Child benefit? No thanks!
Sir: I was particularly struck by Melanie McDonagh (‘What women want’, 25 June) trotting out the same old complaint about the ‘cloth-eared’ decision to take child benefit off families in the higher tax bracket. How and why have we got ourselves into a situation where even middle-class journalists think that they should be clients of the state? I was glad when the government saw sense and discontinued my child tax credit. Why should the government automatically give me money I don’t need, when my hard-earned taxes could be much better spent elsewhere?
Rachel Maclean
Solihull, West Midlands
Assisting suicide
Sir: Charles Moore doesn’t divulge the main reason why religious people oppose the idea of assisted suicide: that life being God-given we have no right to reject the gift (The Spectator’s Notes, 25 June). For those who don’t believe in the existence of a God, this is unpersuasive. As the philosopher Richard Robinson wrote in An Atheist’s Values (Oxford, 1964), ‘The chief argument for the legitimacy of suicide is that life is a trap. We have not asked for it, and it can be terrible.’
Dr Tim Hudson
Chichester
Sir: What a pity that Charles Moore, a man whose views I generally respect, should have jumped on the same anti-assisted-suicide bandwagon as Lady Finlay and the bishop with the funny foreign name. Perhaps he is more of a predictable RC than he claims after all. Does he think he knows more than I do about what I should have done about my first wife’s death? I would suggest that he try minding his own business. (Those who have forgotten about it — it was news about three years ago — can refresh their memories and read all about it by Googling my name + ‘suicide’.)
Michael Grosvenor Myer
Haddenham, Cambridge
Gay wrongs
Sir: The kind of taboo but extensive homosexual activity which John Bradley (‘Gay Damascus’, 18 June) describes in Islamic countries is also widespread in other, relatively primitive parts of the world. But hypocrisy, furtive couplings and terror of exposure begin to look pointless in more enlightened societies. So individuals may well decide to move beyond a secretive double life into something more sane. But it is not true that ‘gay rights’ have destroyed the earlier forms of interaction: secret homosexuality, bisexuality and open homosexuality all flourish and interweave in the west.
Duncan Fallowell
London W11
Haigiography
Sir: In his review of To End All Wars (Books, 25 June), Paul Johnson writes, ‘On the Western Front the British army was commanded, in succession, by two second-rate cavalry generals, French and Haig.’
Mr Johnson is entitled to his opinions, of course, and we must trust that they are the fruits of expert study, especially as he is a former officer of the Royal Army Educational Corps, but I cannot understand why he needs to chip in that French and Haig were cavalry generals; does that make them any more damnable than had they been second-rate infantry generals? Surely they were either second-rate generals or they were not?
Allan Mallinson
The Cavalry and Guards Club, London Sir: Paul Johnson writes that Field Marshal Haig was a mass killer who refused to countermand attacks in the last six hours of the Great War. I would refer him to Major General Essame’s account of the Great War, entitled The Battle for Europe 1918. He was the adjutant of an infantry battalion on 11 November. At 06:00 — one hour after the armistice was signed — he received an order ‘No move till further orders. Acknowledge’. At 09:00 he received a message commencing ‘Hostilities will cease at 11:00 on November 11th.’
There was fighting between 06:00 and 11:00 but it was not willed by Haig.
James Strachan
Cambridge
Bull market
Sir: Simon Courtauld, in his review of Into the Arena (25 June), is quite correct in saying that bullfighting doesn’t survive for the entertainment of foreign tourists. However, the Corrida is assisted by tourism. I recall that in the Plaza Mexico, the tourist parties would rarely stay after the second bull of the afternoon, allowing the more impoverished aficionados to move down into the expensive seats.
Bob Hands
Dorset
Save small museums
Sir: James Hamilton is optimistic if he thinks that expenditure on museums can be ringfenced (Arts, 18 June). The scandal is that many small museums are going to the wall, while the Tates, with their bloated bureaucracy, scarcely feel a pinprick from the cuts. As long as ministers believe that Serota and Emin do wonders for Britain’s image, that will not change. However. the failure of MPs to create a row about this on behalf of their local museums is deplorable.
Dr Selby Whittingham
Secretary-General, Donor watch
London SW5
Philosophical endings
Sir: As per Charles Moore’s intriguing proposition, I put the term ‘Moore’ into Wikipedia and followed his instructions. All I can say is it took a very, very long time to get to ‘Philosophy’. Having falsified his claim, he has led me back to science: we can’t be certain of what we think we know.
Charles Robinson
Greenwich
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