Sir: I enjoyed Robert Stewart’s review of the book about James I’s grasp of spin (Books, 2 October), but there is one fact he omits.
On pets and people
Sir: Baroness Warnock makes a point — frequently made by those who advocate human euthanasia (‘Moral authority’, 2 October) — that ‘we recognise that in animals, when they’re suffering, it’s best to put them out of their misery’.
Leaving aside any moral or spiritual issues, a practical, and vital, difference between animals and people is that animals do not have estates to bequeath, legacies to leave, wills to make and the complex paraphernalia of property and revenue.
I have done some research into deathbed confessions as made to priests, and the last preoccupation of many individuals was, quite frequently, money (sometimes involving pangs of conscience about past wrongdoing in financial matters). Legalised euthanasia could be a formidable temptation to swindle, rob, cheat or otherwise dishonestly manipulate frail or ill persons of their money, to alter wills or to shorten life to spare expense. This is not a concern that arises when the family pet is departing this world.
Mary Kenny
Kent
Tories in Scotland
Sir: ‘Is it time to return to the pre-1967 arrangement where a separate (Scottish) Unionist party was allied to, but not controlled by, the Conservatives?’ (Leading article, 2 October). Yes, high time — in fact 13 years late. The 30–40 per cent of the Scottish electorate who are politically centre-right are never again going to vote in significant numbers for the existing Scottish Conservative party, which clearly despises the public as well as their own rank and file. Scotland desperately needs an effective centre-right opposition voice, and this will not happen without change. Scots need to understand that it is not about the Tories, it is about Scotland. Cameron would do well to be as bold in this as he claims to be elsewhere.
Robert D. Ramsay
By email
Turning halal
Sir: Rod Liddle is right to deplore the widespread and unnecessary use of halal slaughter (2 October). He is, however, mistaken about Goodwood: the entire estate is organic and all its meat is prepared using the very best methods. I will happily treat him to lunch there should he so wish.
Jeremy M.J. Havard
London
Sir: Rod Liddle writes that he will be boycotting halal meat from now on. This may be a mistake. Halal slaughter is a very swift method in which a single cut severs the veins and arteries across the beast’s neck. The lack of blood to its brain makes it lose consciousness almost instantly. The whole process takes less time — one result being that it is also cheaper — and actually implies a respect for life. I suppose it is a matter of preference, but to me it sounds better than being chased about an abattoir by a violent teenager wielding electric tongs or a slaughter pistol.
Olivia Cresswell
London E8
You hobnob, we hobnob
Sir: Dot Wordsworth (25 September) claims that the verb ‘hobnobbing’ is only used of other people: ‘You have been hobnobbing.’ Never: ‘I have been hobnobbing.’ Yet on the very day I read her piece I came across the following in P.G. Wodehouse’s Psmith, Journalist (published 1915): ‘I did not object to giving up valuable time to listen to Comrade Parker. He is a fascinating conversationalist, and it was a privilege to hob-nob with him.’ The modern Chambers gives it the sense of socialising or talking informally with someone.
John Sanderson
Cullompton
Juárez blues
Sir: I read Daniel Kalder’s account of the mean streets of Juárez (‘City of fear’, 25 September) hoping to find a reference from an earlier source. Bob Dylan’s ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ (‘When you’re lost in the rain in Juárez/ And it’s Eastertime too’) shows that the place wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs back in the early 1960s.
Graham Gilbert
France
The returning worm
Sir: Praise to Pritchard and Lawrence — one for his dogged investigative spirit and the other for his entrepreneurial zeal (‘Gut reaction’, 25 September). It is so nice to see that the lowly hookworm, the most common cause of anaemia in the undeveloped areas of the Western hemisphere, may be a benefactor to those in developed countries plagued by autoimmune and allergic scourges.
Tristram Coffin Dammin MD
Boston, Massachusetts
Eton v. Haverstock
Sir: If Charles Moore thinks that David Cameron and Ed Miliband come from ‘very similar backgrounds’ (The Spectator’s Notes, 2 October) then, as we say in Hackney, ‘He don’t know from Jews.’ Plus, his attempt to equate Haverstock Comprehensive School with Eton is utterly disingenuous. How does he get away with it?
Simon Platman
London E9
The king’s image
Sir: I enjoyed Robert Stewart’s review of the book about James I’s grasp of spin (Books, 2 October), but there is one fact he omits. Throughout his reign James had such a keen awareness of image that he altered his appearance to suit his audience, appealing to Presbyterian instincts in Scotland with submissive postures and bland clothing, while in England he adopted an assertive stance, and wore garish robes and a crown. Such was the sophistication of James’s spin that it escaped contemporary and historical comment. Heaven forbid modern politicians become as adept as this 17th-century political mastermind.
Oliver Lewis
Surrey
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