Letters

Made in Britain ‘Today, the Mother of Parliaments has lost half its power, with Brussels making half of British laws,’ says Anthony Browne (‘Parliament of eunuchs’, 30 April). My Conservative opponent in Rotherham goes further. His election address says that 70 per cent of UK law is now made in Brussels. The truth is more

China is still a tyranny As usual Mark Steyn makes some good points, this time in his piece on globalisation (‘The sovereign individual’, 16 April). But he is mistaken in his praise of China, ‘the dynamic, advanced, first-world economy’. The Telegraph, for which Mr Steyn also writes, summed up China’s rulers in its leader of

A Liddle simplistic I read Rod Liddle’s article (‘A question of breeding’, 12 March) with dismay. It appears that my son has autism because I found my husband’s company congenial and we married and had a child. As an explanation for a complex neurological disorder this seems slightly simplistic. In fact it seems only just

ADHD is an illness I am the mother of a daughter who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). For the past 23 years I have protected her and defended myself against the sort of opinionated, didactic comments made on this disorder by people such as your writer Leo McKinstry (‘Not ill — just naughty’, 26

Lay off the Tory tabloids Douglas Hurd advises us to ignore the campaigns of the popular press — and, by implication, the people whose concerns they ably articulate (‘Time to fight back’, 26 February). Hurd has spent his professional patrician lifetime disdaining the opinions of ordinary people. That is why the party he and his

Miller’s genius Attention must be paid’ to Arthur Miller (Mark Steyn, ‘Death of a salesman’, 19 February) quite simply because he was the greatest dramatist of our lifetime. Briefly to answer Steyn, it was hardly Miller’s fault that his biographer failed to locate Norwich accurately; and having survived the McCarthy witch-hunt, it seems a little

RSPCA isn’t ‘anti-pets’ Jeremy Clarke’s article (‘Animals don’t have human rights’, 22 January) contains so many inaccuracies that it is virtually a fact-free zone. It is absurd to suggest that the RSPCA has an ‘anti-pet agenda’. Caring for unwanted pet animals and re-homing them as pets is the principal work of the RSPCA’s 52 animal

Slobs and snobs Simon Heffer’s article (‘The slob culture’, 15 January) identifies a long-standing decline. I live in Bangkok, Thailand, and on Christmas Eve I was in the lobby of a five-star hotel where milling around were representatives from the Caucasian world dressed in subfuscous clothing, ancient jeans and T-shirts — the uniform of the

Don’t blame Davis My old friend Bruce Anderson doubtless wishes to do his friends in the Notting Hill set some good by blaming the continued poor Conservative showing upon David Davis (Politics, 8 January). But he is unjust. Mr Davis has claimed two ministerial scalps, and not just through good luck but rather through hard

Sex, war and the Word It is interesting how people reveal their prejudices by the words they use. So, to A.N. Wilson (‘Holy Sage’, 18/25 December) those who oppose homosexuals taking high office in the Church of England are ‘bigots’, while those in favour are ‘enthusiasts’. He argues that because the Church has changed its

We are not evil I am sorry that Steve (‘We are all Pagans now’, 18/25 December) believes that we Dominicans are evil. I expect he thinks that we are so awful because we are supposed to have run the Inquisition. Actually, there were many different ‘inquisitions’, some run by the Church and others by the

Clarke v. Clark Ross Clark is wrong to assert that the government exerts any influence over the value ascribed to exams in school performance tables (‘Lies, damned lies and education’, 20 November). He does a gross disservice to the pupils and teachers whose attainment he seeks to belittle. The regulatory authority for public examinations —

I was horrified at the outright lies that got both the U.S. and Britain into the invasion of Iraq and said that if G.W. were re-elected (not that he won the popular vote the first time) I would leave the country. However, after reading this article, I cannot envision returning to Great Britain. My God!

Oborne off target Peter Oborne seems to have spent too long in his stuffy London office and has developed a conspiracy theory too far concerning rural sports. He makes a number of unsupported assumptions in his comment on the Hunting Bill (Politics, 13 November). Perhaps he needs to get out more. BASC remains steadfastly opposed

Israel’s rejected offers It is perhaps a bit unfair to single out Peter Oborne, because he is just one of many commentators to make the same error. He writes (Politics, 6 November) of the desirability of President Bush putting ‘renewed pressure on Israel to press forward for a settlement with Palestine’ — as though it

Israel’s rapacious wall Anton La Guardia (‘A just wall’, 30 October) is spot-on in pointing out that Israel’s brutal wall is pushing the Palestinians ‘into reservations’. I have just returned from a week in Bethlehem, where I was warmly welcomed as a Jewish participant in the Olive Harvest Campaign, which calls on international volunteers to

Bush and Blair, ‘terrorists’ Freedom, democracy and liberation. These terms, as enunciated by Bush and Blair, essentially mean death, destruction and chaos. Tony Blair describes the insurgents as terrorists. There is clearly a body of foreign nationals which has entered Iraq since the invasion and which is committing terrorist atrocities. But the heart of the

Liverpool replies I am a survivor of the Hillsborough disaster, so I imagine you can guess where this is going (Leading article, 16 October). Unlike 96 less fortunate people, I was rescued from the Leppings Lane terrace on 15 April 1989 and so am able to provide a little bit of an insight into what