Letters to the Editor | 14 October 2006

Taxing question

From Lord Lawson of Blaby
Sir: Pressed to promise tax cuts during the recent Conservative party conference, both Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne were anxious to point out that Margaret Thatcher didn’t promise tax cuts in 1979. What the 1979 Conservative manifesto actually said was, ‘We shall cut income tax at all levels to reward hard work, responsibility and success.’ I hope we can now take it that the same non-promise will feature in the next Conservative manifesto.
Nigel Lawson
House of Lords, London SW1

Killer figures from the US

From Robert Walls
Sir: The recent tendency for the British press to admire the American system of law enforcement puzzles me. Allister Heath (‘The mean streets of Britain where life is as cheap as food’, 7 October) describes a UK ‘epidemic of gun and knife crime of such intensity that one murder or attempted killing simply melts into another’ and goes on to say that ‘Americans know that crime can be tackled and they expect their politicians to do so’.

In 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, 163 people in the UK died as a result of shooting, criminal or otherwise, while in the US 30,136 people were shot dead, including 12,267 as a result of criminal activity. British society is certainly much more violent than it was 30 or 40 years ago, but the US is one of the last places to look for a solution to the problem.
Robert Walls
Camberley, Surrey

Religion and violence

From Graham Barnes
Sir: Charles Moore should be praised for his generous critique of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (Books, 7 October), including the brief passages of praise or agreement with that work. But I wonder whether Dawkins, ostensibly a supreme rationalist, can fully come to terms with more basic points. 

Religion, particularly Christianity, has been one of the most successful moderators of human violence, and has provided the only justification for moderating violence that has internal coherence and staying power.