No exit deadline
Patrick Hennessey (Letters, January) is right that announcing deadlines for troop withdrawals from Afghanistan is a bad idea. This only encourages insurgents to cause more trouble. It also discourages local co-operation with Nato forces, because people know they will have no protection once the troops have gone. And it signals that we are not serious about our task. We’re there to prevent the country being used as a launching pad for violence in the region and the world. We must do more to explain why we’re there, what we’re doing and the dire consequences of leaving the job half done.
George RobertsonFormer secretary-general of Nato
Tuition fees: a confession
I couldn’t help but feel a little dirty reading George Osborne (January) on tuition fees—and agreeing with almost every word he wrote. As a 22-year-old first-year student, it’s easy to be swept up in the flurry of rebellion, but a fee rise is the only way to retain our world-class universities and look after students (like me) from lower-income families. Higher fees are no reason for poorer students not to go to university, as they are paid retrospectively. What will discourage these students is spin from the NUS and Labour about university being “too expensive.” Shame on Labour for buying votes by misportraying a policy that could actually help the very people they claim to defend.
Jonathan BrunskillHeythrop College, University of London
Clegg’s lack of modesty
Nick Clegg’s comment (January) that you “cannot defeat emotion with reason” is dangerously belittling. Lib Dems lost student support in the tuition fees debate by telling them they didn’t understand the detail of the policy. Many have read it, understand it and still don’t agree with it—but Clegg continues to arrogantly sideswipe their views.
Owen SmithVia the Prospect website
Not the car of the future
Prospect’s note on electric vehicles in “Trends for 2011” (January) failed to mention the “hidden” cost of these cars: the replacement of the battery. I have driven my G-Wiz for five years—a G-Wiz reversioned by award-winning artist Tobias Rehberger, no less—and have had to replace the batteries every 8,000 miles, since the car’s range sinks from 40 miles to under 25 after that much use. This replacement costs about £2,000. If you factor in the cost of charging the batteries, which is around £1 per 40 miles, you can add at least another £200 to the cost of 8,000 miles. That means my G-Wiz costs about 32p a mile to run. Petrol costs around £1.20 a litre (£5.46 a gallon) and the average consumption for all British cars is 37.8mpg for the combined cycle, which works out at about 14.5p a mile.
Ben LewisLondon
The problems with privacy
In “Prospects for 2011,” Bronwen Maddox (January) might also have noted the worrying portents for media freedom. In mid-January, the European Court of Human Rights started hearing Max Mosley’s case. He argues that publishers should be required to inform the subjects of pending stories prior to publication. Privacy rights, he claims, can only be vouchsafed if individuals have the chance to seek an injunction; damages paid afterwards can never fully compensate.
He has a point—but, if he wins, it could mean that every time a story impinged, however legitimately, upon a person’s privacy, the publisher may have to seek “permission” from the High Court. Even if they got this, the claimant could further delay publication by appealing. So we would have a form of judicial licensing, with lawyers sitting in the editor’s chair, and the media would have to decide which stories they most wished to pay the possible legal costs to publish. Investigative journalism would be done for, and broadly-based stories like the Telegraph’s breaking of the parliamentary expenses scandal would become history. We must hope Mosley fails.
Dr Andrew ScottDepartment of law, LSE
Struggling with speech
The King’s Speech was a wonderful film that has done much to broaden public awareness of stammering. Colin Firth was spot-on in his portrayal of a stammerer, powerfully conveying the blocking terror and fear in a perfectly pitched performance.
That said, speech therapy has changed significantly since the 1930s. We no longer attach the same importance to the emotional causes behind stammering: we now understand that it begins in the brain, as a purely neurological disorder, which then has emotional repercussions. And the methods used by speech therapist Lionel Logue, as depicted in the film, are, as far as we know, largely artistic licence. Logue’s diaries are vague on his actual methods. We know he treated soldiers returning from the trenches suffering from mutism due to shellshock. This gave him an appreciation of the psychological aspects of communication, something he must have put to good use. But he had no specific training: he was an innovator, working before the development of modern therapy.
Norbert LieckfeldtBritish Stammering Association
Rethinking the left
James Purnell (January) is correct that the left needs more than modernised Marxism. But he goes too far in rejecting the significance of theorists altogether. His suggestion that “the left in Britain was never Marxist because it was a movement rather than a theory” is a false distinction. History is replete with examples that fulfil both categories of “theory” and “movement.” The current cross-party fetish for “fairness,” for example, no doubt partly springs from the political classes’ collective experience of reading theorist John Rawls as undergraduates. To claim (rightly) that ideas cannot unfold to their logical conclusions in the messy world of politics is not to conclude that they are of no importance. Theorists like Marx and Rawls do not just provide answers; they pose new questions. If the modern British left is devoid of real alternatives, perhaps it isn’t thinking hard enough.
Oliver CussenReading
The wisdom of AV
Peter Kellner (January) underestimates the effect of AV. Because the system puts an end to tactical voting and the “wasted vote” argument, AV changes the expressed first preferences of voters. The rise of the Greens in Australia, for example, is down to growing numbers of people voting Green even where the party has little chance of winning; voters can afford to do this because their second preferences will still count. If AV is adopted here, expect substantial changes to our politics—and not least an accelerated rise for the Green party.
Councillor Rupert Read (Green Party)Norwich
Prospects for 2011
On 27th January Sir Christopher Meyer, Professor Norman Geras and the journalist Simon Tisdall will debate the motion: “This house believes in the spread of western liberal democracy, by force where necessary” at the Cambridge Union. It’s the type of exchange that usually focuses on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, African politics and the role of the UN. But perhaps the motion is a bit last decade. As Bronwen Maddox (January) rightly notes, the countries with “liberal, democratic values are the ones with the huge debts, and the countries upon which they are trying to impress these values are financially stronger.” Ten years after 9/11, with the west buried under financial crises and political disillusionment, does it not seem redundant to be discussing the merits of westernising the world?
If, as Maddox predicts, Iran, Africa and China will be the big players in the coming year, focusing on the spread of the west is much less useful than asking what the west could be learning from the east.
Lauren DavidsonPresident, Cambridge Union Society
Patrick Hennessey (Letters, January) is right that announcing deadlines for troop withdrawals from Afghanistan is a bad idea. This only encourages insurgents to cause more trouble. It also discourages local co-operation with Nato forces, because people know they will have no protection once the troops have gone. And it signals that we are not serious about our task. We’re there to prevent the country being used as a launching pad for violence in the region and the world. We must do more to explain why we’re there, what we’re doing and the dire consequences of leaving the job half done.
George RobertsonFormer secretary-general of Nato
Tuition fees: a confession
I couldn’t help but feel a little dirty reading George Osborne (January) on tuition fees—and agreeing with almost every word he wrote. As a 22-year-old first-year student, it’s easy to be swept up in the flurry of rebellion, but a fee rise is the only way to retain our world-class universities and look after students (like me) from lower-income families. Higher fees are no reason for poorer students not to go to university, as they are paid retrospectively. What will discourage these students is spin from the NUS and Labour about university being “too expensive.” Shame on Labour for buying votes by misportraying a policy that could actually help the very people they claim to defend.
Jonathan BrunskillHeythrop College, University of London
Clegg’s lack of modesty
Nick Clegg’s comment (January) that you “cannot defeat emotion with reason” is dangerously belittling. Lib Dems lost student support in the tuition fees debate by telling them they didn’t understand the detail of the policy. Many have read it, understand it and still don’t agree with it—but Clegg continues to arrogantly sideswipe their views.
Owen SmithVia the Prospect website
Not the car of the future
Prospect’s note on electric vehicles in “Trends for 2011” (January) failed to mention the “hidden” cost of these cars: the replacement of the battery. I have driven my G-Wiz for five years—a G-Wiz reversioned by award-winning artist Tobias Rehberger, no less—and have had to replace the batteries every 8,000 miles, since the car’s range sinks from 40 miles to under 25 after that much use. This replacement costs about £2,000. If you factor in the cost of charging the batteries, which is around £1 per 40 miles, you can add at least another £200 to the cost of 8,000 miles. That means my G-Wiz costs about 32p a mile to run. Petrol costs around £1.20 a litre (£5.46 a gallon) and the average consumption for all British cars is 37.8mpg for the combined cycle, which works out at about 14.5p a mile.
Ben LewisLondon
The problems with privacy
In “Prospects for 2011,” Bronwen Maddox (January) might also have noted the worrying portents for media freedom. In mid-January, the European Court of Human Rights started hearing Max Mosley’s case. He argues that publishers should be required to inform the subjects of pending stories prior to publication. Privacy rights, he claims, can only be vouchsafed if individuals have the chance to seek an injunction; damages paid afterwards can never fully compensate.
He has a point—but, if he wins, it could mean that every time a story impinged, however legitimately, upon a person’s privacy, the publisher may have to seek “permission” from the High Court. Even if they got this, the claimant could further delay publication by appealing. So we would have a form of judicial licensing, with lawyers sitting in the editor’s chair, and the media would have to decide which stories they most wished to pay the possible legal costs to publish. Investigative journalism would be done for, and broadly-based stories like the Telegraph’s breaking of the parliamentary expenses scandal would become history. We must hope Mosley fails.
Dr Andrew ScottDepartment of law, LSE
Struggling with speech
The King’s Speech was a wonderful film that has done much to broaden public awareness of stammering. Colin Firth was spot-on in his portrayal of a stammerer, powerfully conveying the blocking terror and fear in a perfectly pitched performance.
That said, speech therapy has changed significantly since the 1930s. We no longer attach the same importance to the emotional causes behind stammering: we now understand that it begins in the brain, as a purely neurological disorder, which then has emotional repercussions. And the methods used by speech therapist Lionel Logue, as depicted in the film, are, as far as we know, largely artistic licence. Logue’s diaries are vague on his actual methods. We know he treated soldiers returning from the trenches suffering from mutism due to shellshock. This gave him an appreciation of the psychological aspects of communication, something he must have put to good use. But he had no specific training: he was an innovator, working before the development of modern therapy.
Norbert LieckfeldtBritish Stammering Association
Rethinking the left
James Purnell (January) is correct that the left needs more than modernised Marxism. But he goes too far in rejecting the significance of theorists altogether. His suggestion that “the left in Britain was never Marxist because it was a movement rather than a theory” is a false distinction. History is replete with examples that fulfil both categories of “theory” and “movement.” The current cross-party fetish for “fairness,” for example, no doubt partly springs from the political classes’ collective experience of reading theorist John Rawls as undergraduates. To claim (rightly) that ideas cannot unfold to their logical conclusions in the messy world of politics is not to conclude that they are of no importance. Theorists like Marx and Rawls do not just provide answers; they pose new questions. If the modern British left is devoid of real alternatives, perhaps it isn’t thinking hard enough.
Oliver CussenReading
The wisdom of AV
Peter Kellner (January) underestimates the effect of AV. Because the system puts an end to tactical voting and the “wasted vote” argument, AV changes the expressed first preferences of voters. The rise of the Greens in Australia, for example, is down to growing numbers of people voting Green even where the party has little chance of winning; voters can afford to do this because their second preferences will still count. If AV is adopted here, expect substantial changes to our politics—and not least an accelerated rise for the Green party.
Councillor Rupert Read (Green Party)Norwich
Prospects for 2011
On 27th January Sir Christopher Meyer, Professor Norman Geras and the journalist Simon Tisdall will debate the motion: “This house believes in the spread of western liberal democracy, by force where necessary” at the Cambridge Union. It’s the type of exchange that usually focuses on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, African politics and the role of the UN. But perhaps the motion is a bit last decade. As Bronwen Maddox (January) rightly notes, the countries with “liberal, democratic values are the ones with the huge debts, and the countries upon which they are trying to impress these values are financially stronger.” Ten years after 9/11, with the west buried under financial crises and political disillusionment, does it not seem redundant to be discussing the merits of westernising the world?
If, as Maddox predicts, Iran, Africa and China will be the big players in the coming year, focusing on the spread of the west is much less useful than asking what the west could be learning from the east.
Lauren DavidsonPresident, Cambridge Union Society
