Don’t bring it home
Sir: Charles Moore is right when he questions the benefit of holding the 2018 World Cup in England (The Spectator’s Notes, 29 May), but he doesn’t go quite far enough. Given the mindless, violent and xenophobic behaviour of many English football ‘fans’ since England won the 1966 World Cup, one can only hope that we don’t host the 2018 World Cup and that England are sent home at an early stage from South Africa in the imminent games. If England wins, we can expect another three generations of boorish and misplaced patriotism.
Laurence Fowler-Stevens
Clanfield, Hants
Land of the fee
Sir: Charles Moore’s revelation that 170,000 cases of ‘evasion’ are heard by the courts every year (The Spectator’s Notes, 15 May) should be another nail in the coffin of the TV licence. As we move into the digital era, the BBC should charge for access to its entertainment channels to allow people to decide for themselves what they wish to pay for and if it is good value. Public service broadcasting such as news and current affairs could be supported by central government funding in the same way as the World Service. The naysayers will suggest that this will impair editorial independence, but this is nonsense — the government already determines the BBC income by agreeing to the level of the licence fee. It is not the method of raising the tax that preserves BBC editorial independence — it is a properly run board and feisty journalists.
The public would be better off without a licence fee as it is expensive to administer, collect and enforce and getting rid of it would save the courts the trouble of processing Mr Moore and 169,999 of his fellow ‘evaders’.
Paul Green
Horsmonden, Kent
Two-child policy?
Sir: I disagree with Brendan O’Neill’s view. He may say that China’s one-child policy has caused ‘immeasurable suffering, punishing people for wanting to start a family’ (‘China’s parents begin to rebel’, 22 May), but it has not stopped people having one child. In my book, the policy has helped to prevent immeasurable suffering, famine, overcrowding, serious social unrest, and many other horrible consequences of overcrowding.
All this has happened before and is still happening in many parts of the world. England, being the most densely populated country in Europe, might even start thinking about the wisdom of gently encouraging people to consider ‘stopping at two’.
Penelope A. Watson
Edinburgh
A hat and a bump
Sir: I’m sorry to tell you that the whole premise of your second leader (29 May) was wrong. There was no politics involved in Samantha Cameron’s decision not to wear a hat. A hat and a bump are a difficult combination for any woman — there is a high risk of the ‘clown effect’ — so her decision was most sensible. Nor are standards slipping. Hats, fascinators, ribbons and bows are fashionable among the young just now.
Liz Frimston
London SW1
A choice of seats
Sir: In my speech, shaped by the late 1940s, one may talk of both sofa and settee — but there is some difference in meaning (Letters, 29 May). A sofa is independent, a settee part of a three-piece suite. So the (middle-class) sort of man who bought his own furniture is more likely to own a settee, while the impoverished bohemian, who has less planned assemblages, will have a sofa.
P.G. Urben
Kenilworth, West Midlands
Sir: Your correspondent evidently believes that settees and sofas are the same. They are not: whereas sofas are fully upholstered, a settee is partly made of wood, the arms certainly, and the back is at least edged in wood. They were de rigueur in the Indian Raj. The ultimate expression of the cooling use of wood is the planter’s chair, with its wooden leg rests — ideal for the aeration of areas otherwise difficult to reach.
John Williams
Stoke Gabriel, Devon
WASPs became dinosaurs
Sir: It has been years since I have disagreed with my very good friend Taki. His analysis of the fall of the American WASP establishment (High Life, 22 May) is, however, wrong. They have not fallen from power because they did not try as hard or use their elbows enough. They fell because their devotion to egalitarianism and democracy turned them into a race of dinosaurs. They failed to see that pursuit of these objectives would render themselves extinct. Unless they pull together and protect their culture and mores, they will be gone.
William von Raab
Virginia, USA
Ifs and buts
Sir: Lucy Vickery (Competition, 29 May) is, I believe, mistaken in stating that the poem ‘If’ was rescued from a wastepaper basket. According to Charles Carrington (Rudyard Kipling, His Life and Work) it was ‘Recessional’ that was rescued by Miss Norton on 16 July 1897, after she was given leave by Kipling to examine the contents of the basket.
Roger Broadbent
Ditchling
Ticklish
Sir: ‘Nobody can tickle himself’, declares Dot Wordsworth (29 May). Not true: when I touch my feet I can’t help tickling myself. Just like being tickled by someone else, the sensation is sometimes fun and sometimes unpleasant. So I wonder, is this a normal thing, and Dot Wordsworth mistaken? Or am I unusual? If the latter, perhaps I should volunteer myself for scientific research.
Peter Treadwell
Oxford
Comments