Strange kind of love
Sir: Liam Byrne’s breathless panegyric (‘Rise up, Englishmen’, 28 April) on the glories of being British must have left some of us pretty punch drunk.
This is a man who eagerly serves a government that has spent a decade transferring the rights of the British to govern themselves out of Britain and assigning them to an EU government in which his own country has 8 per cent voting stock. Most of this has been done covertly, out of sight of a sycophantic House of Commons and without a referendum.
This is a man who has been happily destroying what was once Europe’s finest constitution and calling it reform. This is a man who reveres an outgoing mountebank who hopes, as his last act, to railroad into law the Merkel EU constitution, a major step towards the superstate and its commensurate end to the nation-state. And once again, without asking the people by referendum despite an earlier binding pledge.
If Mr Byrne loves his country, he has a damnably weird way of proving it. But he does at least demonstrate why so many British today regard politicians of all stripes with utter disdain.
Frederick Forsyth
Hertfordshire
Sir: Liam Byrne’s call for Englishmen to rise up and defend the United Kingdom is pretty rich coming from a Labour politician. It is only recently that Jack Straw was talking about the English with their propensity to violence subjecting the small nations of this island to the cosh.
One thing that has distinguished British socialists over the last century is their visceral loathing of anything British in general and English in particular.
To set the wheels in motion for the break-up of the UK and then shout warnings when it begins to happen is like setting someone’s house on fire and claiming the credit for calling the fire brigade.
John Fannon
Weymouth, Dorset
Islam’s advancing strength
Sir: I thank Matthew Parris (Another voice, 28 April) for his courteous response to my article (‘Why there will be no future Pax Americana’, 14 April). However, Mr Parris reinforces one of its main points: that to underestimate the significance and advancing strength both of Islam and Islamism is to make the same kind of misjudgment as was made by the British about the resilience and determination of the American colonists during the War of Independence.
David Selbourne
c/o Oxford and Cambridge Club,
London SW1
No history of holocausts?
Sir: I’m sure the indigenous peoples of North America would have something to say about your correspondent Katherine Barlow’s assertion that Americans ‘don’t do holocausts’ (Letters, 28 April).
Edward Collier
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Harry must not fight
Sir: Allow me, a Frenchman, to express my astonishment and my concern at the thought that the British army could send a royal prince to the front in Iraq. He will immediately be considered as a privileged target by your adversaries — and not only him, but also those with whom he serves.
I understand and admire the courage and enthusiasm of the young prince, but if he is killed or captured in the field, Britain will be in mourning — or they will be hostages themselves.
Arnold de Contades
Montgeoffory, France
The EU elephant
Sir: Rod Liddle (‘A normal trip with Worst Late Western’, 28 April) wondered why John Major’s government, in the shape of Michael Heseltine, privatised the railways.
It was the EU, of course, under the separation of rail ownership — EC Directive 91/440, amended by 2004/51/EC, which limits nationalised industry’s subsidies by government. The same thing is happening to rural post offices, with the EU restricting subsidy to £150 million until 2008, when it will cease completely.
The EU elephant in the room is always there when the government scrambles to explain itself on unpopular laws and actions.
Brian J. Singleton
Baslow, Derbyshire
Parental professions
Sir: Charles Moore is right about the jokes made regarding the jobs that other people’s parents do (The Spectator’s Notes, 28 April). My father was a professional musician who played viola in the Royal Philharmonic and, later, the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
As a schoolboy, I was teased on the grounds that he was really a dance band leader, and my tormenters would shout ‘Take Your Partners’ and ‘May I Have This Dance?’ It was harmless, if a trifle wounding.
After his death, I discovered that he had, in fact, played the clarinet in a dance band before the war to save money for his marriage. My respect for him doubled.
Paul Callan
London SW10
Rich and paw
Sir: In last week’s Style & Travel section, Victoria Mather gets socially airborne about dog names and breeds. She says dukes have labradors called Purdey, while dustmen have pitbulls called Tyson.
I am a youthful 63-year-old colonial refugee from Southern Rhodesia. My King Charles spaniel is called Elvis. Where would she put me?
Fiona Montagu
Hampshire
Comments