Let Iran go nuclear
Why should Iran be stopped from getting the bomb? (Mark Fitzpatrick, April) The west made no serious attempt to prevent Israel, China, India and Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons. There is no reason to believe that Iran would be any more susceptible than other nuclear powers to the logic of mutually assured destruction. We are still suffering the consequences of stopping Iran, under the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, from nationalising its oil industry in 1953. An attack on it would be felt by most of the Muslim world as an attack on Islam and a continuation of the wars launched against Afghanistan and Iraq. PJ Stewart Oxford
Obama seems to lack any ability to advance his old policy of a nuclear-free Middle East. This involves dealing with a heavily nuclear-armed Israel. It is surely time for Europe to take up the baton and support the moves of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Finland’s Jaakko Laajava to get to the heart of this problem. Peter Norton Norfolk
Mayors: a new dawn
It was refreshing to see your feature on elected mayors (April), which recounted the idea’s origins in my 1980s trip to Hokkaido. Having believed in the importance of local governance and accountability throughout my political life, I hope that May heralds the arrival of directly elected mayors in some of our biggest cities. These mayoralties, of a sort long enjoyed by most European countries and the US, are an essential modernisation of our democracy that can only be good for people across the land. Michael Heseltine House of Lords
Taxing the aged
Set against the chancellor’s decision to cut the tax rate to 45 per cent for those earning more than £150,000, older people are understandably angry at being asked to subsidise the super rich and pay for the mistakes of the financial sector and government.
Older people have already seen cuts to their winter fuel allowance; a lower rise in their state pension; the rationing of community care services; changes to disability benefits; and caps on housing support. The freeze on tax allowances gives us an opportunity to expose this as a government for the rich by the rich. Dot Gibson National Pensioners Convention
Who pays for the party?
Ed Miliband has a problem. Any perception by voters that the relationship between Labour and the trade unions is negative is exacerbated by the sense that he owes his election as leader to union votes. Many voters understandably ask how he can govern on behalf of the many when he owes so much to the unions.
Ed should stop trying to argue that money from trade unions is different from money from corporates or rich individuals. The public just does not buy this difference. Peter Watt Writer and former general secretary of the Labour party
Corrosive communities
As a northern lad, brought up in Rotherham, working in Sheffield (as a philosophy and psychology teacher) and living in Barnsley I’m aware of the allure of communitarian solidarity—but I’ve fought hard to overcome it. Indeed I aspire to the WEIRDness that David Goodhart disparages (“Last hope for the left,” April), and I’m deeply suspicious of the warm glow of belonging that community offers.
Education, as Philip Hunter notes (“Received wisdom,” April), is about challenging rather than confirming our assumptions. I have the distinct impression that Goodhart, like many others, sees the idea of standing back from our particular commitments as both morally and psychologically corrosive. By contrast I have long pledged myself to the Enlightenment tradition that has led to what the philosopher Peter Singer has called the “expanding circle” of moral concern.
If Goodhart is right and difference itself undermines our capacity to care for others, the left really is in trouble. My own career has been inspired by the idea that helping young people attain a “critical distance” from their particular cultural viewpoints is what teaching is about. Philip Badger Barnsley
Stupidity is curable
If Philip Hunter’s inferences from research into IQs (April) suggest anything it is that stimulating intellectual curiosity at an early age is crucial to the development of intelligence in later life. In other words, stupidity is curable if you catch it in time. The disturbing suggestion is that we are increasingly failing to do so, and seeing the consequences in a growing gap between the prosperity of nations that follow certain social models and others that don’t. Jim Trimmer Kingston upon Thames
Know thy neighbour
Rory Stewart is right to suggest that identity, not economics, should direct the debate over Scottish devolution (“Loyalty of the borderlands,” March), but his long sojourns away seem to have blinded him to the outlook and concerns of Scots today.
South of the border, many Scots feel less at home among peoples whose values they cannot always share. He appears to have an almost mystical faith in the redemptive powers of the 1707 Union of Parliaments and in the notion of a “Great Britain” which emerged, a hangover from the days of empire. Edinburgh, Glasgow or even Brussels are our centres of gravity, not London.
We shall grow and develop further within our own homeland and find our larger selves within our common European heritage and in the wider world. We shall also retain our bonds of friendship, family and common interests with those south of the border. Rob Melville Edinburgh
Call for renewables
Malcolm Grimston’s assertion that the “advantages” of nuclear power are widely recognised in Britain (“Nuclear non-reaction,” April) is challenged by the results of a YouGov poll in March which shows a real division in public opinion. Maybe the doubters look at the decommissioning costs and wonder why the public purse continues to underwrite the costs of this technology, and question whether the billions spent on research would have been better used to develop renewables. The poll shows that the majority wants more renewable energy, yet government policy is lacking in ambition and marred by inconsistency. A clear direction is essential for job creation, for the environment and for future generations who must not be saddled with yet another environmental debt. Jean Lambert Green MEP for London
Euroland
The weaker economies of Euroland need policies to promote economic growth. With weak banks, and tougher regulators today, they are short of credit to finance new purchases and investments. Hard-up governments have reached the limits of what more public spending can achieve. Higher taxes, as part of the response to the crisis, are reinforcing recessionary forces.
Euroland needs a new model: private sector led growth. While the private sector faces a shortage of credit, more regulations, and higher taxes, it makes getting out of trouble all but impossible. Printing more money and lending more from the European Central Bank to the banks buys time but does not solve the problem. John Redwood MP Wokingham
Failure of advice
A personal investment strategy has a chance of success when based on analysis of likely changes in coming years. Your correspondents (“Personal finance,” March) largely ignored the efforts, since 2008, by governments and central banks wishing to recreate pre-crunch conditions by supplying copious quantities of credit.
On the one hand, they have succeeded, since financial assets have ballooned, with gross derivative positions standing at similar levels to 2007. But they have also failed, since banks are lending less, and the public and businesses are borrowing less. Will the result of this be prosperity? More debt defaults? Or something else? No wonder the public is unhappy with financial advice. DJ Kauders Director, Kauders Portfolio Management AG, Switzerland
A simply awful writer
David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is indeed insufferable (“My literary allergy,” April 2011). If Joyce was Chopin, Pynchon and his offspring resemble the degeneration into Liszt and every musical mediocrity that followed him into the death throes of Romanticism.
Wallace wrote everything he knew of philosophy (with the irritating sonority of a graduate student) and tennis (God help us!) and murdered the reader through intellection. He needed an editor, simple as that sounds, who would discipline him. He was simply an awful writer in an increasingly crowded field.
Auden once said that we enjoy the sight of our own writing in the same manner we enjoy the smell of our own farts. That sounds positively quaint now. Edward Olivera Via the Prospect website
Broken English
The “hindered narrator” (“Broken English,” March) has become a cliché in children’s and young adult fiction; recent examples include Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking and Moira Young’s Blood Red Road. Like the vogue for the present tense, it is now in danger of losing its freshness, but my objection to it in children’s fiction is that too few know how to spell as it is. I’m also pretty suspicious of it in adult literary fiction. The know-it-all Bellow/Nabokovian narrator could become a bore but at his best came up with phrases of real beauty and wit. As you say, only Nabokov could write like Nabokov.The same is not true of the Broken English variety. Amanda Craig Via the Prospect website
Lolski
The President of Russia was not elected. He was Put in. Jean Hayes Hertfordshire
Have your say
Email letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk More letters online at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk
Why should Iran be stopped from getting the bomb? (Mark Fitzpatrick, April) The west made no serious attempt to prevent Israel, China, India and Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons. There is no reason to believe that Iran would be any more susceptible than other nuclear powers to the logic of mutually assured destruction. We are still suffering the consequences of stopping Iran, under the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, from nationalising its oil industry in 1953. An attack on it would be felt by most of the Muslim world as an attack on Islam and a continuation of the wars launched against Afghanistan and Iraq. PJ Stewart Oxford
Obama seems to lack any ability to advance his old policy of a nuclear-free Middle East. This involves dealing with a heavily nuclear-armed Israel. It is surely time for Europe to take up the baton and support the moves of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Finland’s Jaakko Laajava to get to the heart of this problem. Peter Norton Norfolk
Mayors: a new dawn
It was refreshing to see your feature on elected mayors (April), which recounted the idea’s origins in my 1980s trip to Hokkaido. Having believed in the importance of local governance and accountability throughout my political life, I hope that May heralds the arrival of directly elected mayors in some of our biggest cities. These mayoralties, of a sort long enjoyed by most European countries and the US, are an essential modernisation of our democracy that can only be good for people across the land. Michael Heseltine House of Lords
Taxing the aged
Set against the chancellor’s decision to cut the tax rate to 45 per cent for those earning more than £150,000, older people are understandably angry at being asked to subsidise the super rich and pay for the mistakes of the financial sector and government.
Older people have already seen cuts to their winter fuel allowance; a lower rise in their state pension; the rationing of community care services; changes to disability benefits; and caps on housing support. The freeze on tax allowances gives us an opportunity to expose this as a government for the rich by the rich. Dot Gibson National Pensioners Convention
Who pays for the party?
Ed Miliband has a problem. Any perception by voters that the relationship between Labour and the trade unions is negative is exacerbated by the sense that he owes his election as leader to union votes. Many voters understandably ask how he can govern on behalf of the many when he owes so much to the unions.
Ed should stop trying to argue that money from trade unions is different from money from corporates or rich individuals. The public just does not buy this difference. Peter Watt Writer and former general secretary of the Labour party
Corrosive communities
As a northern lad, brought up in Rotherham, working in Sheffield (as a philosophy and psychology teacher) and living in Barnsley I’m aware of the allure of communitarian solidarity—but I’ve fought hard to overcome it. Indeed I aspire to the WEIRDness that David Goodhart disparages (“Last hope for the left,” April), and I’m deeply suspicious of the warm glow of belonging that community offers.
Education, as Philip Hunter notes (“Received wisdom,” April), is about challenging rather than confirming our assumptions. I have the distinct impression that Goodhart, like many others, sees the idea of standing back from our particular commitments as both morally and psychologically corrosive. By contrast I have long pledged myself to the Enlightenment tradition that has led to what the philosopher Peter Singer has called the “expanding circle” of moral concern.
If Goodhart is right and difference itself undermines our capacity to care for others, the left really is in trouble. My own career has been inspired by the idea that helping young people attain a “critical distance” from their particular cultural viewpoints is what teaching is about. Philip Badger Barnsley
Stupidity is curable
If Philip Hunter’s inferences from research into IQs (April) suggest anything it is that stimulating intellectual curiosity at an early age is crucial to the development of intelligence in later life. In other words, stupidity is curable if you catch it in time. The disturbing suggestion is that we are increasingly failing to do so, and seeing the consequences in a growing gap between the prosperity of nations that follow certain social models and others that don’t. Jim Trimmer Kingston upon Thames
Know thy neighbour
Rory Stewart is right to suggest that identity, not economics, should direct the debate over Scottish devolution (“Loyalty of the borderlands,” March), but his long sojourns away seem to have blinded him to the outlook and concerns of Scots today.
South of the border, many Scots feel less at home among peoples whose values they cannot always share. He appears to have an almost mystical faith in the redemptive powers of the 1707 Union of Parliaments and in the notion of a “Great Britain” which emerged, a hangover from the days of empire. Edinburgh, Glasgow or even Brussels are our centres of gravity, not London.
We shall grow and develop further within our own homeland and find our larger selves within our common European heritage and in the wider world. We shall also retain our bonds of friendship, family and common interests with those south of the border. Rob Melville Edinburgh
Call for renewables
Malcolm Grimston’s assertion that the “advantages” of nuclear power are widely recognised in Britain (“Nuclear non-reaction,” April) is challenged by the results of a YouGov poll in March which shows a real division in public opinion. Maybe the doubters look at the decommissioning costs and wonder why the public purse continues to underwrite the costs of this technology, and question whether the billions spent on research would have been better used to develop renewables. The poll shows that the majority wants more renewable energy, yet government policy is lacking in ambition and marred by inconsistency. A clear direction is essential for job creation, for the environment and for future generations who must not be saddled with yet another environmental debt. Jean Lambert Green MEP for London
Euroland
The weaker economies of Euroland need policies to promote economic growth. With weak banks, and tougher regulators today, they are short of credit to finance new purchases and investments. Hard-up governments have reached the limits of what more public spending can achieve. Higher taxes, as part of the response to the crisis, are reinforcing recessionary forces.
Euroland needs a new model: private sector led growth. While the private sector faces a shortage of credit, more regulations, and higher taxes, it makes getting out of trouble all but impossible. Printing more money and lending more from the European Central Bank to the banks buys time but does not solve the problem. John Redwood MP Wokingham
Failure of advice
A personal investment strategy has a chance of success when based on analysis of likely changes in coming years. Your correspondents (“Personal finance,” March) largely ignored the efforts, since 2008, by governments and central banks wishing to recreate pre-crunch conditions by supplying copious quantities of credit.
On the one hand, they have succeeded, since financial assets have ballooned, with gross derivative positions standing at similar levels to 2007. But they have also failed, since banks are lending less, and the public and businesses are borrowing less. Will the result of this be prosperity? More debt defaults? Or something else? No wonder the public is unhappy with financial advice. DJ Kauders Director, Kauders Portfolio Management AG, Switzerland
A simply awful writer
David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is indeed insufferable (“My literary allergy,” April 2011). If Joyce was Chopin, Pynchon and his offspring resemble the degeneration into Liszt and every musical mediocrity that followed him into the death throes of Romanticism.
Wallace wrote everything he knew of philosophy (with the irritating sonority of a graduate student) and tennis (God help us!) and murdered the reader through intellection. He needed an editor, simple as that sounds, who would discipline him. He was simply an awful writer in an increasingly crowded field.
Auden once said that we enjoy the sight of our own writing in the same manner we enjoy the smell of our own farts. That sounds positively quaint now. Edward Olivera Via the Prospect website
Broken English
The “hindered narrator” (“Broken English,” March) has become a cliché in children’s and young adult fiction; recent examples include Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking and Moira Young’s Blood Red Road. Like the vogue for the present tense, it is now in danger of losing its freshness, but my objection to it in children’s fiction is that too few know how to spell as it is. I’m also pretty suspicious of it in adult literary fiction. The know-it-all Bellow/Nabokovian narrator could become a bore but at his best came up with phrases of real beauty and wit. As you say, only Nabokov could write like Nabokov.The same is not true of the Broken English variety. Amanda Craig Via the Prospect website
Lolski
The President of Russia was not elected. He was Put in. Jean Hayes Hertfordshire
Have your say
Email letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk More letters online at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk
