The path to growth
Both Paul Krugman and your panelists (“How to get growth” July) assume that fiscal stimulus is the only way to achieve growth. Yet, for the UK at least, a package of alternative measures would be more effective but lower risk. The government could tap the vast resources of sovereign wealth funds by offering them an attractive deal to invest in the country’s infrastructure: actual ownership, by means of 40-50 year leases, of the projects. This should be an acceptable concession; it would be a temporary mortgage on as yet non-existent structures. Second, an incentive should be provided for corporations to deploy their record level of cash by imposing a 10 per cent tax on it. Third, underwrite 20 per cent of the value of new loans to small businesses. The danger to the country’s already vulnerable AAA credit rating would be minimised. Fourth, if Scotland votes for independence in 2014 the English government should charge it for two services which it is currently assumed would be provided for free: guaranteeing Scotland’s national debt, and its defence.
David Crook, CEO Tail Wind Advisory & Management Ltd.
Edward Wilson responds
Richard Dawkins’s review of The Social Conquest of Earth (“The Descent of Edward Wilson,” May) makes little connection to the part he criticises. The central issue in my book, which he urges others not to read, is the replacement of inclusive fitness theory (kin selection theory: the evolution of characteristics which favour the survival of close relatives) by multilevel selection theory (that is, individual and group selection combined), with a new and major role assigned to group selection in the origin of advanced social behavior. The original formulation was made by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and myself in 2010 (in Nature 466: 1057–1062).
We demonstrated that while inclusive fitness theory sometimes works, its mathematical basis is unsound, and inclusive fitness itself is an unattainable phantom measure. Multilevel selection in contrast is mathematically sound, analytically clear, and works well for real cases—including human social behaviour. The science in our argument has, after 18 months, never been refuted or even seriously challenged—and certainly not by the archaic version of inclusive fitness from the 1970s recited by Professor Dawkins. While many have protested (incidentally, not including Steven Pinker and Robert Trivers, as Professor Dawkins claims), many others of equal competence are in favour of the replacement proposed. In any case, making such lists is futile. If science depended on rhetoric and polls, we would still be burning objects with phlogiston and navigating with geocentric maps.
Edward O Wilson
Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology, Harvard University
Persian past
I was delighted to read Jahangir Amuzegar’s elegant riposte (“Myths about Iran,” June) to the endless vilification of Iran churned out by our press. It is not easy to find some objective analysis of Iran’s political scene based on knowledge of its history, its constitution and culture. We need to understand the centuries-old conflict between Shias and Sunnis that forms the background to much of Middle East tension. The invasion of Iraq unleashed in its aftermath the deadly tribal wars that had been held in check by Saddam Hussein.
Malathy Sitaram
Swindon
Beyond revenge
Richard Wilson’s sister was killed because she was not Hutu (The futility of forgiveness,” July). Like those in many parts of the world, whatever tribal grouping calls itself the Lord’s Resistance Army has roots that go back far beyond the boundaries created by 19th century colonial powers and perpetuated post-independence: hence its “cross-border” activities. And in common with most inter-tribal conflicts, mercy comes a poor second to the perceived need to protect the tribe at all costs.
Forgiveness is irrelevant: the individuals involved were not acting as individuals. So is anger, unless it’s frustration with most of humanity’s reluctance to move on beyond traditional structures, and the west’s reluctance to engage with the fact. What remains is love for a sister and grief for her death.
Jim Trimmer
Kingston upon Thames
Myths about Hungary
You did well to point out that Hungary is in a dire state and that Viktor Orbán destroyed his “revolutionary” and liberal heritage (“Threat to Hungary,” June). But there are some misconceptions about Hungary. Since the victory of Fidesz in the general election, left-leaning journalists and public intellectuals argued that Mr Orbán and his party would create some kind of an authoritarian rule. But slashing the top-tier of the civil service and the leadership of public institutions and appointing party apparatchiks to these posts was a habit of both Fidesz and MSZP (the Hungarian Socialist Party, in government from 1994-1998 and 2002-2010). The scale and attitude with which Fidesz is doing this is shameful, but others were doing so as well. Secondly, the police brutality of 2006, the blood-boiling cynicism of the authorities, widespread corruption, an openly mendacious prime minister and the useless political management that accompanied the socialist rule in Hungary, do not represent a path to liberal democracy either. Fidesz is by far the most stable party in the country and Hungarians really do not have to fear police raids for expressing their views.
Áron A Németh
Budapest
Facing death
Catriona Chatfield’s modest and sane contribution on medical treatment near the end of life (“Cancer Wars,” July) only touches the edge of a far larger issue about the inevitability of mortality for every single one of us (“Cancer wars,” July). Our ancestors were not afraid to recognise the end approaching (statements in innumerable wills testify to this) but today we have adopted the obtuse habit of designating death, even in the old, as failure, or “losing the battle.” Yet there are far worse possible fates than death, and I know from experience that when the ageing get together they do not swap worries about being hustled out of life (as a number of obsessed “pro-lifers” would have us believe), but, rather, anxieties about being kept pointlessly alive in a decrepit state.
A few people in the public eye say this loudly, but the press tends to treat them as “brave” lone voices. The right to autonomy, which operates in every other area of personal life today, gets pushed aside by a vociferous minority who appear to be terrified of death for themselves or anyone else. “Dignity in Dying” [a campaign organisation] will not now discuss anything beyond a quicker end for those already terminally ill—a laudable aim, but one that bypasses the wider philosophical question: why should one not be free to renounce one’s own right to life?
Gillian Tindall
London
Is UK OK?
Kate Hoey has got her lines crossed (Letters, July). First she correctly tells us that the United Kingdom comprises “Great Britain and Northern Ireland” so that “Britain excludes Northern Ireland,” but then she goes on to say that “we” spent “40 years fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland in order to remain British.” If Hoey chooses to write to Prospect, under the banner of member of parliament for Vauxhall, to revive the dying unionist ascendancy in the six counties, she should be aware that her constituents will not take kindly to her using that position to reinforce the usurpation of seats in the UK parliament to stonewall the increasing clamour for all-Ireland institutions.
Tony Kay
London
Prospect uses Britain because it is the best short name for the country we live in. Britain is the place we are attached to as citizens.
“The United Kingdom” is emotionally loaded with imperial oppressiveness, yet describes merely an incidental form of constitution and not a community and a place. We are British citizens—my passport says so—even if you live in Northern Ireland. Our Olympic team have the words “Great Britain” on their kit, and we have GB on our motor vehicles, and the GB pound as our currency. Churchill consistently used Great Britain, Britain and British in his speeches, and it was the Battle of Britain we won in 1940. Please keep using the noun Britain for our country.
Anthony Pitcher OBE
Dorset
Summer break
As a student currently in limbo between the end of my GCSEs and the beginning of sixth form, I completely agree with Sonia Sodha’s article (“School’s out forever,” June). It has not yet been 2 weeks since my last exam and already I am struggling to find things to do when I am not with friends or family. Yet I find it equally hard to sit down and do some work to keep my brain from going into a summer coma. The idea of school terms and breaks being spread out more evenly over a year appeals to me very much, especially when considering the ridiculously short Christmas break (usually beginning half a week before Christmas and ending half a week after New Year’s Day) in comparison to the ridiculously long summer break (which is now even longer for me, as I have no more school until September after finishing my GCSEs).
The fact that this has been rejected previously due to opposition from teachers’ unions arguing that “(it) represent[s] a significant change in the conditions of teachers’ service and… teachers and pupils need the long summer break to recharge” comes as a shock to me. In my eyes, a better structured school year would not only improve conditions for teachers but also prevent students from, as you say, reversing their progress”.
All in all, a very informative argument, which I completely agree with. Maybe if students spoke up for the reform it could become more of a possibility.
Oscar Huglin,
London
Sonia Sodha advocates a school year with more frequent and shorter holidays, to avoid a large block of time away from school in the summer. She may well be right, though I doubt any government will think it worth the upheaval to organise such a change top-down. However, irrespective of how the school year is organised, it is sad she has found evidence of many youngsters being bored during their holidays. Britain misses out on the wonderful national networks of residential summer camps to be found elsewhere, notably in the United States and France, which provide the chance for young people from widely differing schools and backgrounds to meet up, away from TV, computer games and commercial pressures. We would gain enormously as a nation if many more of our youngsters took part in such camps regularly.
Christopher Green
Co-ordinator of the Campaign for Summer Camps
Political science
It has long been evident that whatever drives politicians, (“The lunatic fringe,” July) it is not a grasp of basic science (maybe the BBC should pull its socks up and make less dumbed-down programmes such as “Horizon”) but some genetic urge to please the more vociferous (and therefore, almost by definition, less intellectually inclined) of their constituents. Populism makes for bad science—the worst of all being religion (vide Dawkins attacks on it). The other toxic ingredient to playing fast and loose with science is money (or greed) and the power of corporations to shut their eyes to science.
Not all scientific advisers in Whitehall are as clear-sighted as David King [the government’s chief scientific adviser, 2000-2010]: when I worked in the ministry of defence I had to explain a basic mathematical principle to the department’s chief scientific officer in order to get past his preference for one service over another.
John Ellis
Via the Prospect website
Mark Henderson’s piece reminded me of two incidents. First, when Ann Widdecombe was being questioned on the radio about her climate-change scepticism, she responded, as she has elsewhere, that she does not believe everything that scientists say. Second, on a special edition of the BBC2 programme “University Challenge,” one of the teams was a group of MPs, and there was a round of questions on chemistry. The questions were fairly simple—“What is H2SO4?” for example—but the MPs didn’t get one single question right. At the end of the round one of them queried whether they should be expected to know much about chemistry.
Ian K Watson
Carlisle
Best and worst of Britain
Interesting how many of the people in your feature (“The best and worst of Britain,” June) mention variants of diversity in their best of Britain list—a much higher proportion than the 15 per cent of the public who said the same in the poll that appeared alongside the contributions. This is an excellent illustration of how elite consensus can be fundamentally divorced from the actual opinions of the population.
Randall Helms
Via the Prospect website
Man bites shark
“In Fact” (July) tells us that in 2011, 12 people across the world died after encounters with sharks, and that this was a 20-year high. In the same year, over one million sharks across the world died after encounters with human beings.
Harvey Cole
Winchester
Have your say
letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk.
Suggested maximum 200 words.
David Crook, CEO Tail Wind Advisory & Management Ltd.
Edward Wilson responds
Richard Dawkins’s review of The Social Conquest of Earth (“The Descent of Edward Wilson,” May) makes little connection to the part he criticises. The central issue in my book, which he urges others not to read, is the replacement of inclusive fitness theory (kin selection theory: the evolution of characteristics which favour the survival of close relatives) by multilevel selection theory (that is, individual and group selection combined), with a new and major role assigned to group selection in the origin of advanced social behavior. The original formulation was made by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and myself in 2010 (in Nature 466: 1057–1062).
We demonstrated that while inclusive fitness theory sometimes works, its mathematical basis is unsound, and inclusive fitness itself is an unattainable phantom measure. Multilevel selection in contrast is mathematically sound, analytically clear, and works well for real cases—including human social behaviour. The science in our argument has, after 18 months, never been refuted or even seriously challenged—and certainly not by the archaic version of inclusive fitness from the 1970s recited by Professor Dawkins. While many have protested (incidentally, not including Steven Pinker and Robert Trivers, as Professor Dawkins claims), many others of equal competence are in favour of the replacement proposed. In any case, making such lists is futile. If science depended on rhetoric and polls, we would still be burning objects with phlogiston and navigating with geocentric maps.
Edward O Wilson
Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology, Harvard University
Persian past
I was delighted to read Jahangir Amuzegar’s elegant riposte (“Myths about Iran,” June) to the endless vilification of Iran churned out by our press. It is not easy to find some objective analysis of Iran’s political scene based on knowledge of its history, its constitution and culture. We need to understand the centuries-old conflict between Shias and Sunnis that forms the background to much of Middle East tension. The invasion of Iraq unleashed in its aftermath the deadly tribal wars that had been held in check by Saddam Hussein.
Malathy Sitaram
Swindon
Beyond revenge
Richard Wilson’s sister was killed because she was not Hutu (The futility of forgiveness,” July). Like those in many parts of the world, whatever tribal grouping calls itself the Lord’s Resistance Army has roots that go back far beyond the boundaries created by 19th century colonial powers and perpetuated post-independence: hence its “cross-border” activities. And in common with most inter-tribal conflicts, mercy comes a poor second to the perceived need to protect the tribe at all costs.
Forgiveness is irrelevant: the individuals involved were not acting as individuals. So is anger, unless it’s frustration with most of humanity’s reluctance to move on beyond traditional structures, and the west’s reluctance to engage with the fact. What remains is love for a sister and grief for her death.
Jim Trimmer
Kingston upon Thames
Myths about Hungary
You did well to point out that Hungary is in a dire state and that Viktor Orbán destroyed his “revolutionary” and liberal heritage (“Threat to Hungary,” June). But there are some misconceptions about Hungary. Since the victory of Fidesz in the general election, left-leaning journalists and public intellectuals argued that Mr Orbán and his party would create some kind of an authoritarian rule. But slashing the top-tier of the civil service and the leadership of public institutions and appointing party apparatchiks to these posts was a habit of both Fidesz and MSZP (the Hungarian Socialist Party, in government from 1994-1998 and 2002-2010). The scale and attitude with which Fidesz is doing this is shameful, but others were doing so as well. Secondly, the police brutality of 2006, the blood-boiling cynicism of the authorities, widespread corruption, an openly mendacious prime minister and the useless political management that accompanied the socialist rule in Hungary, do not represent a path to liberal democracy either. Fidesz is by far the most stable party in the country and Hungarians really do not have to fear police raids for expressing their views.
Áron A Németh
Budapest
Facing death
Catriona Chatfield’s modest and sane contribution on medical treatment near the end of life (“Cancer Wars,” July) only touches the edge of a far larger issue about the inevitability of mortality for every single one of us (“Cancer wars,” July). Our ancestors were not afraid to recognise the end approaching (statements in innumerable wills testify to this) but today we have adopted the obtuse habit of designating death, even in the old, as failure, or “losing the battle.” Yet there are far worse possible fates than death, and I know from experience that when the ageing get together they do not swap worries about being hustled out of life (as a number of obsessed “pro-lifers” would have us believe), but, rather, anxieties about being kept pointlessly alive in a decrepit state.
A few people in the public eye say this loudly, but the press tends to treat them as “brave” lone voices. The right to autonomy, which operates in every other area of personal life today, gets pushed aside by a vociferous minority who appear to be terrified of death for themselves or anyone else. “Dignity in Dying” [a campaign organisation] will not now discuss anything beyond a quicker end for those already terminally ill—a laudable aim, but one that bypasses the wider philosophical question: why should one not be free to renounce one’s own right to life?
Gillian Tindall
London
Is UK OK?
Kate Hoey has got her lines crossed (Letters, July). First she correctly tells us that the United Kingdom comprises “Great Britain and Northern Ireland” so that “Britain excludes Northern Ireland,” but then she goes on to say that “we” spent “40 years fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland in order to remain British.” If Hoey chooses to write to Prospect, under the banner of member of parliament for Vauxhall, to revive the dying unionist ascendancy in the six counties, she should be aware that her constituents will not take kindly to her using that position to reinforce the usurpation of seats in the UK parliament to stonewall the increasing clamour for all-Ireland institutions.
Tony Kay
London
Prospect uses Britain because it is the best short name for the country we live in. Britain is the place we are attached to as citizens.
“The United Kingdom” is emotionally loaded with imperial oppressiveness, yet describes merely an incidental form of constitution and not a community and a place. We are British citizens—my passport says so—even if you live in Northern Ireland. Our Olympic team have the words “Great Britain” on their kit, and we have GB on our motor vehicles, and the GB pound as our currency. Churchill consistently used Great Britain, Britain and British in his speeches, and it was the Battle of Britain we won in 1940. Please keep using the noun Britain for our country.
Anthony Pitcher OBE
Dorset
Summer break
As a student currently in limbo between the end of my GCSEs and the beginning of sixth form, I completely agree with Sonia Sodha’s article (“School’s out forever,” June). It has not yet been 2 weeks since my last exam and already I am struggling to find things to do when I am not with friends or family. Yet I find it equally hard to sit down and do some work to keep my brain from going into a summer coma. The idea of school terms and breaks being spread out more evenly over a year appeals to me very much, especially when considering the ridiculously short Christmas break (usually beginning half a week before Christmas and ending half a week after New Year’s Day) in comparison to the ridiculously long summer break (which is now even longer for me, as I have no more school until September after finishing my GCSEs).
The fact that this has been rejected previously due to opposition from teachers’ unions arguing that “(it) represent[s] a significant change in the conditions of teachers’ service and… teachers and pupils need the long summer break to recharge” comes as a shock to me. In my eyes, a better structured school year would not only improve conditions for teachers but also prevent students from, as you say, reversing their progress”.
All in all, a very informative argument, which I completely agree with. Maybe if students spoke up for the reform it could become more of a possibility.
Oscar Huglin,
London
Sonia Sodha advocates a school year with more frequent and shorter holidays, to avoid a large block of time away from school in the summer. She may well be right, though I doubt any government will think it worth the upheaval to organise such a change top-down. However, irrespective of how the school year is organised, it is sad she has found evidence of many youngsters being bored during their holidays. Britain misses out on the wonderful national networks of residential summer camps to be found elsewhere, notably in the United States and France, which provide the chance for young people from widely differing schools and backgrounds to meet up, away from TV, computer games and commercial pressures. We would gain enormously as a nation if many more of our youngsters took part in such camps regularly.
Christopher Green
Co-ordinator of the Campaign for Summer Camps
Political science
It has long been evident that whatever drives politicians, (“The lunatic fringe,” July) it is not a grasp of basic science (maybe the BBC should pull its socks up and make less dumbed-down programmes such as “Horizon”) but some genetic urge to please the more vociferous (and therefore, almost by definition, less intellectually inclined) of their constituents. Populism makes for bad science—the worst of all being religion (vide Dawkins attacks on it). The other toxic ingredient to playing fast and loose with science is money (or greed) and the power of corporations to shut their eyes to science.
Not all scientific advisers in Whitehall are as clear-sighted as David King [the government’s chief scientific adviser, 2000-2010]: when I worked in the ministry of defence I had to explain a basic mathematical principle to the department’s chief scientific officer in order to get past his preference for one service over another.
John Ellis
Via the Prospect website
Mark Henderson’s piece reminded me of two incidents. First, when Ann Widdecombe was being questioned on the radio about her climate-change scepticism, she responded, as she has elsewhere, that she does not believe everything that scientists say. Second, on a special edition of the BBC2 programme “University Challenge,” one of the teams was a group of MPs, and there was a round of questions on chemistry. The questions were fairly simple—“What is H2SO4?” for example—but the MPs didn’t get one single question right. At the end of the round one of them queried whether they should be expected to know much about chemistry.
Ian K Watson
Carlisle
Best and worst of Britain
Interesting how many of the people in your feature (“The best and worst of Britain,” June) mention variants of diversity in their best of Britain list—a much higher proportion than the 15 per cent of the public who said the same in the poll that appeared alongside the contributions. This is an excellent illustration of how elite consensus can be fundamentally divorced from the actual opinions of the population.
Randall Helms
Via the Prospect website
Man bites shark
“In Fact” (July) tells us that in 2011, 12 people across the world died after encounters with sharks, and that this was a 20-year high. In the same year, over one million sharks across the world died after encounters with human beings.
Harvey Cole
Winchester
Have your say
letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk.
Suggested maximum 200 words.
