The Church is culpable too
Sir: Will Rowan Williams start his call for ‘fresh scrutiny and regulation in the financial world’ (‘Face it: Marx was partly right about capitalism’, 27 September) by glancing at the institution he heads? I am told that the 2007 Church of England target for its investment arm was 6 per cent above Bank of England base rate. It should have been clear to the Archbishop that this could not be achieved without the Church getting involved in the murky world of City finance.
The Church of England was made to look even more ridiculous when the Archbishop of York called short-sellers ‘bank robbers and asset strippers’. Are these people not just parasites making good out of an overpriced economy which all, including the Church of England, have enjoyed for the past 15 years?
If Christianity teaches us one thing it is that none is without sin. The far-reaching consequences of the global stock-market crash has brought this into sharp focus. The majority have enjoyed the good times and therefore the majority must be culpable. For the Church to see itself as an institution which is not part of the problem, when it clearly is, smacks of the same self-worth which got Pelagius into such trouble.
Stephen Rand
London SW15
Sir: The trouble with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s public moral stands is that they are exclusively directed against right-wing policies. In the left-liberal milieu that he inhabits, these stands require no moral courage at all. But he never addresses the many social and political evils that have emanated from left-wing ideology — something that would call for real moral courage on his part. This is the main reason why he so conspicuously lacks what religious leaders must have if they are to command respect: spiritual authority.
Clive Christie
Maesglas, Wales
Fired again
Sir: My friend Toby Young listed the magazines and newspapers he has been fired from in the last 22 years (Status anxiety, 27 September). His list is incomplete: I would like to point out that I also fired him from GQ once, after I rashly hired him on his return from New York. There, I feel better now.
Dylan Jones
Vogue House, London
Bad gun
Sir: It made me wonder, after reading Charles Moore’s anecdote about a shooting accident where the perpetrator denied shooting one of his party (The Spectator’s Notes, 13 September), if such a reaction isn’t endemic. The very same thing happened to me in France on a pheasant shoot years ago. One of the party shot me in the shoulder from three metres away; all of the rest of the guns witnessed the event. The gun responsible went into immediate denial mode, saying I had shot myself. He continued to deny it and was one of the few who went to the luncheon afterwards. The majority were too disgusted and chose to go home.
Peter B. Martin
Belvèze, France
The wrong Tarzan
Sir: I write on behalf of ‘Cheeta’, who went ape on seeing the caption under the photograph on page 37 in the most recent Spectator. The Tarzan shown in the photo is not the Romanian Johnny Weissmuller, whom Cheeta could not understand, but the all-American Lex Barker. I have given the chimp a double ration of bananas to compensate.
Alan Price-Talbot
Caerphilly, Glamorgan
Family fortunes
Sir: Jonathan Mirsky’s review of Alexander Waugh’s book on the family Wittgenstein (Books, 20 September) perhaps reveals more about The Spectator’s sturdy Europhobia than about the Wittgensteins themselves. He doubts if the Wittgensteins would have merited a group biography if they hadn’t been extremely rich and included among them the ‘notorious’ philosopher Ludwig. But the Wittgenstein family included a father who became the Andrew Carnegie of Austria- Hungary and who befriended and acted as patron to Brahms and Gustav Klimt, among others; three brothers who committed suicide; and a fourth who, despite losing an arm, became a concert pianist of international repute. One wonders who Mirsky thinks would merit a group biography.
Perhaps the most interesting fact about the Wittgenstein family wealth is not mentioned by Mirsky. Ludwig, as a young man, gave his share of it entirely to his siblings, with the words, ‘They’ve got so much money already that some more won’t do them any harm.’
Neither is it strictly true that everything that Ludwig wrote and said — as Mirsky suggests — is baffling nonsense. Some of it is really quite lucid, and one of his choicer epigrams remains as true today as when he coined it and seems particularly timely: ‘In this country [Britain] politics alternates between an evil purpose and no purpose.’
Patrick Skelton
London SW1
On Bodmin Moor
Sir: ‘On an exercise during misty weather on that fearsome place Bodmin Moor, I was the only one to get my platoon back safely,’ says Paul Johnson (And another thing, 20 September). We cannot doubt this statement, since we know Mr Johnson to be a modest man — he was not, after all, ashamed to admit recently that he had not yet met the current Pope. But surely he should have told us what happened to the other platoons?
P.C.H. Stabler
London WC1
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