Dutch tensions
Sir: Rod Liddle’s magnificent portrayal of Dutch politics is marred by one error (‘Orange alert’, 16 October). The anti-immigration and anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders is not ‘almost bizarrely Aryan’, as Liddle states. His grandmother was from a Jewish Indonesian family. His blond hair is peroxided. These facts, unlike many about Mr Wilders, are not in dispute.
David Jones
Amsterdam
The philosophy of Stone
Sir: I could have a little more respect for Oliver Stone’s views on cutting defence spending in the UK if he had the slightest idea what he was talking about (‘When Stone gets stick’, 16 October). Defence spending costs £35 billion per annum, in contrast with welfare at £190 billion, health at £120 billion, and education at £90 billion. Furthermore, as your own statistics show, spending on our hard-pressed armed forces has only just kept pace with inflation over the past five years, in contrast with the large real increases in the budgets of both health and education, with no discernible improvement in quality. You do the math, Mr Stone, as I believe your countrymen are wont to say on these occasions.
John-Paul Marney
Glasgow
Commitment to the classics
Sir: While I can only admire Peter Jones’s commitment to his subject (‘Classic spooks’, 16 October), and can only agree that rigour in education is desirable, I fear he is making too much of the contingent survival of classics in the best schools. Is it not plausible that the aims of statecraft would be even better served by teaching the literatures of (say) Russian, Spanish, Persian and Mandarin to the standards of the curriculum for Ancient Greek?
Guy E.S. Herbert
London NW1
Downton anachronism
Sir: Yes, Downton Abbey is superb melodrama, as Charles Moore wrote (The Spectator’s Notes, 16 October), as well as a feast for the eyes, and brilliantly cast. But may I gently point out that an Ottoman diplomat visiting the estate in 1912 would never have been introduced as ‘Kemal Pamuk’. Pamuk (meaning ‘cotton’) is a surname, and surnames were not used in Turkey until the mid-1920s, when Atatürk made their adoption compulsory as part of his Westernisation drive. The visitor in question would have been known and addressed as Kemal Bey.
Lord Monson
London W8
With a clap of the hands
Sir: Further to Michael Henderson’s excellent article about sanctimonious pop stars (‘John Lennon, idiot’, 16 October), I remembered that story about Bono saying at a concert that ‘Every time I clap, a child dies in Africa.’ A member of the audience shouted: ‘Well, stop f***ing clapping then!’
James Butterwick
London W6
It was me
Sir: As the 89-year-old granddaughter of David Lloyd George, I would like to point out that the date and the caption on the picture you printed in your Books section (18 September) are incorrect. The date was not c. 1910 but c. 1928. The little girl on the right is not his daughter Megan (she would have been about 24 years old) but me, his youngest granddaughter, smug in my new school blazer. In the centre is my grandfather as I remember him, rather stout, with his shock of white hair and bushy moustache. In 1910, he was much slimmer. To the left is not his wife Margaret but his eldest daughter Olwen, my mother. On the far left is my Aunt Roberta. The picture brought back happy memories and I just wanted to set the record straight.
Eluned MacMillan
Toronto, Canada
Whose benefit?
Sir: I sympathise with Toby Young (Status anxiety, 9 October) losing his child benefit, and agree with those who say that it is unfair that two parents earning £35,000 each would retain theirs. As child benefit is paid to the mother, shouldn’t it be mothers earning over £45,000 who forfeit it?
Morag Cummings
Durham
Council and honour
Sir: I would like to clarify several aspects of the consultation and planning processes referred to in Alexander Waugh’s piece (‘Housing estates are killing our countryside’, 20 March). The article referred to a planning application for new housing in Milverton, Somerset, where I work as a council officer. Mr Waugh criticised the plans as well as a local consultation event about the development and the ‘equalities monitoring form’ distributed at that event.
I would like to make it clear that I was not responsible for drawing up either proposals for the housing development or the equalities form issued by the Taunton Deane Council. I strongly objected to being identified in the article which, I felt, was offensive at times and seemed to single me out. Members of my local community criticised me following its publication.
The event was also attended by the council’s press officer who is permitted to deal with the press and the manager responsible for delivering the plan.
R. Mitchinson
Somerset
Not posh enough?
Sir: As one of five children, I was alarmed to read Rachel Johnson’s assertion that ‘only the underclass or the truly posh have four or more children’ (‘How to spend it’, 9 October). Since I am not nearly as posh as Rachel and her three siblings, I fear I must be a member of the underclass. Should I stop reading The Spectator?
Lucy McGough
By email
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