Beating bird flu
From Peter Dunnill
Sir: Ross Clark’s article on what will happen if bird flu becomes a pandemic (‘Will you have a place in the bio-bunker?’, 10 February) is correct in its criticism of government. However, our government could learn a lot from America. Mike Leavitt, the equivalent to Patricia Hewitt in the USA, has worked his way through the States with the message that ordinary people must do their part. Put a tin of food under the bed each time you shop, he advises, which is official US government advice. Ross Clark asks why children are not a vaccination priority, and US research can help us here as well. Studies done in America suggest that pre-school children and the elderly move around less than working people, so protecting the working people from infection indirectly protects the very young and old.
Peter Dunnill
Chairman, Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, University College London, WC1
Against our ethos
From Dr Sumaya Alyusuf
Sir: I find Rod Liddle’s article (‘Not all faith schools are the same’, 10 February) deeply offensive in every way. This school has never taught any child of any age that Christians are pigs and Jewish people are apes. The current public furore is about a footnote attached to a small section of a book, which has been taken out of context. This book has, in any event, only been used as a secondary resource for one class in the school, and the actual passage has never been taught in this school. The text itself is based on a pre-Islamic story which in essence says that ‘those who transgress on the Sabbath’ will be punished by God. As a result of the public anger, these books have been removed from the school.
The ethos of this school is and always has been to develop interfaith and cross-cul-tural understanding. We openly welcome a second inspection of the Academy in order to clear our name. In the meantime, our children are getting abused in the streets around their school for something which they have never been taught and which goes against the whole ethos of the school they attend.
Sumaya Alyusuf
King Fahad Academy, London W3
Soft in the head
From Richard Laming
Sir: Tony Blair misunderstands the notion of ‘soft power’ when he uses it to refer to the non-military aspects of government foreign policy (Leading article, 10 February). Joseph Nye, coining the phrase in The Paradox of American Power, meant something different. In Nye’s usage, soft power represents those aspects of a country’s external influence that are outside the direct control of the government: culture, the business community, educational institutions, and so on. What does it mean to be British? That is soft power.
Sadly, by chasing like a dog in a park after sticks thrown by the Bush administration, Mr Blair has allowed the UK’s soft power to decline to an alarming extent. He is the last person who should be seeking now to use it.
Richard Laming
London SE1
Home-schooling rules OK
From Stephen Patten
Sir: I do wish Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth had looked a bit further afield when researching their article on city academies and the involvement of the private sector (‘Liberate schools’, 10 February). There is a far more productive and economic private sector that they overlooked: parents. Home-schooled children, if the research in the US is to be trusted, dramatically outperform their state-educated peers, by up to 40 percentiles. The cost is a tenth of that incurred by the state.
Instead of wasting taxpayers’ money on encouraging parents to work, why don’t politicians encourage them to stay at home and bring up and educate their children? Hang on! I know the answer to that one: there is a real danger that the generation educated by their parents might see through the cant of today’s politicians and reject the politically correct nonsense that infests education in both state and private schools.
I write as a teacher with over ten years’ experience in the state system.
Stephen Patten
Ipswich, Suffolk
Indian ink
From Erica de Graaff-Hunter
Sir: Kate Chisholm’s article ‘The Spirit of India’ (Arts, 10 February) was very refreshing. I was thrilled to find someone who had been as pleased as I was with the week the BBC World Service gave over almost entirely to India. I had almost given up on the World Service for anything other than news; their programmes had become so boring. There must be someone new in charge — please let them stay! Then I can stick with the radio and not defect to BBC World TV! Congratulations to the WS for a week of outstanding programmes.
Erica de Graaff-Hunter
Majorca, Spain
Exit the fox
From Patrick Brooks
Sir: First, let me wish The Spectator — and all who sail in her — health and happiness in its new home. Long ago an ancient mariner told me about the ‘alleged’ tattoo of ‘the Waterford Hunt in full cry’ on Admiral Lord Charles Beresford’s back, to which Michael Kennedy referred in his article about 22 Old Queen Street (‘A new home rich in history and genius’, 3 February). Good taste perhaps prevented Mr Kennedy from revealing the unique selling point of this masterpiece, which was the fox. All that could be seen of it (and then only when His Lordship was in the shower) was the brush disappearing between his nether cleavage: ‘Gone to earth’. Quite droll, in a rather naval sort of way.
Patrick Brooks
Chudleigh, Devon
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