Letters | 7 July 2012 | The Spectator

China and Tibet

Sir: Clarissa Tan poses the question: ‘What happens to people who do not have the joy of being Chinese?’ (‘China’s civilising mission’, 30 June). China’s handling of Tibet provides the answer. After 60 years of occupation, torture, intimidation and repression continue unabated. Tibetans are now doing the only thing they can to draw attention to their plight — setting themselves on fire.

If conditions are so desperate that, against all the precepts of Buddhist teachings on nonviolence and the sanctity of human life, citizens are driven to taking their own lives through self immolation, it hardly supports China’s claim to represent a ‘civilising mission’.

In contrast, the UK can be proud of its openness, tolerance and commitment to resolving difficulties through dialogue. Whatever one thinks about the underlying issues, a referendum on independence for Scotland will be held in 2014 and in the week that the Queen shook hands with Martin McGuinness, we can lay claim to a truly civilised way of conducting ourselves.

Hylton Philipson
London

The only way to travel

Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 23 June) is not the first passenger to appreciate the benefits of wheelchair transport through airports. In 1967 I was on passport control at Heathrow airport when Noël Coward came through in a wheelchair (pushed by an airline employee). I asked after his wellbeing, to which he replied, ‘I’m absolutely fine, dear boy. It’s just that you get so much better service this way.’

Universities challenged

Sir: Toby Young — and by extension, Michael Gove — has missed something in his desire to do away with the GCSE (Status Anxiety, 30 June). One of the many consequences of turning the polytechnics into universities-lite was to make a lot more places available.