Inside the dragon
Sir: How refreshing to read some sharp insight on ‘The Chinese question’ (24 March). We have all had enough of handsome Niall Ferguson on our television screens, one moment telling us that China is running the world, then abruptly changing tack and saying that the People’s Republic is collapsing. Jonathan Fenby offers something different — a measured interpretation of an impossibly complicated story. But it’s a shame that even he can’t shed more light on the scandal surrounding Bo Xilai. For all the microbloggers in China, we westerners still cannot fully understand the mystery of the rising east.
Liam Collard
Hong Kong
Tories for the ECHR
Sir: It seems awfully unfair to blame the Liberal Democrats for the enduring supremacy of judgments handed down by European Court of Human Rights (Leading article, 17 March), when the Conservative attorney general, Dominic Grieve, lauded the ECHR in his maiden speech in 1997, and the Conservative Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Kenneth Clarke, described the proposal for a British Bill of Rights as ‘xenophobic and legal nonsense’.
It is the two most senior legal minds in the government who are committed to ensuring that the Bill of Rights Commission produces a document ‘full of drivel’ (i.e., in support of the status quo). In arguing for the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty, Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky told Andrew Neil on 12 March that Ken Clarke’s ‘hands are everywhere’ — he is complicit in ‘sidelining parliament’ and ‘thwarting’ the will of the Prime Minister.
David Cameron cannot ‘repatriate British justice’ without first sidelining the Tory ECHR advocates in his own Cabinet, thereby tearing his party asunder (again) over the issue of ‘Europe’. The Liberal Democrats are merely a convenient smokescreen.
Adrian Hilton
St Antony’s College, Oxford
Leaping from the pulpit
Sir: Douglas Murray, in his interview with Richard Holloway (‘Apostle of doubt’, 24 March), was right to say that the former bishop’s ministry brought him a larger following than any other cleric of his generation. I remember my daughter, aged 18, the first time she heard him speak, turn to me and say: ‘Dad, who is this man?’ Shades of Pilate when Jesus was brought before him! At the time of his episcopy, his congregations were either in a steady state or, more usually, growing when all the other denominations in Scotland were in free fall.
No article can convey the passion with which our bishop preached and I have witnessed him on occasion literally leaping out of the pulpit. Perhaps the best way to describe his ministry would be one of ‘passionate uncertainty’ — which is the place that most sane people occupy when it comes to religion.
Michael Fass
Priest in charge, Rosslyn Chapel
Midlothian
Politics and the Church
Sir: On gay marriage, it remains important to keep our eye on the facts. For example, James McEvoy (Letters, 24 March) cannot be allowed to say that ‘the Church is not a political organisation’. Has he forgotten the constitutional role of the Church of England? The bishops in the House of Lords? Who, of course, are nominated by the Prime Minister? Does he know who the Supreme Governor of the Church of England is? As for the Roman Catholic church, does he not realise that the Pope is also head of a sovereign state? And surely he is aware that all the churches consistently express strong political views on a huge range of political issues, and expect to be listened to. Mr McEvoy personally is no doubt entirely sincere in his wish to separate churches from politics, but wishing it does not make it so.
Peter Treadwell
Oxford
The easy way out
Sir: I have always been a supporter of civil partnerships, on the grounds that gay couples who share a home and thus an economy should benefit by not having to pay inheritance tax on the demise of their partner. Now that gay marriages are to be sanctioned, should we not take things a stage further and allow heterosexual people who choose to share a household with a same sex, or differently sexed friend, or indeed a relative of either sex, to enter into a civil partnership?
Indeed, it might just be simpler to scrap inheritance tax altogether, it being an iniquitous and grave-robbing tax which yields little, since the rich have always found, and will continue to find, ways to evade it.
Julia Pickles
London SW1
Exit music
Sir: Charles Spencer (Olden but golden, 24 March) invites us to submit what pop music will be played at our funerals. Without hesitation, I will have Ian Hunter’s ‘Sea Diver’ from the 1972 Mott The Hoople album All The Young Dudes. Its poignant ending, ‘ride until you fail’ is something felt by all us foxhunters. I once played it, in the context of my funeral choice, to A.N. Wilson, and he cried.
Worryingly, it was also the last Desert Island Disc chosen by Morrissey, whose views on hunting are somewhat different to mine. But at least we will have something in common to talk about if we both get to heaven.
Rory Knight Bruce
Devon
Write to us
The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP
letters@spectator.co.uk
Comments