Letters: Innovation has been stifled in Britain for too long

The chance to fail

Sir: Matt Ridley’s article ‘Risky business’ (1 February) offers a variety of reasons why innovation has been stifled in Britain for too long. As an educator, I would like to add two factors that I encounter on a regular basis: the tremendously suffocating grip of insurance companies, which turns the safest idea into a discouraging risk-assessment exercise, and the desire of parents to protect their child from any failure. There are understandable reasons why insurance companies and parents act like this. However, in schools and at home it prevents necessary opportunities to test and try, fail, learn and improve, and try again. More importantly, it corrodes one of the most essential human traits that makes taking a risk and possible failure bearable: forgiveness.

Barbara van Abel

Cambridge

Doing the Continental

Sir: Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s piece on ‘Continental drift’ (1 February) revived a guilty memory. In 1981 Club Continental was the down-market cousin of Club 18-30 holidays. I (just about) remember having a great time with the travel company on a Greek island, where we probably ruined the breaks of quite a few more sober travellers of the time. Although I don’t recall too many Spectator readers round the pool as we sung the third verse of ‘Club Continental on the piss again’ maybe, as Ysenda hints, it’s time for us almost sixtysomethings to revive the franchise by reintroducing ‘Continental’ as a suffix, rather than as the prefix she suggests.

Graham Cox

Lush hope

Sir: The Hotel Continental cuisine in Ndola, Zambia, came to mind when I read Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s article. The 1980s in Zambia were a time of shortages of even basic foodstuffs, and this was reflected in what the kitchens could offer. But the name, which owed little to the English language, proclaimed a hope of lusher times.