All in the delivery
Sir: Toby Young’s opinions about Cardinal Vaughan school (Status anxiety, 19 March) are subjective and misguided. When seeking a new headteacher, our governing body will be looking for the best person to fill that role and that is all. Cardinal Vaughan is rated ‘outstanding’ and there is every commitment, from the Archbishop of Westminster downwards, to ensure that rating is maintained. On the question of sharing expertise, I would remind the Spectator that at its own recent conference on education, the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, talked about the need for partnership among schools. I could envisage Toby Young approaching the senior management team of the Vaughan for advice on the delivery of high-quality education in the free school he is seeking to establish. Finally, the governing body is already considering the question of the school becoming an academy, as are no doubt many other schools.
John M. O’Donnell
Chairman of governors, Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, London W14
The mighty pen
Sir: I read with interest and delight Mark Mason’s article discussing the fascinating question of handwritten versus word-processed documents (‘Chained to the Keys’, 19 March). He can be assured that the art of writing by hand is most certainly not dead, as a team of over 600 examiners of which I am one will attest. We travel to many parts of the globe for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, or ABRSM as we are now known, assessing tens of thousands of individual musical performances, penning a handwritten report on each one. Mr Mason’s inspiring article has reinforced my firm belief that a report written by hand conveys a respect for the emotion and sheer hard work that goes into a musical performance much better than a typed sheet ever could.
Robert Bailey
London SW16
Not a Trot
Sir: Many apologies to Mike Gapes (Letters, 19 March), who I incorrectly referred to as a former Trot. This stemmed from an internal Labour party football match which took place at the Elephant and Castle leisure centre in 1985. I was assured by my captain that all of my opponents were Trots, and that we should therefore kick them. Mike was one of those opponents. I suppose that taking as fact a tossed-off insult made prior to a game of football 26 years ago is not necessarily journalistic good practice. So my profuse apologies to him.
Rod Liddle
Kent
Putting the Boots in
Sir: Professor P.G. Isaacson asks whether I really believe that the big pharmaceutical corporations are troubled by competition from herbalists (Letters, 19 March). I have no idea what their motives were, but I do know that they lobbied intensely in Brussels for restrictions which will have the effect of putting many small practitioners out of business. In fairness, they did so quite openly. I remember a spokesman from Boots demanding these regulations on the BBC. Boots, of course, will have no difficulty meeting the compliance costs when it sells alternative and herbal products. The same is not true of the typical herbalist, who concocts remedies from her own garden.
In a week that saw a number of MEPs caught on tape offering to move amendments in return for cash, we are again reminded of the corporatist nature of the Brussels system. Lobbyists love the EU, intuiting that it was designed by and for people like them. A ban on herbal remedies and higher dose vitamin supplements would never have got through the House of Commons — nor, I suspect, any other national legislature. But EU institutions were designed to be invulnerable to public opinion.
Daniel Hannan MEP (Conservative)
Brighton
Questing vowels
Sir: Alexander Chancellor’s diary (19 March) prompts me to ask a question that has puzzled me for decades. What is the correct middle-class pronunciation of ‘really’, which Mr Chancellor wrongly assumes all your readers to be sure of? Not ‘reelly’ — that is clear! So is it ‘rahlly’, ‘rilly’, ‘rarely’, or what? Where I live, most people give ‘really’ three syllables, but that can’t be right.
David Watkins
Cardiff
Small world
Sir: Aidan Hartley (Wild Life, 12 March) wonders whether he may have learnt more of the world had he stayed on a farm in Devon instead of travelling. I was brought up in Winkleigh, the neighbouring village to his, and can assure him that he has forfeited a great deal. He may not be aware that Constable Waycott, who rescued him in the snow, went on to enjoy local celebrity status when he spotted a UFO hovering in the night sky over Okehampton.
Ceri Harding (nee George)
By email
Perfect pitch
Sir: Ed Smith (‘Swards of Honour’, 12 March) has evidently not had the pleasure of playing on ‘The Senior’, the cricket pitch of Malvern College, which is set on the side of the Malvern Hills overlooking the Vale of Evesham. Perhaps he omitted to mention it because, being set into the side of a hill, it is rather narrow and one cannot score a six. On the other hand it might be because the Old Malvernians regularly beat his fellow Old Tonbridgians in the Cricketer Cup. Either way, the school has produced a similar number of first-class cricketers. There is in the Memorial Library a photograph of the 1st XI playing in front of Blenheim Palace, where the school was briefly based during the war. Now that really was a setting.
Jeremy M.J. Havard
London SW3
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