Education revolution
Sir: Fraser Nelson (‘Made in Sweden’, 1 March) is right to highlight the importance of Sweden’s independent state schools for the debate on school choice and diversity. The successful Swedish experience strongly influenced New Labour reformers as we sought to introduce independent state-funded schools into England. However, it doesn’t need the Conservatives to ‘bring the Swedish education revolution to Britain’. The revolution has arrived already in the shape of the academies programme, which enables schools to be set up and managed on an independent basis by promoters outside the local authority system. There are now 83 academies open, managed by promoters including leading private schools, universities, churches, businesses and philanthropists. Academies are concentrated in precisely the areas of low standards highlighted by Mr Nelson, and they are working. Their results are rising far faster than the national average, and they are on average three times oversubscribed by parents who like what they see.
This is why we are accelerating the academies programme. At least 160 more academies will open by 2010, with more to follow thereafter. The Conservatives may be talking about radical education reform; New Labour is delivering it.
Andrew Adonis
Minister for Schools,
House of Commons, London SW1
Powell unhinged
Sir: Robert Shepherd’s analysis of the reasons behind Enoch Powell’s notorious immigration speech (‘The real tributaries of Enoch’s “rivers of blood”’, 1 March) is fascinating. But there are other more concise explanations. My aunt, Dame Enid Russell-Smith, worked closely with Powell when she was deputy secretary to the Ministry of Health and he was health minister, and she admired him greatly. When, after the 1968 speech, I asked her why this wonderful man seemed to have descended into abusive racism, she had a simple answer. ‘He’s gone mad,’ she told me. ‘People do, you know.’
Colin Bostock-Smith
St Leonards on Sea
Moor to the point
Sir: I am relieved to know that my concerns about the possibility of a President Obama are due not to any substantive matters but solely to my ‘primeval racist fears of the black super-male’.
Before reading Venetia Thompson’s article (‘Obama is an Othello for our times’, 23 February) I had mistakenly attributed my opposition to Senator Obama to his hard-left notions about government policy. It is a comfort to know that objection — and others, such as his lack of executive experience and minimal tenure in national politics — are mere self-deluding artifices to conceal the incorrigible racism within my fearful and embittered psyche.
I can now stop fretting over superficialities — like wanting my country not to be led by a socialist — and focus on making amends for my thoughtcrimes. Thank you, Venetia, for helping me to see the light. (Meanwhile, is it true what they say?)
Bill Wray
North Kingstown, Rhode Island
Disproportionate claims
Sir: According to its website, the British–Israel Communications and Research Centre, of which Lorna Fitzsimons is CEO (‘Israel is getting ready to invade Gaza’, 23 February), is an organisation ‘devoted to creating a more supportive environment for Israel in the UK’. These aims might be more easily fulfilled if she did not put her name to articles that read as though they were taken directly from Israeli government handouts.
To take only one example, Fitzsimons goes on at some length about the ‘soaring’ number of rocket attacks on Israel since Hamas’s election victory in January 2006, and then (curiously) quotes figures for Israelis killed and wounded by these since 2001. However, she does not quote the figures for the period since January 2006, nor the number of Palestinians killed and injured by Israeli attacks on Gaza during the same period. Had she done so, your readers would have been reminded that these are wildly disproportionate, far in excess even of the overall kill ratio of 3:1 or 4:1 during the second intifada.
Moreover, while blaming Hamas alone for the current state of tension, Fitzsimons completely fails to mention the fact that, since its ‘withdrawal’ from Gaza, Israel has continued to maintain a complete blockade of the territory, preventing its port and airport from operating and for much of the time preventing aid and supplies from reaching its people. Nor of course does she mention the continuing construction of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, despite their illegality and the government’s promise not to allow any more.
This sort of blatantly one-sided approach, presumably meant to provide an advance justification for an Israeli invasion of Gaza, is frankly not the best way of creating a more supportive environment for Israel.
Richard Hoare
East Lavant, West Sussex
London calling
Sir: Rod Liddle is not only nasty and sexist and silly, he’s wrong (‘Boris’s most brilliant wheeze’, 1 March). I’m not in Newcastle upon Tyne and I haven’t worked there for years. He could have called me up and I’d have told him where to find me on the London electoral roll (Camden), where I live and where I stood for the Green Party in the last local elections.
Beatrix Campbell
London NW1
Magic lines
Sir: I find myself going along with most of Paul Johnson’s choices (And another thing, 1 March). But there is surely one grievous omission, one total blind spot. Mr Johnson claims Keats is his favourite poet but says that all of his poems are ‘too long’. Surely he has forgotten — rather than considered and rejected — ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’? Perhaps the first eight lines are not absolutely top-drawer Keats, but the last six are pure magic, with the last line ‘Silent, upon a peak in Darien’ echoing and re-echoing down the years from one’s first encounter with it.
Edward Carr
Peterborough
Briefs encounter
Sir: Tamzin Lightwater writes (1 March) about David Cameron’s Vilebrequin swimwear. As any keen follower of political fashion knows, whereas Tony Blair wears Vilebrequins costing £80 a pair, Dave wears lookalikes manufactured by Boden. It would be possible to suggest metaphorical significance in this or, perhaps, to draw a conclusion about his pecuniary sense, depending on one’s own sympathies.
Oliver Marre
The Observer, London EC1
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