Pecksniffian bureaucrats
Sir: I bought your 27 November issue purely on the promising cover illustration and was not disappointed. Josie Appleton’s masterly article (‘A common sense revolution’) held up to deserved ridicule the Criminal Records Bureau, a classic example of a very worthwhile idea hijacked by as big a bunch of Pecksniffian bureaucrats as ever wrung their hands. Of the many howling idiocies dragged whining and wailing into light, the crowning example was that of the cathedral flower guild who might have ‘paedophiles infiltrating’ their group because of a toilet-sharing arrangement with choirboys. On that basis, I would have thought it much more likely that a pervert seeking a happy hunting ground would apply to join the CRB, thereby gaining access to an unholy grail of informative documentation via their copious computerised records.
Peter Wyton
Gloucester
Sir: Hurrah for Josie Appleton and the Volunteers’ Revolt! I have twice refused on principle, after 36 years of trusted public service, to fill in CRB forms, first when serving for ten years as a governor of one of the best schools in England (six of them as chair); and then when volunteering to join ‘Good Neighbours’ in the town where I have lived for 35 years, to visit and befriend elderly fellow residents who are housebound or lonely.
If others want to check me out with the police, let them. But the present system is Orwellian; it evidently does not prevent law-breaking and abuse; it simply covers bureaucratic backs, while undermining the trust on which a healthy community depends.
Sir John Weston
Richmond, Surrey
Sir: ‘A common sense revolution’ will have struck a chord with any dentists among your readership, who are shortly to be regulated by the Care Quality Commission. Registering under this duplicated and costly regulation requires dentists to travel to a small number of specified Post Offices and queue to have a special CQC-issued CRB form signed, in order that they can continue to offer dental care from next April, just to cover a totally theoretical risk. This is despite the fact that they are already fully regulated by the General Dental Council, which is already fully informed of any prosecutions against dentists. As your article says, ‘humiliating and unnecessary’.
Quentin Skinner
Warminster, Wiltshire
Corrie-ing favour
Sir: As a former leader-writer, I very much enjoyed the submissions to The Spectator’s competition (20 November) offering pompous editorials on trivial matters. None, though, matched the first leader which actually appeared in the Daily Telegraph ten years ago, when Tony Blair called for a character in Coronation Street called Deirdre Rashid to be released from custody.
The leader-writer — who, if I recall correctly, was James Bartholomew — began by explaining that human sympathies should not stand in the way of a disinterested application of justice: dura lex, sed lex. He noted that Mr Blair was connected, through his father-in-law, to the soap opera (‘we do not allege actual corruption, we simply note with regret that the Prime Minister has allowed the appearance of impropriety’), and went on to discuss the importance of the separation of powers. He finished with this admonition: ‘If the Prime Minister has any evidence to the contrary, he should hand it to the police, instead of impugning the integrity of our judicial system.’
Daniel Hannan MEP
Brighton
The truth about Pashley
Sir: A.N. Wilson is wrong to hold up ‘British’ Pashley bicycles as the best in the world (Diary, 27 November). They are archaic curiosities that appeal to heritage sentimentalists. Admittedly, many women do like the upright, vicar’s-wife seating position, although the weighty steel frames are probably less appreciated.
The key parts on a Pashley are Taiwanese, including the brilliant Sturmey-Archer internal gears, which were first patented in 1902 and made in Nottingham until 2000.
As with many British heritage products, there are cheapskate touches on the Pashley — the alloy and plastic on the handlebars of my wife’s Sovereign Princess for instance. Germans and Americans do this sort of stuff better. Pashleys are no more a model for our industrial future than a bamboo rickshaw was for a 19th-century Chinaman.
Sebastian O’Kelly
London
Choose the BBC
Sir: Peter Hitchens may well be right that the BBC has a default setting (‘Auntie’s blind spot’, 27 November) but it is rather closer to neutral than he suggests. Of course its attempt to be even-handed enrages the likes of Hitchens, Melanie Phillips and Charles Moore as much as it does left-wing commentators such as John Pilger and Mehdi Hasan (political editor of the New Statesman), who have claimed the exact opposite: that the corporation has an in-built right-wing bias. On the touchstone issue of the Middle East for example, both the supporters of the Israelis and the Palestinians claim that the BBC favours their enemies. This would seem to suggest that its attempt to chart a middle course through some notoriously difficult territory is at least partly successful.
Given a choice between the BBC with all its faults, and a broadcast media dominated by the Murdochs or a Silvio Berlusconi figure, I know which I would prefer.
Jon Stubbings
London
Student moans
Sir: In South Africa we scratch our heads that top-quality university education can be had for as little as £9,000 per year — here, it would usually cost at least three times that. The students should be falling on their knees and thanking the British government — and the British taxpayer.
Edward Mitchell
Pretoria, South Africa
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