Rubio for President?
Sir: Richard Littlejohn’s idea of a President Rubio (‘Who will fight Obama?’, 16 April) is little more than wishful thinking. The Florida senator is at most a lukewarm conservative, which will become increasingly obvious over his six-year term. (Obama is only the second man in 50 years to go directly from Senate to White House — it’s a difficult path because legislative service forces a politician to commit his views to the record.) Littlejohn is impressed that Rubio could draw a crowd of 5,000 in his home state, yet there are a half-dozen other Republicans with at least as much pull — including figures such as Palin, Bachmann and Trump, whom Littlejohn rightly discounts.
Daniel McCarthy
Editor, The American Conservative
Washington, DC
Sarko could survive
Sir: John Laughland thinks that Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency is finished and the French centre-right cannot hold (‘A right mess’, 16 April). But his judgment might be premature. In 2001, after all, it was commonplace to say that Jacques Chirac had no chance of re-election. Yet thanks to the peculiarities of French elections and the majority’s fear of the Front National, Chirac kept the keys to the Elysée Palace and ruled over the unhappy French for another four years. Sarkozy could do the same. Never mind AV for Britain, maybe the French should embrace electoral reform.
Albert Bellando
London SW15
Productivity or the chop
Sir: Well done Rod Liddle (16 April) for pointing out that the Conservative councils are squandering public money just as the loony Labour councils have done for years. The Conservative Cotswold District Council has just paid £19,000 to a Magic Circle magician to provide something called ‘The Even Better Place to Work Programme’, which is ‘designed’ to motivate the council workers, or, as the chief executive put it, to ‘increase capacity… reducing non-productive time caused by sickness, absence, grievances and dispute resolution.’ This same Cotswold prodigal, David Neudegg, also happens to be chief of West Oxfordshire District Council, covering David Cameron’s own constituency, where he spent £30,000 of rate-payers’ money for a barmy ‘happiness course’. All 316 council workers, including bin men, were compelled to attend and keep a ‘happiness index log’. What a disgraceful waste of our money. Council workers who don’t provide a useful and efficient service to ratepayers should simply get the chop, and that should be all the motivation they need.
Tom Boyd
Cirencester
Lost in translation
Sir: Obviously Minister Ken Okaniwa does not appreciate that his letter against the word ‘Jap’ (April 9) is more likely to be read as a parody from the bridge on the River Kwai, than as a serious reprimand. It’s a classic ‘lost in translation’. As a Chinese, I am always asked if I find ‘chink’ or ‘Chinaman’ offensive — and I always say no — first, because I abhor political correctness; and secondly, because I want to be able to laugh either with others or even at myself. Mind you, your Greek Taki once told me that he described me as a ‘Chinaman’ in his diary, but your predecessor censored it.
Sir David Tang
London W1
Risen from the ruins
Sir: Douglas Murray (Diary, 16 April) asks if there is a single building in the UK which has been rebuilt postwar. May I refer him to Swansea, which was savagely bombed during the second world war? St Mary’s Church, in the city centre, was rebuilt according to its original design and is a very impressive place and an oasis of calm.
Sally A. Williams
Dinas Cross, Pembrokeshire
Duffy verse
Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 16 April) is right about Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘poem against the Arts Council cuts’, published recently in the Guardian. ‘Indignation creates verse’, wrote Juvenal. Unfortunately, by itself it doesn’t create poetry.
Tim Hudson
Chichester, West Sussex
The weight we were
Sir: I was horrified to read Taffeta Gray’s description of the horrible measures girls would take to achieve ‘model’ proportions when she was at Downe House school (‘Downe Time’, 9April). I was at a well-known girls’ boarding school from 1943 to 1949 and I do not remember any of the girls being overweight or being obsessed with being thin. We were very healthy, though, which must say a lot for the war-time diet, low in fat and sugar, which we consumed mostly without complaint as we did not remember anything else.
Shirley Page
Cambridgeshire
Short memories
Sir: Matt Cavanagh rightly lambasts the defence establishment for its inability to learn lessons in Afghanistan (‘Operation Amnesia’, 9 April). However, it is strange that an article which attacks the government for forgetfulness in Afghanistan should mention no date before 2006. As a colonial power, Britain has fought three wars against Afghanistan since the 19th century, attempted to occupy it twice, and controlled its foreign policy for nearly 40 years. There is a wealth of practical military, diplomatic and governmental knowledge from these times which sadly goes little regarded in governmental circles. Let us look to this expertise built up over a century and a half, rather than just the last few years, if we wish to make any headway in Afghanistan.
Bijan Omrani
London SW1
Sir: I must have been reading a different article from Elke Miller de Vega (Letters, 16 April). Far from being ‘razor-sharp analysis’, I believe Matt Cavanagh’s article on Afghanistan missed the most important lesson: politicians should not embark on military adventures unless they are willing to invest intellectual capital into formulating a sound strategy. If our leaders are unwilling to pay the price in money, they must be prepared for a higher cost in blood.
The experience in Afghanistan shows the problem; the last government failed to provide a coherent strategy and failed to fund it properly. The current government made a bad situation worse by publishing an exit date while carrying on the under-funding. When the military tries to compensate for an inadequate strategy they are accused of mission creep. And when third-rate statesman start demanding details of an ‘exit strategy’, it’s political code for ‘we’ve lost the political will, let’s get out of there’.
John Gallagher
Ayrshire
Two writers of Genesis
Sir: In his review of Melvyn Bragg’s book on the King James bible (Books, 9 April) Philip Hensher criticises the standard of storytelling in Genesis, writing that ‘the author seems to forget the details of his own story’. As Hensher ought to know, most bible scholars would contend that the book of Genesis had not one, but at least two authors, usually referred to as J, the ‘Yawist’, and P, the Priestly writer.
Christopher Goulding
Newcastle upon Tyne
Who can save the libraries?
Sir: If Toby Young is correct that the fate of our libraries is in the hands of local councils and not central government (‘Status anxiety’, 9 April), why does he appeal to culture minister Ed Vaizey to save the Kensal Rise library in Brent?
Richard Laming
London NW2
Mass desertion
Sir: I recently stayed in Paris for a few days and, on returning to Warsaw, I read Matthew Parris’s lament for the French capital (2 April). I was struck by how similar our impressions were. I used to love Paris: it used to lift my spirits. Now it is obvious that something is really going wrong with France. As a fanatical Catholic, I think I have at least a partial explanation. All the élan and beauty created by centuries of Catholicism seems to be dying slowly in these times of empty churches. Paris ought to be worth a mass.
Andrzej Wilski
Warszawa, Poland
Camilla as consort
Sir: The word that springs to mind to describe Melanie McDonagh’s article about the Duchess of Cornwall (‘Adultery rewarded’, 2 April) is ‘spiteful’. Quite apart from the dubious accuracy of her assertions about private matters, is it fair, in a society where almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, to say that Camilla should not be forgiven for her past? It is very doubtful whether Charles and Camilla could have married when they were young and single. The Prince of Wales’s match with Lady Diana Spencer was dynastic; an obligation not imposed on Prince William.
Many people are glad that Charles has found happiness with Camilla and, if he ascends the throne in due course and if Camilla is then living and married to him, she ought to be Queen Consort. Note the second word. So much criticism of Camilla seems to blur the important distinction between the status of the present Queen as reigning monarch, and a Queen Consort, who would not reign at all. If it comes to pass, the Duchess of Cornwall can be expected to fulfil the latter role admirably.
Christopher Lennon
London N1
Crowd computing
Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 2 April) laments our inability to estimate crowd sizes accurately. Here in the East, the BBC local news has three times told us that a crowd of protesters besieged council buildings as the councillors entered to pass their new austerity budgets. From the early camera shots and from the three or four interviews with protesters, we might have been led to believe that it really was a massive demonstration of public anger. Only when the cameras panned back did we see that the number of protesters was about 23. My emails complaining about this distortion have met with massive silence.
Ian Baird
Suffolk
Universe of the Masters
Sir: When Mr Alton gazed into his crystal ball to predict the winner of the 2011 Masters (Sport, 2 April), he didn’t manage to see any player from the colonies posing a challenge. Yet as the sun set over Augusta National Park on Sunday afternoon and lit up the leaderboard, the top three consisted of two Aussies and a South African. Unlike our cricket team, Mr Schwartzel didn’t choke and gave us our best win over the Aussies in years.
Johnny Caldow
Johannesburg
What price manners?
David J. Cox (Letters, 16 April) accuses me of implying that state-educated pupils are ill-mannered louts, and that privately educated pupils are models of mannerly virtue. That would have been unacceptable. The phrase I used, however, was ‘expensive manners’. As any shop assistant in the posher parts of London could tell you, expensive manners are not the same thing as good ones.
Benjamin Rockbird
London SE15
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