Capital letters
Sir: As Neil O’Brien (‘Planet London’, 14 April) rightly says, London is New York, Washington and LA rolled into one, which is unhealthy for our national politics. So I have a serious suggestion. If the House of Lords is going to be reformed in the next year, part of the reform should be to move it out of London to a city in the Midlands or the North, perhaps next to the relocated BBC in MediaCity in Salford Quays. Half our national politicians would then assemble well away from ‘Planet London.’ The public purse would make a net saving by selling the vast and expensive property portfolio the Lords has been acquiring to house its 850 members along Millbank and the surrounding streets. And yes, yours truly — a Londoner and proud of it — would be happy to lead the way.
Andrew Adonis
House of Lords, London SW1
Sir: London hasn’t ‘left Britain behind’, any more than it had over a century ago when Disraeli called it a ‘nation not a city’. Neil O’Brien refers to Britain’s ‘governing class’ living in the capital — but almost all were born somewhere else. These are the ones who appreciate London the most (‘Maybe it’s because I’m not a Londoner that I love London so’). They retain strong family links in their home towns. London will stay tied to the rest of the country, as it always has been, a bond sometimes reflected in its architecture. The spaces between the iron columns in the Eurostar departure lounge at St Pancras are the width of three Bass beer barrels — the station was designed so the Midlands brewery could store its produce there before distribution around the capital.
Mark Mason
Suffolk
Uncharitable
Sir: I am responding to Anne Wareham’s attack (‘Please shut the gates’, 14 April) on the National Gardens Scheme, the charity I run. The NGS is the UK’s most significant non-government funder of nursing and caring. Since 1927 it has donated more than £40 million; in 2012 a total of £2.6 million. It is the largest single benefactor in the history of its two best-known beneficiaries, Macmillan and Marie Curie. A few years ago Anne decided to set herself up as the iconoclast of the gardening world. The NGS became her number one target. The National Gardens Scheme is comparable to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy; Anne thinks it should be the Turner Prize. She says the organisation has stifled originality in design. Yet many of the most admired examples of contemporary design are in NGS gardens: Kim Wilkie at Boughton, Robert Myers in Cambridge and Tom Stuart-Smith at a hatful, to name a few. However, I am not concerned with her views on gardens, rather with the underlying implications of her snobbery towards those ordinary people in the National Gardens Scheme who think they know everything about gardens; their contemptible taste and equally contemptible good intentions. Many of the thousands of modest, generous people who work tirelessly for nothing opening their gardens or organising the openings will be mortified that their efforts — often prompted by painful personal loss — have been so vilified. Perhaps if Anne Wareham ever requires the support of a Macmillan or Marie Curie nurse, or ends up in a hospice, she might think back to one of her less edifying efforts as a journalist.
George Plumptre
Chief executive, The National Gardens Scheme, East Clandon, Surrey
Chinese whispers
Sir: Jonathan Fenby (‘Buried in China’, 14 April) wisely sticks to the political tangles in China right now and steers clear of the claptrap about a murder. It is shaming that the quality British press has fallen for what is after all a gigantic Communist Party smear — so far — about the death last November of Neil Heywood. There is only one fact: Mr Heywood was found dead in a hotel in Chongqing on 14 November and was quickly cremated. Two official causes of death were published in China; heart attack and alcohol poisoning. All further stories here have been peppered with that dodgiest of attributions, ‘sources say…’. As Mr Fenby observes, what is going on in China is the sudden sacking of a senior party official, Bo Xilai, for reasons unclear. This happened a lot in Mao’s time, with the accused usually dead after he had been ‘named’. Later, Deng Xiaoping brought down, but did not kill, the country’s two top officials, Hu Yaobang — this triggered the Tiananmen uprising — and then Zhao Ziyang. Now Mr Bo’s wife is officially alleged to have murdered Neil Heywood. There is so far no evidence worth a minute of court time in London for this, but the Chinese state media have gone to town on the woman’s almost certain guilt, with no reason given. Both Mr Bo and his wife are under arrest. She may get an official bullet in the back of her neck. As they say in China, ‘Verdict first, trial afterwards.’
Jonathan Mirsky
London W11
Busy buggers
Sir: Visitors to Moscow in the bad old days will recall the story of the tourist couple who grumbled in their bedroom, to themselves, about something. Almost immediately a man arrived, unsummoned, to fix it. A KGB bug in the chandelier? Chums of mine in the know reckon that a major factor in the fall of the regime was that the KGB collapsed under a welter of useless intelligence, collected from such promiscuous bugging. With Downing Street’s new security proposition (Barometer, 14 April), should our Dave not walk cautiously lest those worthy nerds in Cheltenham also suffocate under a million reams of rubbish?
Alistair Horne
Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire
Shame that tune
Sir: I’m delighted to read that Toby Young’s child woke the composer of Waybuloo’s hypnotic music to offer a critique (Status Anxiety, 7 April). My two-year-old freezes in fear when the tune starts and shouts ‘Nooooooo song!’ I had been wondering how to tell the person responsible.
Revd Dr Peter Sanlon
London
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