Leading power in Europe?
7th October 2004
I have not lived in Britain for a long time, but as I read the Guardian Weekly and Prospect, I still have my finger on the pulse. Or so I thought. But Robin Harris's mention (October) of "the transformation of Britain into the leading power in Europe" does make me fear that I may have missed something.
Paul Daniels
Heidelberg, Germany
Greene's Catholicism
13th September 2004
Julian Evans (September) makes heavy going of Graham Greene. The point about Greene is that he was a two-sided man. His Catholicism was simply stage-lighting for a novelist who addressed the same moral dilemmas as other writers: it certainly gives an edge to things if characters risk damnation as a consequence of their actions.?
Ivan Rowan
Stroud, Gloucestershire
Olympic futurology
23rd September 2004
While dividing a country's toll of Olympic gold medals by its population (News & Curiosities, October) is attractive in its simplicity, you would have done better to pay heed to your own columnist Azeem Azhar. In an article for the Observer, he pointed out that wealth and style of political governance are also key predictors of performance at the Olympics. The masters of Olympic medal predicting, Azhar informs us, are Andrew Bernard and Meghan Busse, two American economists from Dartmouth and UC Berkeley respectively. For the Sydney games their predictions were 96 per cent accurate and this time around most countries (including Britain) performed as expected. Their glaring error was in forecasting 19 medals for Japan (of which six would be gold), which actually accumulated 37 medals, including 16 golds.?
Frederic Casella
London W2
Burning butterflies
19th September 2004
Michael Coveney (September) begins his piece on political theatre with a reference to Peter Brook's play US. In 1966 I was the lighting designer for the play at the Aldwych. After the first night and the poor reviews, Brook decided to address the staff - everyone from the London manager, Hal Rogers, to the boilerman, Gerry Oakes. As we sat in the stalls, a sombre-faced Brook told us, "The technical staff of this theatre have sabotaged my production for political reasons." Brook had never liked the technical staff, who he saw as right-wing yobbos, but to this day I'm not sure what he was referring to. His rant may have had something to do with our abandonment of his hopelessly ambitious plan to install monitors all over the theatre (playing live and pre-recorded material) the night before the show opened. At the time, the RSC's stagehands, electricians and sound technicians all worked 70-80 hours a week for most of the year. The people were interesting, the work demanding, we were good at it and we earned lots of money. The closest we ever came to talking politics was to moan about the amount of tax we were paying. A few days later, the RSPCA told us it had been receiving sacks of mail about the burning of butterflies in the play, and if we were only burning paper ones would we please make a public statement to help unblock their mailroom. Hal Rogers asked Brook if we should comply, and Brook replied that if anyone released anything to the press he would burn every butterfly he could lay his hands on. Babies, he said, were being burned in Vietnam and the British public wrote letters complaining about the nightly incineration of one cabbage white! Apart from the invited first-night audience, US preached to the converted. On the morning after, Brook preached to the apathetic. In any case, there was probably a better play in the butterfly story than the ragbag of fact, exaggeration and parody that became US.?
David Read
Vancouver
Dawkins on race
24th September 2004
If, as Richard Dawkins (October) argues, the effect of "differences in language, religion and social customs" was so strong as to cause races to evolve, then why aren't those differences doing more to slow racial mixing as geographical barriers are lowered in modern times? We still live in a world where cultural differences are important; even today, families across the globe discourage their children from choosing a partner of a different race or culture. Dawkins doesn't consider the point that humans may actually have a propensity to be sexually attracted to, not repelled by, members of a different race (if the rising proportion of "mixed-race" people isn't enough to demonstrate this, an analysis of the sex industry certainly would be). Surely the truth is that many of our ancestors would have been prepared to put their choice of sexual partner ahead of cultural norms, just as millions choose to do so today.
Max Christian
London NW8
Walzer and the UN
15th September 2004
I was disappointed to read Alexander Casella's "After the Bomb" (September). He raised important issues about the UN: lack of management accountability, a system of justice which rarely permits justice to done or to be seen to be done, and an ineffective field staff security system that meets neither the needs of staff nor beneficiaries. These are all issues to which member governments should be paying much more attention, since without their resolution, there will be no reformed UN. But was there any need for Casella to introduce at length his vitriolic personal views on Gerald Walzer, a former UN staff member, or to compare Walzer so unfavourably with Sergio Vieira de Mello? As a former staff member of the UN refugee agency, I appreciate the very different, but complementary, talents these men brought to UNHCR under the leadership of the then high commissioner Sadako Ogata, at a time when UNHCR was the most highly respected of the UN humanitarian agencies. Walzer was, and I have no doubt remains, a man of the utmost integrity. The UN is desperately short of men of the calibre of Sergio Vieira de Mello and Gerald Walzer.
Maureen Connelly
Lymington, Hants
Beaches need managers
6th October 2004
Charles Leadbeater's article on beaches (August) was most enjoyable, but his conception of the beach as space left over from planning and governance, where people are "tolerant and self-regulating," was wide of the mark. Beaches are some of the most contested landscapes - globally, nationally and locally. Conflicts in land use are common and not easy to resolve. In the Bangladesh delta it might be problems about breaking up cargo vessels, on the Senegalese coast it's the EU's industrialised fisheries, but at our Studland Bay property it's about access disputes between horse riders, naturists and water sports. Beaches are vulnerable environments that need properly looking after in order to aspire to be civil, playful and open.
Jeremy Blackburn
National Trust
Palestinian rejectionism
22nd September 2004
David Green's portrait of Benny Morris (August) made interesting reading but what a pity Green seems to have accepted without comment Morris's statement: "The thrust of Palestinian history from the beginning of the Palestinian movement in the 1920s… was rejectionist. It opposed the idea of Jews coming here, it opposed the idea of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine." Here is the crux of the whole Israel-Palestine problem: do Palestinians have a right to reject the 1917 Balfour declaration and the resulting immigration of Jews? I believe that as long as Israelis and most Americans believe it was, and is, unreasonable for the indigenous residents of Palestine to reject such immigration, there will continue to be conflict in the region. What is needed now to assuage Palestinian anger is an acknowledgement of this historical wrong by Israel and the western nations involved. Only then can reconciliation begin. The US, Australia and other "migrant" countries shut their doors to Jewish immigration after the first world war, but apparently many people think it unreasonable for Palestinians to have wanted to do the same. The post-Balfour immigration was specifically intended to lead to the domination of Palestine by Zionists. How can Morris, a historian, be surprised that Palestinians should reject the imposition of such an artificially contrived European Jewish majority? Can Morris honestly say that had he been born a Palestinian Arab and lived in a period when Transjordan, Iraq and other "vassal" territories were being granted autonomy, he would not have struggled against being overwhelmed by a massive alien immigration, that he would not have rejected the idea of a Jewish state being carved out of Palestine??
Roger P Kaye
Cyprus
Selenium and depression
26th September 2004
Cheryll Barron (October) is right to criticise the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) as a cure for depression. The use of SSRIs is based upon the failure to understand the true cause of depression, which is the inability of brain tissue to generate the energy needed for it to perform. The basal rate of energy generation depends upon the availability of thyroxine that has been activated by a selenoprotein for which selenium is needed, but the maximum rate is limited by the availability of vitamin B3. Thus a decrease in the basal rate will result in depression without a corresponding increase of vitamin B3. The average intake of selenium in the UK has fallen to about half of that recommended, causing an increase in depression. The use of a selenium supplement to prevent or cure depression is likely to prove safer and more effective than SSRIs.
Tom Stockdale
Dumfries
Immigration targets
8th October 2004
In most circumstances, "targets" have proved to be a public policy nightmare. But Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah's suggestion of targets for immigration (October) could just be an exception. Properly constructed, they could cast some daylight on a murky area now marked by deep public distrust. The present situation benefits only the extreme right. Sriskandarajah's suggestion of an independent panel could help to reassure the public, who are understandably concerned abut the doubling of immigration in recent years. But both the composition and remit of the independent body he suggests would need considerable care. Canadian experience should be a warning, not an example. In Canada, the immigration and refugee board fell into the hands of political appointees with predictable results. James Bissett, a former Canadian ambassador who served as head of the Canadian immigration service from 1985-90, recently described Canada's asylum system as "a morally bankrupt charade." No such body should have responsibility for policy. The issue is far too important to be hived off. It affects our daily lives and futures so greatly that it must remain the clear responsibility of the home secretary, answerable to parliament and to the electorate.
Andrew Green
Migrationwatch
