This turbulent priest
Sir: Seeing that it was I who wrote the article in The Spectator five and a half years ago advancing the case for choosing Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury the week before he was actually shortlisted for the job, I have something of an obligation to ask myself whether I got it right (‘Just a posh version of Prescott’, 16 February).
The answer, I think, is yes. Let’s remember, amid all the kerfuffle, that Jesus himself also prevaricated on the tricky issues of the day, included the excluded and overrode doctrine. How enraging it all was to the righteous, to those fearful for their identity and their own moral fences! A woman was caught committing adultery in flagrante, and all he would do was doodle in the dust and ultimately remark that whoever was without sin should fling the first rock. He was playing for time, giving no robust lead at all. They slunk off, inwardly boiling. In that same chapter, John the Evangelist tells how the Jews actually jeered at Jesus for being a ‘Samaritan’.
The reality after five and a half years in the job is that Archbishop Williams is widely loved and much revered by a great body of the prayerful in a Church which, against all the odds, has not fallen apart and is improbably growing nationally and globally not merely in numbers but, I daresay, in quality of faith. Here is the primus inter pares of the show, speaking and writing with his idiosyncratic spiritual slant upon that broad rationality which is Anglicanism’s inestimable gift to Christianity. So far, I’m content with my hunch, and sticking with the prayerful.
Tom Stacey
London W8
Sir: I emphatically agree with Rod Liddle. However, as a practising Christian I would go further. Not only is Dr Williams refusing to confront the awful inhumanity and threat of sharia law; he is in fact, by his lecture and his pompous pseudo-academic way of dealing with it, giving it credence and promoting it. Would I be going too far if I were to say that he is — in the memorable phrase of the person he claims to represent — a ‘whitened sepulchre’?
Michael Knowles
Congleton, Cheshire
Devilled by detail
Sir: Nick Robinson (Politics, 16 February) complains that David Cameron’s friends ‘cannot spell out what he would do’ in government. Of course they cannot. They are in exactly the same position as Margaret Thatcher’s supporters before the 1979 election, when she combined forceful speech-making with a limited programme of commitments that made her first election manifesto one of the shortest on record. That is the way the finest Tories do things in order to retain freedom of action in the face of unforeseeable events. Ted Heath, who spelt out precisely what he would do in 1970, devoted his embarrassed period in government to executing a series of U-turns.
But by 1988, when I interviewed David for a post in the Conservative Research Department at the start of his political career, Thatcher had largely surrendered her Tory flexibility. This, we agreed, could well make her salutory third-term aims of improving the public services and overhauling the welfare state harder to achieve. In a series of engaging speeches which I edited for publication last year — a far cry from Gordon Brown’s turgid tomes — David Cameron has set out a new framework for Tory reform while avoiding the detailed commitments for which Nick Robinson unwisely looks.
Alistair Cooke
London SW1
New kinds of authority
Sir: Trust in old institutions is in decline, but hierarchies are not flattening, as Fraser Nelson suggests (‘Trust in politics is dead: long live “wiki-politics”’, 9 February) — rather they are shifting. We are still a deferential and hierarchical society, but we respect and revere new kinds of authority. This challenges traditional social norms and institutions. Business and political leaders need to use new techniques and language to communicate with their audiences, but what they need to demonstrate remains the same: leadership and shared values. Ultimately, the means by which this is communicated will never be as important as the message.
Malcolm Gooderham
London WC2
The state of pensions
Sir: A couple of weeks ago an elderly relative received a letter from the Department of Work and Pensions telling him that his state retirement pension is to be increased by 44 pence per week and his age-related pension by 23 pence per week, a total increase of 0.34 per cent. The inflation figures show the Consumer Prices Index has increased to 2.2 per cent and the Retail Price Index to 4.1 per cent.
I have just returned from standing in a long Post Office queue, mostly made up of young people speaking foreign languages, being handed generous wads of large denomination notes. It is right that a rich country should help and protect the dispossessed. However, from the evidence before my eyes today, it seems that a pensioner who has paid tax and NI for over 50 years is not considered worthy of financial support on the same generous level as fit, young, new residents who have yet to find work and pay tax.
I feel I am in danger of becoming the sort of person I avoid having to listen or talk to.
Melanie de Blank
London SW11
Volunteers needed
Sir: Jeremy Clarke’s tale of service with CSV demonstrates its huge impact (‘Who gives?’, 16 February). Nationwide, community centres, schools, hospitals, homeless shelters and care homes for frail, elderly and disabled people are transformed by over 1,000 such volunteers giving four to 12 months’ full-time service. We are proud that Tesco now sponsors 20 a year at our local radio action desks. In cash terms, they are amazing value for money — costing just £10,000 a year to cover pocket money, food, accommodation and travel.
More are needed every month. No one is rejected. The nation needs their energy to ‘personalise’ public services. Volunteers need the chance to broaden their horizons. It ‘inspires and opens doors’. Jeremy recommends it!
Dame Elisabeth Hoodless
Executive director, CSV, London N1
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