Time to rehabilitate
Sir: The issue of whether or not ‘Prison works’ is confused in your leading article (19 June) with the broader arguments about reducing the National Offender Management Service’s £5 billion budget.
Even if the £2 billion of annual public expenditure on prisons was left largely intact, there is scope for savings and other benefits in localising the punishment and aftercare of offenders with much more input from voluntary and community groups. Such a localisation policy could result in better and less costly services in this part of the criminal justice system, provided sentencing reform was part of the package. To give one example: NOMS could hardly be doing worse at managing the many thousands of young offenders who are jailed with sentences of less than 12 months who in practice average three months inside. Their post-release reoffending rates are now 74 per cent — and rising.
Reducing such a scale of failure does indeed require the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ promised by the coalition government. The Spectator should not attempt the editorial mugging of Ken Clarke before he has had a chance to spell out the specific reforms which could cut both the number of crimes and the number of prisoners over the period of a parliament.
Jonathan Aitken
London
Back to Black
Sir: In fact, I liked Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s review of Sir Max Hastings’s book about Mr Churchill (Letters, 19 June), but was just inserting the word ‘jejune’ because Mr Wheatcroft had questioned my use of it in an otherwise generally favourable review he wrote of my book about Richard Nixon in 2007. I too struggled with the Venerable Bede, though not in such an ancient and cloistered place as Mr Wheatcroft did, and can set his mind at ease that I have been quite familiar with the meaning of the word since those far-off days. At no point did I imagine it had anything to do with youth, and I was not bothered by a stammer when young, or starved, as he apparently was, out of any sense of humour. I regret that my attempt to amuse him misfired, but I never take very strenuous issue with a favourable reviewer, and thank him for his solicitude and advice.
Conrad Black
Coleman, Florida
The point of French
Sir: Rod Liddle would have us stop teaching children French (Liddle Britain, 19 June): ‘a language,’ he writes, ‘which is of no consequence whatsoever beyond the borders of France itself, a handful of desperately hopeless countries in West Africa and nine chippy Canadians’. There are two reasons for learning a foreign language, apart from the pleasure that may be derived from doing so. The first is to be able to communicate with those whose language it is, the second to be able to read what is written in that language. Liddle seems to suppose that only the first of these reasons matters, and so would have our children learn Arabic and Mandarin rather than French, even though most of them will probably have little occasion to speak either of the languages he recommends.
As to the second reason, Somerset Maugham, who read widely in several languages, once observed that while many countries have great writers, only England and France have a great literature. This is a good reason for learning French. My ignorance of Mandarin and Arabic causes me no pain or discomfort. My ability to read French has brought me many hours of pleasure.
Allan Massie
Selkirk
Sir: Don’t write French off, Rod Liddle. It is the first language of the EU and the one in which documents are drafted before translations appear; and Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg are all French-speaking. Any Britons wanting to make a career in the EU would do well to acquire a command of French, and so should our politicians.
Eric Brown
Kent
Poor thinking
Sir: In his (very fair) review of Alastair Campbell’s diaries (Books, 19 June), Chris Mullin says that the lives of most of his least prosperous constituents changed immeasurably for the better during the last 12 years. Surely this was not difficult to achieve when the chancellor was prepared to encumber the next generation with a trillion pounds of debt.
Neil Stuart
Cumbria
Miller misunderstood
Sir: What is it with the English and Arthur Miller? I knew he had a more exalted reputation in England than in the US, but nothing prepared me for Lloyd Evans’s demented claim (Arts, 12 June) that All My Sons was the best play to have emerged since the death of Chekhov. Thus Evans casually dismisses Shaw and Pirandello, and presumably Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Bertolt Brecht are also lilliputians next to the great Miller. I gather Miller has become for the English what Jerry Lewis allegedly was for the French: a misunderstanding.
John Kelleher
New Jersey, USA
A short rebujito
Sir: I was disappointed that your Summer Drinks supplement (12 June) did not have space to share with your readers one of the great refreshing summer drinks and one with a hidden but not dangerous kick — Andalucia’s ‘rebujito’. You pour equal measures of dry sherry (fino is good but manzanilla is even better) and fizzy lemonade over ice, stir and strain into short tumblers. There is no point in using a leading fino or manzanilla — save those for drinking straight — as the supermarket own brands (nearly half the price) do the job perfectly. And you must use clear lemonade — Andalucians use a sugar-free diet version. Using a proper lemonade produces a cloyingly sweet concoction which just makes you thirstier and is more likely to lead to a hangover.
Michael D. Varcoe-Cocks
London W6
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