• Gone with the wind
Sir: Your recent campaign against wind farms is brought, perhaps, to a conclusion by Matt Ridley’s splendid article on shale gas (‘Shale of the century’, 15 October). Yet at no time have you referred to that other blot on the domestic landscape, the solar panel. I wonder why. As with the wind farm, they are weather dependent, their installation is beyond the means of the majority, they are judged to be an eyesore, and they are subsidised by the taxpayer. That’s four similarities. But what can seriously be done about either?
John Weaver
Derbyshire
Sir: Can anything be done to force the government to reassess the policy on wind farms? I was impressed by the success of Hugh’s Fish Fight in forcing a review of the wasteful discards of cod in the North Sea. If a similar initiative could be launched to make the government look again at their current policy on wind farms, it would surely be worthwhile. Would The Spectator support such an initiative? I do not know anyone who believes what we are doing makes sense. The current policy, if adhered to, will be result in national economic suicide, to no useful purpose.
Edward Brett
Norwich
Sir: We sympathise with CLA (Country Land & Business Association) member William Cash who is threatened by a proposed wind farm, but his article (‘Selling our birthright’, 15 October) might further polarise a planning debate which has no need to be polarised at all.
The CLA is neutral on wind farms, mainly because we have no special expertise on their costs and benefits. However, we do have expertise on heritage because, collectively, our members manage at least a quarter of it. While we are just as opposed to ‘concreting over the countryside’ as the National Trust or CPRE, we do not see all rural development as evil. The long-standing assumption that it is evil has had disastrous outcomes for rural areas. In the words of the Rural Coalition, a group which includes the CLA and CPRE among others, the countryside ‘for 50 years or more has relentlessly become less and less self-sufficient, part-dormitory, part-theme park and part-retirement home. Only if people in rural communities have ready access to local schools, local jobs, local shops and affordable homes will they and their children thrive.’
The current furore has largely missed the point. Development is not always wicked any more than it is always good. It depends on its location, scale and design. If the time and money now spent fighting over the principle of development went instead into making it appropriate and attractive, England would be a better place.
William Worsley
President, CLA, London SW1
Sir: I am saddened by the naivety of William Cash in juxtaposing wind farms and housing development as comparable threats to ‘our heritage’. If we do not tackle climate change there will be no heritage worth preserving, and probably no one around to appreciate the old piles. Not to mention, in the interim, the untold suffering caused to countries more immediately affected, such as Pakistan and the Horn of Africa. Opposing means of reducing carbon emissions is little better, where the likely consequences for human beings are concerned, than appeasing Hitler. Wind turbines are not, actually, particularly ugly, and certainly less so than the pylons we have lived with for decades
Antony Black
Dundee
• French with tears
Sir: A mighty hurrah to Ysenda Maxtone Graham for writing, and the Speccie for printing, a blast against the prevailing behemoths of language teaching (‘Textbook error’, 15 October). As one who was lucky enough to teach French from what was probably the last of the grammar books, the wonderful A la page (with illustrations by Sempé would you believe?), and Latin from the thorough, unstuffy (but oh so difficult!) Oxford Latin Course, I observed with dismay the descent into the patronising textbooks that have controlled the market for the past 30 years. (Greek, thank heaven, has been spared, but I suspect only because it is almost a lost cause anyway.) By now, of course, you have to be really old to have known anything else — as you were taught, so shall you teach — and even teachers at the top of their tree were brought up on the Cambridge Latin Course and Tricolore.
Just recently I have noticed a slight inclination in the press to resurrect ‘elitist’ as a word to be uttered without spitting. If we can admit again that some children want to learn things in an orderly way, that some children really thirst for knowledge, we might be on the road to giving them what they need.
Cornelia Starks
Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
Sir: Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s article about feeble French teaching was full of praise for J.R. Watson’s book La Langue des Français, on the grounds that it was full of proper grammatical information. I worked with John Watson, and he would (I suspect) not be all that flattered: he saw himself as one who taught by speaking French as much as possible. Small boys arriving at the boarding school where he worked would find that the most important parts of the day, mealtimes, were puzzling because only French was spoken at his table. They had to learn pretty quickly the words for knife, fork, spoon, plate, mug, and many food words — otherwise they might not get fed. Grammar, for John, was something that came later. In fact, he wanted the best of both worlds, and why not?
Ian Baird
Suffolk
• Mutual intemperance
Sir: How strange that a passing reference to Paul Goodman’s opposition to gay equality should provoke such an intemperate and strange emission from him (Letters, 15 October).
It is true that he and I have history. Partly it relates to some intemperate comments of my own some years back for which Paul demanded I atone. Since those requesting atonement included some who had previously praised the speech he was complaining about, I thought it a matter of principle not to back down.
That was a mistake. But we all make them. Paul makes one when he says that the work of the Centre for Social Cohesion had no effect on government. I am pleased to say that the government’s ‘Prevent’ and ‘Contest’ strategies as well as the latest annual review of terrorism legislation show that our work is taken very seriously indeed. As for what Paul refers to as the ‘hard grind’ of keeping Islamists out of parliament, I have been (and remain) deeply involved in this.
Douglas Murray
London W1
Sir: I was proud to be a director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, which under Douglas Murray’s leadership produced a body of invaluable work on political extremism. Now merged with the Henry Jackson Society, it continues to cast a cold eye on dangerous elements — right and left — within our society.
It does not much bother me that, a few months after the 7/7 bombings, Douglas uttered a few infelicitous phrases. Nor am I concerned that he is too confrontational for a Conservative party bent on proving its niceness. Douglas is a brave and brilliant champion of western values: he is not a bigot. I’m sorry that Paul Goodman, who I know and admire, should have allowed his emotions to get the better of him and produced such an infelicitous attack.
Ruth Dudley Edwards
London WC2
• Now the bad news
Sir: I would suggest that if Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 15 October) finds ‘John Bell of the Iona Community’ to be the most discouraging phrase currently in use on Radio 4, then he can not have heard ‘after the news, Weekend Woman’s Hour with Bidisha’.
Jonathan Guy
by email
Sir: Rod Liddle (15 October) makes ‘some suggestions about how the BBC management can save money’. Would sacking the lunatics who decided to play ridiculous music during the news be too much to ask?
Damian Law
Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire
• The state they’re in
Sir: Evgeny Lebedev is entitled to disagree with my new book on Russia, Mafia State (A press lord’s notebook, 1 October). But he’s not entitled to claim that Alexander Lebedev didn’t agree to give me an interview. (He did. Lebedev Snr’s aide arranged the meeting and gave me the address of Evgeny’s Mayfair offices.) The owner of the Independent and Evening Standard also says he has ‘doubts’ that Russia’s FSB spy agency broke into my Moscow apartment. The Foreign Office has no such doubts: it complained about the break-ins to the Russian government in 2009. British diplomats in Moscow have also suffered repeatedly from similar intrusions.
Luke Harding
Hertfordshire
• Pride of Scotland
Sir: We were delighted to read Toby Young’s kind comments about the immaculate appearance of Dumfries station (Status Anxiety, 1 October). It is testament to the pride with which our staff have cared for the station over many years.
John Yellowlees
External Relations Manager
First ScotRail, Glasgow
• Dog days
Sir: I am writing to tell Melissa Kite that there is light at the end of the tunnel (Real Life, 24 September). I too had a terrible puppy and she has grown into a lovely, docile golden retriever. I brought her home as an eight-week-old ball of adorable white fluff. But Poppy was a chewer. She got through three remote controls, two mobile phones and five phone chargers, among other things. She used to swallow socks whole only to regurgitate them later, still whole but not wearable. On her first Christmas, I put the gifts under the tree and went to work only to find a sea of wrapping paper and half-eaten presents on my return. I was surprised that my parents had sent me nothing but a card, of which I found only pieces. Later I discovered that the envelope had contained £100 in cash.
She is now, however, a sweet and lovely dog who no longer chews anything but the occasional bone.
Sarah Wardle
Portugal
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