Rod for our backs
Sir: Each week, Rod Liddle’s column reminds me of the little girl of whom it was written that she hiked up her skirt to show she wasn’t wearing knickers. In the absence of a parent, or in Mr Liddle’s case an editor, one can only look away in embarrassment. So usually I have a quick look at the first paragraph and turn the page. Last week (Liddle Britain, 12 July) he compared a fat woman with ‘26 Ethiopians, if you put them in a blender, added some bleach’ etc… and her food with ‘an approximation of Shami Chakrabarti’s face’.
I glanced at his last sentence in which Mr Liddle suggested fat people should be kicked. I suppose this includes Winston Churchill.
Jonathan Mirsky
London W11
Sir: Rod Liddle is right about obesity. I am prepared to believe some people put on weight more easily than others. I am not prepared to believe that people are powerless to stop themselves becoming fat. Consume fewer calories than you burn and you lose weight; consume more than you burn and you gain weight. That is the reason you never see photos of fat concentration camp inmates — output exceeds intake.
I am about ten pounds heavier than I would like to be — nothing to do with genes, just lack of self-discipline and a liking for rather more chocolate than is wise.
M. Tinney
Via email
Persuasive argument
Sir: The problem with calling the initial Islamic campaign ‘unprovoked’ (Letters, 12 July) is that many events in late antiquity — and modern times — were also unprovoked. The Magyar settlement in what is today Hungary in the tenth century ad was unprovoked. Not many today assert that the Hungarians should be driven back to central Asia.
Byzantine Christian rule in Palestine and Syria was not popular in the seventh century because it was driven by a hunt for heresy. The populace held a variety of differing beliefs on the Trinity and the nature, or natures, of Christ. Islam allowed people to believe as they wished. Moreover there were Christian Arabs in pre-Islamic Syria. It is not surprising that several commentators — including Theophanes, Dionysius of Tel-Mahre — make no great thing of the Islamic conquest. Its peace terms were generous. By contrast, the Sassanid Persian campaign of 20 years earlier had wrecked the towns, and carried away the most holy relic of the True Cross.
I am all for an end of sugary tales of nonsensical history. But any attempt at finding truth has to look at context, and seek good sources. Perhaps the comment, dating from 1707, of Mathurin Veyssière de la Croze, the royal librarian of Berlin, is to the point: ‘I own, that violence had some place here, but certainly persuasion had more.’
Christopher Walker
London W14
Questions of character
Sir: What a pity that Martin Rowson did not do his homework before embarking on his interview with the Hamiltons (‘I love Christine Hamilton’, 12 July). His reference to Martins Bell’s decision to stand as an ‘anti-sleaze’ candidate at the Tatton election in 1997 rather ignores the fact that Bell, far from being the ‘man in the white suit’, was recruited by Alastair Campbell and the Labour party acting in collusion with the Liberal Democrats after Campbell’s first choice had turned him down. Bell was coached and advised by Campbell throughout what was a brilliantly executed if unscrupulous media stunt — read Campbell’s diaries for the details. It has been claimed that the ‘sleaze’ campaign presented Tony Blair with an additional 80 seats.
As to the wider question behind the ‘Cash for Questions’ scandal, Rowson should have read Jonathan Boyd Hunt’s Trial by Conspiracy. There he would have found a mass of evidence which denies the alleged guilt of Hamilton.
Amidst all the evidence — the Downey Report and the transcripts of several trials — one single fact stands out. When Mohammed Al Fayed first threatened to make public his accusations against Hamilton, he relayed his allegations to John Major via the Daily Express. As a result Hamilton was interviewed by Richard Ryder, the chief whip. The meeting was minuted by Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet secretary. Hamilton was told that Al Fayed claimed to have evidence to support his allegations which probably included taped records of private discussions. Hamilton asserted his innocence, and the next day, when the allegations were made public by Al Fayed and the Guardian, Hamilton went ahead with libel proceedings.
To risk the huge cost of libel proceedings against one of the richest men in the country and a national newspaper, having been told that the defendants claimed to have taped evidence, means that Hamilton was either innocent — or a fool.
Nobody has claimed that he was a fool.
George Gittos
St. Briavels, Gloucestershire
Russian vulnerability
Sir: Oleg Gordievsky (Letters, 5 July) dismisses Russia’s perception of its own vulnerability as ‘communist propaganda’. In fact the anxiety borne of inhabiting a land without natural borders has been a constant feature of Russian national life. In 1903, the distinguished historian Milyukov commented that since their emergence from Mongol rule, Russians have been forced to subjugate all other priorities to defence of the motherland, saying: ‘Compelling national need resulted in the creation of an omnipotent state.’
Putin, and now Medvedev, are still striving for omnipotence; they can now use Nato’s expansion along their borders as evidence of a compelling national need.
Charlotte Hobson
St Mawes, Cornwall
Comments