Pension scheming
Sir: As a pensions professional who has witnessed his once-mighty industry’s sustaining of blow after blow, I was heartened to read The Spectator’s call for Conservatives to resist the temptation to make ‘yet another raid on pension funds’ (Leading article, 25 February).
The government’s lack of understanding of pensions tax relief was revealed in the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s reported comment on how much ‘we spend’ on higher-rate relief on pension contributions. The government is not ‘spending’ at all; the contributor is simply being allowed to retain more of his own money, as a reward for putting some away for exposure to future taxation.
Zachary Gallagher
Leicester
Sir: Your leading article was spot on. Let’s raise the tax allowance to £10,000 but not by mounting yet another damaging raid on pensions. There are cuts that can easily be implemented with the grain of existing policies: drive government cuts over three not four years; force half of councils to outsource basic services long outsourced by the sensible half; don’t offer final salary pensions for anyone new joining the public sector. The ‘top 1 per cent’ within the public sector should accept a 5 per cent pay cut as an incentive to drive deficit reduction.
Tony Devenish
Superannuation Committee
Westminster City Council, London SW1
Impending divorce
Sir: Unless Conservatives risk imminent coalition break-up (‘Irreconcilable differences’, 25 February) by adopting necessary economic growth policies, they risk electoral suicide. Growth requires global competitiveness. It necessitates first lowering the top tax rate to 40 per cent immediately and capital gains taxes commensurately, to encourage entrepreneurs to invest in Britain (and substantially increase tax revenues). Second, the repeal of excessive and ill-founded regulations, including all restrictive EU regulations, even if it means leaving the EU. These measures should be vigorously defended as overwhelmingly in the public interest and the best way to create viable, sustainable jobs.
The risk of coalition break-up must be accepted since the Conservatives cannot win an election on current policies alone. So what is there to lose?
Allen Sykes
Surrey
Simple error
Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 25 February) says that Colin Welch invented the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Simple column, but I don’t think that is correct. Cyril Herbert Bretherton, a journalist on the old Morning Post, wrote a ‘Way of the World’ column for many years in that paper, signing himself ‘Peter Simple’, until the Post was taken over by the Daily Telegraph in 1937. He was also a columnist on Punch, where he wrote under the pen name ‘Algol’.
C.H. Bretherton was the Morning Post’s correspondent in Ireland during the original ‘Troubles’, and a reporter for the Irish Times. His contemporaneous reports in both papers make vivid and exciting reading. An English Catholic Unionist, he had some narrow escapes from the IRA and drunken Black and Tans (whom he generally admired). He had, to put it mildly, no sympathy with Irish nationalism, and wrote a scathing account of the Troubles in his book The Real Ireland, published in 1925.
In a letter to the Sunday Telegraph (11 November 1984), Bretherton’s son, J.C. Bretherton (himself an accomplished writer), tried to put the record straight. He thought that Colin Welch himself acknowledged that he was the second Peter Simple by signing his first few Telegraph columns ‘Peter Simple II’.
Paul Rowlandson
Londonderry
Cool aid
Sir: I absolutely agree with Ian Birrell (‘Big Charity’, 18 February) that ‘Some charitable organisations are good, some bad — but none sacred’. And he is right to point to the proliferation of small NGOs as a problem that has hampered relief efforts in Haiti and elsewhere.
But it is unfortunate that in calling for a light to be shone on the working of the ‘aid industry’ and NGOs, he conflates the two and chooses to highlight only the negative — relying heavily on uncorroborated stories.
Nowhere does Mr Birrell acknowledge the great benefits aid can and does bring. Take one example: in 2002 only 50,000 Africans were receiving life-saving Aids medicine, but by 2010 aid had helped increase this figure to more than five million.
It would be wrong to claim that aid is perfect. But it is ludicrous to pretend that Haiti has developed less quickly than the Dominican Republic because it received more aid. If a seriously ill patient dies after receiving medicine, would you blame the treatment or the disease?
Contrary to the impression given by Mr Birrell, aid agencies such as Oxfam do not act only as public cheerleaders for aid. A key part of our role is to act as a watchdog, speaking out when governments, international institutions or other parts of the ‘aid industry’ get it wrong.
Nor do we exempt ourselves from public scrutiny: last month we published a joint report with Save the Children which admitted that we were among the organisations that responded too slowly to the East African food crisis.
As my rather more trivial blog about the Nairobi swimming pool shows, our commitment to openness can occasionally lead to embarrassment. But a public, balanced conversation about the benefits of aid and how to improve its effectiveness is in everyone’s interests.
Duncan Green
Oxfam Head of Research, Oxford
Sir: Much as I hate to shatter Ian Birrell’s illusions, this letter is not penned from the poolside during a break from a charity team-building safari. Of course not all charities are perfect. But to tar us all with the same brush is simply unfair.
During last summer’s drought in East Africa, we hired a small plane (no, not a jet) from Nairobi to take a group of journalists to see for themselves the plight of pastoralists in the far north-east of Kenya and Somalia. Because of the considerable danger in al-Shabab territory, frankly it was the only safe way in and out. The ensuing coverage did much to alert the public to the horrific problems the people faced there, and the donations from readers not only more than covered the costs of the trip but paid to feed 50,000 head of livestock until the rains came in November.
In recent years SPANA’s work has taken me to Afghanistan, Iraq, Zimbabwe and Darfur. Five-star hotels are sadly quite rare and in Helmand province the quality of lobster was very poor indeed.
Jeremy Hulme
Chief executive, Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad, London WC1
Bats in the belfry
Sir: I sympathise greatly with Ursula Buchan in her frustration over the messy behaviour of bats in her church (‘A churchwarden’s lament, 11 February).
Like hers, one of my churches in a rural parish in County Cork (where I was the incumbent 25 years ago) was plagued by the little monsters and, like her, we were prevented by law from compelling them to seek alternative accommodation elsewhere. We didn’t even have a decent belfry to which they could retire, which meant that after every service we had to cover the chancel, lectern, prayer desk, altar and sanctuary with dust sheets to prevent serious harm being done.
However, a ‘curious incident’ occurred. We discovered serious woodworm infestation in many of the pews and floorboards, and one day a team of us got together and covered the infected areas with very generous doses of Rentokil. There was as yet no legislation nor even a militant Woodworm Lovers’ Association to stop us taking lethal care of that nuisance.
We were delighted on two fronts. We got rid of the woodworm, and for reasons they didn’t take time to explain, the bats with one accord took umbrage and departed. We had either deprived them of bedtime snacks, or else they couldn’t stand the smell, and we were bat-free thereafter.
I wouldn’t dream of making unlawful suggestions to a churchwarden. But I can lawfully remind her that woodworm is a menace. All church furniture and wooden fittings should be inspected for signs of its activity on a regular basis, and the appropriate action taken immediately.
Rt Revd Michael H.G. Mayes
Cork, Ireland
Encounters in brief
Sir: I liked Charles Iliff’s story (Letters, 25 February) of his Great War grandfather’s discussing the Dreyfus affair with a French officer who turned out to be Dreyfus (‘Le juif, c’est moi’). I have never been better rebuked than in the Belgian Congo as a youth when, looking for the local missionary, I slid back the Land Rover window and in schoolboy French asked a black man by the roadside: ‘Où est le missionaire?’ He looked at me mildly: ‘Que voulez-vous comme missionaire?’ It was only then I noticed his dog-collar.
Matthew Parris
Derbyshire
Sir: I was most interested in Charles Iliff’s letter regarding his grandfather’s meeting with Alfred Dreyfus. What appears fascinating about the encounter was that while there were, in the mess, ‘groups of officers seated at tables’, Dreyfus was seated on his own. This must have been some ten years after the Court of Appeals pronounced that the evidence against him was completely unsubstantiated. Apparently, however, no other officer would sit with him. Plus ça change.
Michael Zaidner
Herts
Talking sense to Tel Aviv
Sir: How pleasing to read Avi Shlaim’s intelligent piece about Israel’s position in the Middle East (‘An Israeli Spring?’, 25 February) One doesn’t have to be a cock-eyed conspiracy theorist to recognise that much of the coverage of Israel in the media is terribly biased one way or the other. Professor Shlaim’s outlook was refreshing because, as an Israeli, he obviously wants the best for his country. Yet he can see that, in trying to undermine all manifestations of the democratic spirit among Arab peoples, Tel Aviv is crippling itself in the long run. The best way forward for Israel is to use common sense, put itself on the side of free peoples everywhere, and give up the militaristic bluff and bluster.
Fergus Reynolds
London W10
Credit where it’s due
Sir: In my article about the Saudi dissident Hamza Kashgari on 18 February, I included a quote which I believed had been posted online by one of Kashgari’s friends. It read: ‘Right now we’re not worried about freedom of speech. We’re worried about the safety of our friend. And right now we can only help his safety if we condemn him, and [from there] try to rationalise what he said.’ I’ve since been told that this quote was taken from an interview with one of Kashgari’s friends, carried out by Michael Giglio, a Newsweek reporter. Apologies for not having known — and credit where it’s due.
Rod Liddle
Kent
High jinx
Sir: It’s a shame that Jeremy Clarke’s first ever ‘high five’ was such a shambles (Low Life, 25 February), but his mistake was probably to look at the other person’s rapidly moving hand. The best way to guarantee a fulsome strike is to watch the opposing high-fiver’s elbow. I don’t understand the physics, but it never fails.
Donald Rice
Ross-shire
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