Is it right to aspire?
Sir: According to your leading article, ‘The Tory party is a party of aspiration or it is nothing’ (19 May). If this means that the Tory party is a party in the interest primarily of that ambitious minority which wants to rise in the world, then I should like to disagree, if only because the great majority of the nation, thank God, are not social climbers.
By which I do not mean that the great majority of the nation do not have aspirations — to lead good and decent lives, for example — only that they do not necessarily have aspirations to join the rat race, believing that they can lead good and decent lives quite satisfactorily on the level of society into which they were born. In other words — unlike most of those who write about this subject — not everyone is consumed with a burning ambition to succeed in a worldly sense.
This is very much the welfare state’s doing. Before the welfare state life, except for those at the top, was pretty grim. Now, except for the underclass, life is very much more tol-erable. So only congenital thrusters still feel driven to elbow their way to the top. Most of us do not want to be a celebrity, a Daily Mail columnist, a City whizz kid or, least of all, a David Willetts.
The party for aspirers: surely the Tory party can do better that that.
Peregrine Worsthorne
Hedgerley, Bucks
Sir: Congratulations on your leading article. I have today resigned my membership of the Conservative party. As an ex-grammar school boy, from modest circumstances, who gained a place at Oxford and is now in a professional occupation, I cannot support a party led by a group of toffee-nosed Old Etonians who believe that my sort should have been kept in their place.
The comprehensive system has been a total failure over the past 30 years. It has failed to provide a challenging academic education for those who would benefit from it. It has failed to provide a vocational/technical education for those youngsters who are just below grammar-school level and it has failed to provide trade apprenticeships for those youngsters who would benefit from them.
Grammar schools are not wholly the solution to this country’s secondary education problems, but they are part of the solution. The fact that David Cameron thinks otherwise makes it quite clear that the Conservative party no more intends to deal with this country’s education problems than the Labour party does.
Andrew Walters
Petersfield, Hants
An interest in war
Sir: I read Andrew Roberts’s Biggles-like comments in Blair: A Modern Tragedy (12 May) with amazement, given the still-deepening catastrophe in Iraq as reported week by week. Blair ‘a true hero of the English-speaking peoples’? Oh, come off it! And how can a reputable historian like Roberts trot out the simple-minded Bushite line about ‘a war on terror’? Then again, Roberts reckons that Blair ‘put the best interests of his country before his own political survival’. Tell that to the families of the 148 British servicemen killed and some 5,000 wounded in the cause of Blair’s ‘legacy’. Just the same, Roberts’s fawning endorsement of Blair’s world policy surely warrants a ‘k’ in the resignation-honours lavender-list. Or at least a promotion to head prefect.
As for poor Willy Shawcross and his moral passions, will he never accept the plain evidence that the chances of a strong and stable democracy permanently ruling a unified Iraq are virtually nil? I myself would certainly say nil, tout court.
Correlli Barnett
Cambridge
Vaccines don’t kill
Sir: Whatever the cause, the deaths of Harry and Christopher Clark were a tragedy, as was that of their mother. Their family has our sympathy. Neville Hodgkinson argues (‘What killed Sally Clark’s child?’ 19 May) that there is a strong possibility that the death of one of the boys was due to the DTP (diphtheria/ tetanus/whooping cough) vaccine he had recently received. Vaccines are one of the most researched aspects of modern medicine and this suggestion is not supported by the evidence. A major US review, in 2003, of the proposed role of vaccines in cot death concluded that the evidence ‘favors rejection of a causal relationship between DTwP vaccine and SIDS [sic]’. There is no credible research that contradicts this conclusion.
Neville Hodgkinson refers to an unpublished report, produced by Professor Gordon Stewart, showing that the whooping cough vaccine was ineffective. Professor Stewart’s views on the vaccine are well known and are not supported by the facts. There is considerable evidence that the vaccine in use in the UK was highly effective, as is the new one. Similarly, Hodgkinson suggests that there is a strong case that autism is caused by vaccines. There is now a large body of evidence showing this is not the case for any vaccine, including MMR.
We ask that journalists check credible scientific evidence before making statements that could have serious consequences.
Dr David Elliman
Consultant Paediatrician, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children
Dr Helen Bedford
Senior Lecturer in Children’s Health, Institute of Child Health
Dr Patricia Hamilton
President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
Dim sum
Sir: Charles Moore asks what name should be given to the ‘dumbing down’ which threatens to reverse the Renaissance (Spectator’s Notes, 19 May). Then, reborn learning replaced much that was lost in the so-called Dark Ages. So, for more than one reason, the ‘Dimming’ would seem apt to describe the opposite process.
Benjamin Williams
London EC4
Comments