Letters | 3 September 2011

We had no choice

Sir: ‘Britain remains an expeditionary nation keen on shaping the world,’ says James Forsyth (Politics, 27 August). Come off it, James. We weren’t consulted about Libya any more than we were about Iraq (a referendum would have been nice), but if ‘the nation’ means ‘the people’ then I’m sure that if we’d been told how many hundreds of millions of pounds would be involved, we’d have been considerably keener to spend them on job creation in our own country than on killing people and trashing the infrastructure in someone else’s. We elected Dave and Nick to make prudent cuts in public spending, not to make things worse by splurging our scarce resources on regime change in foreign parts.

Derek Rowntree
Banbury, Oxon

Bad for business

Sir: The blindness of British governments to business opportunities abroad long predates the events described by Christopher Meyer (‘Show us the money’, 27 August). A couple of centuries ago, when the boundary between Rhodesia and the Congo was negotiated, Britain was represented by soldiers and Belgium represented by businessmen. The outcome was that Britain secured hills ideal for defence against an attack from the north, but Belgium had the mineral-rich territory of Katanga.

Frank Tomlin
By email



More about ME

Sir: I am pleased to read that Simon Wessely is ‘very proud of his achievements’. Unfortunately even he admits that at least a third of patients do not respond to CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) or GET (graded exercise therapy). In fact this figure is likely to be much higher, as around a quarter of sufferers are housebound or bed-bound and therefore unable to access these treatments. And while the recent PACE trial showed some benefit to a small proportion of those involved, it only included those well enough to attend the hospital for appointments.