Letters

In his painfully raw "Confessions" (November) on the subject of piles, Andrew Martin lists some synonyms from rhyming slang, such as "nauticals" (nautical miles). I well remember Arthur Daley visiting a friend in hospital, who was said to be in for his "Chalfonts [St Giles]."

Patrick Malahide
London NW1

Tumultuous Britain
4th November 2007

Walter Russell Mead's article on the relationship between Britain and the US (November) prompts the thought that it can never be "special" in the sense of providing Britain with the guarantee of real political influence in Washington. In that sense, only two countries have a special relationship with the US—Ireland and Israel—and for the same reason. Each, when the need arises, can call on the support of American voters, with the result that significant numbers of members of congress will espouse Irish and Israeli causes. Britain cannot do that.

Christopher Tugendhat
London W2

Living with West Lothian
22nd October 2007

While it is always pleasant to be quoted in support, Jack Straw needs a gentle rebuke. In his article defending the government's decision to do nothing about the West Lothian question (October), he identifies me as "recognising" that the current Conservative policy of insisting on English votes on English issues will break up the union. I have, indeed, said that to create two classes of MP, with different rights, would not be sustainable in the long term. But as Straw knows, or ought to know, I do not agree with his view that nothing needs to be done. I have submitted proposals to my party that would ensure that all strictly English business would, in future, be dealt with by an English grand committee consisting of all English MPs. While the full House of Commons, and all its members, would retain the right to overrule them, there would be a new convention that they would not do so. This would be similar to the convention that has emerged that the House of Commons does not overrule the Scottish parliament or Welsh assembly on devolved issues.

Malcolm Rifkind
MP for Kensington and Chelsea

No national identity crisis
29th October 2007

What on earth is all the ID card fuss about (AC Grayling and David Birch, October)? Here in Finland, everyone has a social security number consisting of date of birth plus a four-digit code. Mine is on my health insurance card, driving licence, passport and so on. No one has ever suggested that this is an infringement of liberty, or a symbol of a concentration camp mentality. It is simply common sense: practical, useful, no problem.

Andrew Chesterman
Helsinki

Counting migration 1
29th October 2007

Andrew Dilnot and Michael Blastland's admirable article on migration (November) is right to say that the ONS should not be accused of "a conspiracy to suppress sensitive trends." But the ONS is less than frank about the contribution of immigration to population growth. Its recent press release said that 47 per cent of the projected population increase over the next ten years would come from net migration. This is correct as far as it goes, but you have to go through a series of footnotes to discover that the inclusion of migrants' children brings that percentage up to 70 per cent in 2031 and 90 per cent in 2051. This is a crucial element in any serious debate.

AF Green
Chairman, MigrationWatch UK

Counting migration 2
19th October 2007

Uniquely in Britain, one was once met at airports by immigration officers in plain clothes; in recent weeks they have been replaced by men and women in Ruritanian uniforms, making us just like everyone else. How can this government not see that to bleat on about Britishness while forcing through changes like that is hypocritical? Orwell and others have pointed out that uniforms are not merely symbolic: police dressed like stormtroopers behave more like stormtroopers.

Yorick Wilks
Oxford

God's return to Europe
6th November 2007

Eric Kaufmann's review (November) of Philip Jenkins's new book is insightful, but his arguments about the lack of integration among European Muslims are misleading. He compares Muslim intermarriage rates and residential dispersion unfavourably with those of other immigrant groups, but it is not clear why these are considered definitive indices of integration. Apply the same criteria to India, and Muslims there would be found wanting, even though they have been integrated into Indian life for 1,000 years. To me, this tells us more about the limits of the sociology of integration than of the integration of European Muslims.

Kaufmann's claim about the high rates of intermarriage, residential segregation and secularisation of "non-Muslim Asians" is also problematic. Has he been to Southall recently, or Belgrave Road in Leicester? Even Afro-Caribbeans are relatively concentrated residentially. What he overlooks here is class. Muslims, like other groups, tend to desegregate residentially as they move up the class ladder. Conversely, class is one of the main factors in social exclusion and residential segregation.

Anshuman Mondal
Brunel University

Misunderstanding Burma
1st November 2007

As a member of the British embassy in Rangoon in 1962, I lived through the fateful Burma coup and saw its consequences. Because Malcolm MacDonald, former high commissioner in Delhi, was a friend of the coup's instigator, General Ne Win, we brought him over to allay the fears of the British community. I can still hear Ne Win saying: "Malcolm, don't get excited. Just give me two years and everything will be back to normal." 45 years later it is not enough to say, as does Nic Dunlop (November), that "the world is going to have to deal with the generals."

The sad facts are these: Burma is still badly divided along ethnic lines; the military has repeatedly demonstrated its incompetence as well as its brutality; nearly 90 per cent of the best brains of the country are now abroad, in Australia, the US, Canada, Britain and Thailand; and corruption is so rampant that Burma's natural resources are being squandered. Sanctions are not the answer. Nor is the status quo. The best hope may be a loose federation with UN overlordship, like Kosovo. Britain and the US will have to get used to China, Russia, Japan and India as co-guarantors. And, perhaps trickiest of all, properly qualified Burmese will have to be induced to return to support Aung San Suu Kyi.
It will be necessary to speak to the generals; but mainly to say goodbye.

Archie Mackenzie
Rowardennan, Glasgow

Ironies of the Caliphate
4th November 2007

Jean-Pierre Filiu says (Prospect online, November) that Hizb ut-Tahrir advocates the achievement of a caliphate by peaceful means. Its opponents want it banned, accusing it of recruiting Muslims to violent jihad. It so happens that the thoughts of the west's favourite leader during the recent Yugoslav wars—the Bosnian Muslim Alija Izetbegovic—echoed those of Hizb ut-Tahrir. His authorship of The Islamic Declaration in 1970 earned him a prison sentence. In this book, Izetbegovic expressed his yearning for a caliphate subject to Islamic law, stretching from Morocco to Indonesia and ultimately elsewhere, wherever Muslims attained a majority. At no subsequent time did he disown the book.

Yugo Kovach
Twickenham

The real GM scandal 1
4th November 2007

Dick Taverne's story on GM food (November) was of special interest to me because I grew up in Brazil, which produces a large quantity of GM food each year, helping the large proportion of its population at risk of malnourishment. You can imagine my disbelief when I came to Britain in 2006: food chains proudly proclaiming themselves GM-free; media portraying GM products as dangerous to health. I was disappointed to see a country so progressive in everything else trying so vehemently to engrave a primitive idea in the public mind.

Lara Espirito Santo
Manchester

The real GM scandal 2
5th November 2007

Has Dick Taverne ever spoken to any African farmers about what they want and need? I have—in Kenya. One of these men told me a story. "Three years ago, one of my uncles bought and sowed the new maize. He grew the most wonderful crops. We were all amazed! He is a generous man and gave us all cobs so that we could grow some of this marvellous maize. Nothing came up as the seed was sterile. Nobody round here will buy that new maize again. We cannot afford to buy new seed every year even for the bigger crop."

GM companies deliberately make their seeds sterile in order to preserve their intellectual property rights. Insects and wind, the main vectors for spreading pollen, carry sterile pollen from GM crops to neighbouring crops and compromise their fertility. That is a serious threat to plant diversity everywhere.

If GM companies wanted to feed the world instead of owning it, they would develop fertile strains of improved crops. Millions of farmers would scrape up the money to buy these improved seeds. As the seeds would tend to revert, the farmers would renew them every fourth year, perhaps, so a reasonably profitable continuing market would result. It is not ignorant sentimentality but common sense that fuels the campaigns against the people who produce GM foods. Of course, some of the claims are likely to be ill-informed; but the need for strict control of greedy monopolists is as necessary in this field as in any other.

Isabel Norval
Edinburgh