Why children need us
In attacking charities such as the NSPCC, the RSPCA and Cancer Research UK (‘Bullying for charity’, 12 November) Guy Adams also harms the beneficiaries. Both larger and smaller charities have a vital role to play in the voluntary sector. Each has its strengths and they complement one another.
It is also wrong to assume that because the NSPCC is a national charity, it is not ‘local’. We have 177 projects across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands, all with strong links to the local community. Some of these projects work to help children rebuild their lives after abuse, and some work to prevent cruelty in the first place.
Campaigning and lobbying are a key part of preventing cruelty. Our ‘sinister advertising slogans’, as Adams describes them, are not mere slogans. They are true statements. One to two children die every week at the hands of parents or carers. Given that our name is the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, something would be very wrong if we did not work to prevent cruelty.
As he pointed out, we manage a big budget, but what he failed to mention is that 83 per cent of this money comes from public donations. By encouraging your readers to ‘refuse to subsidise’ charities such as ours, he is putting continuation of these services at risk and, as a result, the children we help.
However, I was delighted to see that The Spectator is not actually practising what it preaches, and that your Christmas Carol Concert is in aid of Cancer Research UK. Keep up the good work.
Mary Marsh
Director and CEO,
NSPCC, London EC2
Not yet the business
In his enthusiasm about the trend for students to choose business-studies courses, Leo McKinstry (‘Young people are the business’, 12 November) never considers whether that subject is capable of offering the intellectual training that higher education is expected to provide. A few years ago I started teaching business studies and I was astonished to discover how thin the literature of business and management is. Again and again, widely praised contributions prove to consist of just one or two banal ideas stretched out to book length, illustrated with graphics that do nothing to further the reader’s understanding but serve merely to pad out the pages. (This has been the subject of recent articles in both the Economist and Daily Telegraph.) I enjoy teaching and researching the subject — as retirement looms, it is relaxing to work in an area where the competition is weak. But, though there are exceptions, the general standard of academic literature in this field would be laughed out of court in any other discipline I know.
Geoffrey Sampson
Uckfield, East Sussex
Tyranny of ‘necessity’
As the Parliaments of Great Britain and Australia grapple with their anti-terrorism legislation (Leading article, 12 November), our respective political leaders might care to reflect on the words of William Pitt the Younger: ‘Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.’
Harold Adams
Commodore, Royal Australian Navy (Retired),
Canberra, Australia
Shelley said it
Mark Steyn (‘It’s the demography, stupid’, 12 November) attributes the quotation ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’ to Anatole France (1844–1924). In fact, the lines were written by Shelley (1792–1822) in A Defence of Poetry (1821).
Christopher Lush
London SW3
Over-age drinking
I thought you might be interested in this amusing instance of the increasing nannyism of our government. I visited my local supermarket this afternoon to pick up some groceries and also to buy a bottle of whisky and some beer for the weekend, as I am expecting some family to visit. The supermarket registered the groceries, but when they came to the whisky and beer said they were unable to serve me. I asked why — being 93 years old I couldn’t believe they thought me under-age — and was told that a new instruction had come in that if they could smell alcohol on a customer’s breath, they should not supply any!
Maybe at my age I am a little unsteady on my pins, but I’m quite sure that a couple of lunchtime sherries had not put me over the limit.
C.J. Chilvers
Heathfield,
East Sussex
Body and soul
Paul Johnson says, ‘Our souls have existed before space and time’ (And another thing, 12 November). Since Paul Johnson is known to be a Catholic, some will infer that this is Catholic teaching. On the contrary, the Council of Constantinople of ad 543 anathematised the thesis that the soul existed before the body (Denzinger 403), and it has ever since been the teaching of the Church that it did not do so. Before making theological assertions, Paul Johnson would do well to consult a theologian, or at least his parish priest.
Michael Dummett
Oxford
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