry VIII was even less Welsh. He showed no interest in Wales except to suppress its institutions and incorporate it in England, a characteristic act of the English Stalin.
Paul Johnson
London W2
Sad modernist notion
Sir: It is rather sad to see Admiral Liardet trotting out those old ‘modernist’ notions that I thought had been put to rest some time ago (Letters, 12 January). I leave aside his gratuitous libel of some of the Fathers of the Church — I dare say the City of God can stand it.
But it is ironic that, in citing Galatians iv 4, he hits on a text which, far from showing that St Paul had not heard about the Virgin Birth, carries the clear implication that he did know about it. What biographer has ever commented of his subject that he was born of a woman? We all were. It would be an absurd tautology. The Apostle must therefore mean something more, and it seems reasonable to suggest that he means that Christ was born, in human terms, exclusively of a woman, without male agency.
Turning to the old chestnut that ‘virgin’ was a mistranslation of ‘young woman’, I am confident that the Gospel writers had as firm a grasp of both the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint as Admiral Liardet. First, the term ‘young woman’ referred to the subject’s status, not her age: she was unmarried and, unless of easy virtue, a virgin; so he is attempting to distinguish between things that do not differ. Second, it will be remembered that the event of a virgin conceiving and bearing a son was to be a sign. What kind of sign would have been provided if merely a young woman had borne a child — it happens all the time — and why should the fruit of such a quotidian occurrence be named Emanuel, God with us?
Dr Brian Campbell
Glasgow
Desert Island diss
Sir: Kate Chisholm comments that Kirsty Young has yet to breathe new life into Desert Island Discs (Radio, 12 January). Far from resuscitating the programme, I fear that Kirsty has her heel firmly planted on its windpipe. Things are not helped by the irritating way she asks all her castaways, ‘And when the waves sweep up the beach and threaten to wash away all your discs, which one will you rush to save?’ Why can’t she just say, ‘And of your eight records, which one is your favourite?’?
Dr Andrew Mason
Norton, Bury St Edmunds
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