Don’t blame the website
From Malcolm Gooderham
Sir: Your leading article of 24 February misses a fundamental point. Notably, the e-petition initiative has helped to breathe new life into the body politic, and has put No. 10 at the heart of key debates and in touch with millions of voters. The fact that ministers and officials at the Department of Transport were unprepared for such a response is also worth noting, but does not undermine the thinking behind the website. Rather, it highlights a failure on behalf of the ministry adequately to manage — and pre-empt — such a public reaction. For MPs, or anyone else, to blame a website really misses the point.
Malcolm Gooderham
Political adviser to No. 10, 1995–97
London W11
Raised in the USSR
From Jana Edmunds
Sir: Your leading article ‘A nation of babysitters’ (17 February) hinted at a truth behind the problem faced by Britain in relation to childcare. I was a teenage mum, and became a single parent aged 22, living on benefit in the 1990s while bringing up two children.
Yet in spite of a crippling financial burden, an unsympathetic welfare state and unrelenting social prejudice, I raised my children with love, instilling in them at a young age a thirst for knowledge and a strong family bond. How did I do it? Or more pertinently, why am I different from the statistical norm?
The answered lies in culture. Britain is still suffering from the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ syndrome. I was brought up in the 1960s Soviet Union by two women, my mother and grandmother. They worked, procured scarce food and shared childcare responsibilities. This was done lovingly and willingly. Most children were brought up that way. The cultural norm in Soviet Russia was to love, idolise, cherish and educate one’s children in the finer cultural pursuits: literature, ballet, classical music, art — a blueprint I carried with me into my life as a single mother in England.
The main objective of parenthood, as mentioned in the leading article, is a ‘dedication to invest the remainder of one’s life in the nurturing of another’. Whether this is done with joy, pride and love, or a feeling of loss of personal freedom, depends on a deeply ingrained cultural bias.
Jana Edmunds
Lewes, East Sussex
The wrong metre
From George Simmers
Sir: Auden’s ‘Letter to Lord Byron’ is not written in ‘the stanza form of Byron’s Don Juan’ as Grey Gowrie believes (Books, 24 February). Byron used ottava rima (rhyming abababcc), whereas Auden chose the seven-line rime royal stanza (ababbcc), which avoids the difficulty of finding two triple rhymes. As Auden says in stanza 21 of the poem:
Ottava Rima would I know be proper,
The proper instrument on which to pay
My compliments, but I should come a cropper;
Rhyme-royal’s difficult enough to play.
But if no classics as in Chaucer’s day,
At least my modern pieces shall be cheery,
Like English bishops on the quantum theory.
George Simmers
Brackley, Northamptonshire
It’s not cricket
From Richard Mernane
Sir: It is a pity that Leo McKinstry, whose writing I find unfailingly compelling, should choose to celebrate the forthcoming World Cup by taking a swipe at the MCC and some of its grandees (The Connoisseurs’ Guide to the Cricket World Cup, 24 February). He mentions that Lord Hawke prayed that England should always be led by an amateur — a prayer which has frequently been echoed in recent years by cricket lovers anxious for more enterprising Test cricket — but fails to recall that, as captain of Yorkshire, Hawke personally saw to it that all his professionals had gainful employment in the winter, access to medical care and that their children were properly educated. Such a patrician approach is, perhaps, out of step with our own times but is surely preferable to the exploitative treadmill on which international cricketers are now expected to perform.
It is true that the MCC’s initial reaction to Australian protests about bodyline was to defend Douglas Jardine, hardly surprising given that he was their appointed captain. It is, however, also true that the Club legislated almost immediately to blunt the potency of leg theory through the imposition of fielding restrictions and the prohibition of intimidatory bowling.
In contrast to its clichéd image, the MCC has often been at the forefront of cricket’s development. Back in the 1960s, the Club devised limited-overs cricket and, in the 1970s, actively encouraged the early World Cup competitions. Today, Lord’s stages two 20-20 matches every season and would have installed floodlights by now, had not the residents of St John’s Wood objected.
The MCC certainly has not got everything right but it deserves a more balanced appraisal than Leo McKinstry accords it.
Richard Mernane
London SW10
From Steve Reszetniak
Sir: As a longtime admirer of the great Lilian Thomson (mentioned on page 8 of your cricket supplement), I was disappointed that you were not able to include a photograph.
Steve Reszetniak
Enfield, London
The Diving Logos
From Paul Johnson
Sir: I was unable to see a proof of my essay on crocodiles, and two misprints emerged in consequence. Lepidus in Antony and Cleopatra appeared as ‘Lefridus’ and the Divine Logos was printed as ‘the Diving Logos’. I realise that my habitual use of unusual words and references invites such errors but I trust readers will forgive the odd misprint.
Paul Johnson
London W2
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