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. Religion has been only one among many motivators of violence, and hardly the worst when compared with greed, tribal or national ambition, or sheer bloodlust. Violence is demonstrably a part of human nature. It predates recorded history and probably all complex belief systems and social forms.
And lastly, a point unlikely to be made by Christian defenders of religion, but which should be obvious to any pagan or rationalist mind — violence as such is morally neutral, its justice defined by its ends. Its mere use cannot itself be an element in judging any belief system.
Graham Barnes
Ottawa, Canada
Expert and bully
From James McEvoy
Sir: Congratulations to Frank Johnson (Shared opinion, 30 September) for spotting that William Dalrymple has turned into something of a bully. I like Dalrymple’s writing and loved his first book (In Xanadu), but now he is an Expert, given to implying that the East is so magnificent and complicated that only he can understand it. He wrote in the New York Review of Books last year that al-Qa’eda has ‘explicitly political’ aims, which seems rather to leave out the religious dimension. Perhaps he finds Islam so magnificent and complicated that he is blind to its occasional viciousness.
James McEvoy
Denver, Colorado, USA
Andrew’s revenge on Alan
From Alan Riley
Sir: Sigh. I’m inclined to agree with the points Andrew Roberts makes about misrepresentation and the liberal/left cast of history teaching (‘The History Boys film gets me all wrong’, 7 October). But I and one of two others missed the run at the National Theatre and were looking forward to the film. Sadly we won’t enjoy it as much as we hoped because Andrew, in full polemic spate, revealed in his penultimate paragraph what is presumably a key plot development. So he has got his own back on Alan Bennett: he has spoiled the drama.
I’m reminded of an experience years ago when I told a friend that I’d not seen Don’t Look Now and was looking forward to catching up with it. He wondered, ‘Wasn’t that the one where Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland’s daughter gets drowned in a red party dress, and they keep thinking that they see her reincarnated in Venice, but it’s only a crazed dwarf who’s out to get them?’ I volunteered, ‘Yes, it probably was.’
I admire the National Film Theatre’s policy of prefacing its excellent free information with a ‘plot spoiler’ warning. I wonder if the articles and reviews need one?
Alan Riley
London SE1
Homophonic acronyms
From Gillian Harrison
Sir: Sandra Howard is quite right. Within the Civil Service at least, Parliamentary under-secretaries of state (the most junior ministers) are often acronymically called ‘pusses’ (Books, 7 October). This can easily be misheard as ‘pussies’, especially if the ministers in question are amenable.
Gillian Harrison
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Boo to shampoo
From Duncan Blake
Sir: Matthew Parris may want to put his hair affair behind him (Another voice, 23 September), but I would like to take the opportunity of confirming what he says, as I have also abstained (from shampoos) for a number of years now.
My son-in-law told me that models for shampoo advertisements are asked not to use shampoo for three months before the shoot, which rather ends any discussion on the matter.
Duncan Blake
Istanbul, Turkey
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