FINNISH FUTURES
23rd May 2003
You say ("In fact," June) that "the Finnish language has no future tense." Of course, morphologically speaking neither does English.
Nick Boalch
University of Durham
SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
4th June 2003
Kathleen Burk (Letters, June) implies that Britain was cut out of the loop of US security and military intelligence only during the time when Ted Heath requested no special favours in the 1970s. Does she not remember the US invasion of Grenada, a Commonwealth member, in 1983? About 36 hours before it happened, the state department and the Pentagon stopped talking to the British embassy in Washington on grounds of operational secrecy. Geoffrey Howe was on his feet assuring the Commons that the Americans wouldn't invade as the marines hit the beach. That was at the height of the Reagan-Thatcher love-in.
Rodric Braithwaite
London NW1
DESECRATING SCRUTON
3rd May 2003
I watch Wagner's Ring whenever I get the chance, have a certificate from an Icelandic college that says I know something about the Edda and Nordic mythology, and have now read Roger Scruton's piece on Wagner (April) several times. I simply do not understand much of what he is saying and am irritated by the rest. Where it is possible to see through Scruton's prose, the meaning is not particularly profound. He does not like modern productions of Wagner,? mostly because "the god-haunted, dream-enchanted landscape of the Ring is the first thing that modern producers hasten to airbrush from the story." His position is identical with my neighbour's, who won't go to see Shakespeare in modern dress. But she is open about her preferences, and does not feel she has to defend them with references to Feuerbach and hunter-gatherers.
As a church organist I resent my faith being lined up with Scruton's paranoiac and pretentious conservatism. Prospect thrives on the presentation of critical studies of the arts and of unpopular and controversial ideas, but its tradition is to have them presented by serious thinkers.
Martin Axford
Bridge of Weir, Scotland
JUSTICE GAP 1
5th June 2003
I read Jonathan Myerson's article (June) with interest. Working as a GP on a poor estate in Halifax, I see the games that go on between courts, the probation service and some of my patients. One current favourite is the medical "get out of jail free" card. In this, a young, fit person on a community service order makes an appointment at the surgery and asks for a letter stating that he missed his community service or probation appointment two weeks ago as he had diarrhoea and vomiting. Needless to say, there is no contemporary medical record of the illness; someone at the probation service has told the person: "Get a note from your doctor, or you will be found in breach." The formula we are forced to use-"this patient stated to me that..."-is weasel words. The courts and the probation service could usefully stop this misuse of medical evidence and medical time.
Peter Davies
Mixenden, Halifax
JUSTICE GAP 2
9th June 2003
Many lay magistrates will welcome Jonathan Myerson's article. Myerson might have added that much time and money is wasted by the crown prosecution service or the police "over-charging" -that is, seeking a conviction for a more serious offence than the evidence supports and then backtracking later.
RW Farrington JP
London SW1
JEWISH SILENCE
14th May 2003
I wholeheartedly agree with Anatol Lieven's plea (May) to Jewish liberals to question the policies of the Sharon government and the Bush administration's support for them. Translated into policy this means Israel accepting that the road map is the only way to create a viable Palestinian state. But without the president's pressure, Sharon will continue to prevaricate and to perpetuate a situation in which the Jewish values enshrined in the Zionism that created Israel will be further diminished and perverted. Tony Blair must be urged to hold Bush to his word, and British Friends of Peace Now will support his government in that effort.
Paul Usiskin
British Friends of Peace Now
AFRICAN LAMENT 1
22nd May 2003
Lamenting the departure of white people from Africa (June), RW Johnson writes that the nameboards on driveways in northern Nairobi tell their own story: "Harney, Griffiths, Koch, Bulloch, Mbwa Kali..." Mbwa Kali? Perhaps the Mbwa Kali clan are seizing the houses as the whites flee. Sadly, there is a more prosaic explanation: "Mbwa Kali" is Swahili for "Ferocious Dog."
Lindsey Hilsum
London N16
AFRICAN LAMENT 2
9th June 2003
I am sorry RW Johnson has had such a disheartening time on his return to South Africa. I've returned for three years as dean of humanities at the University of Cape Town and my experience of the performing arts is in sharp contrast to his. We have a thriving music college with an opera school which has an intake of 98, 92 of whom are black. Opera, the orchestra and the dance school have extensive outreach programmes and attract racially mixed audiences across the age range. Johnson's comments on the universities are equally misinformed. President Mbeki has not "destroyed the universities." The minister of education has sought to merge 36 institutions of higher learning into 22 more viable ones. The usual corporate language of restructuring, rationalisation, quality assurance, economies of scale and centres of excellence may be irritating, but the policies adopted have affected the historically black institutions far more adversely than the old liberal (formerly white) institutions. It is utterly implausible to suggest that black barbarians have been set loose to assault the groves of academe.
Robin Cohen
University of Cape Town
PHARMO-NUTRITION
23rd May 2003
Paul Clayton (June) complains about the huge profits that pharmaceutical companies earn pedalling medication to the chronically ill. Then, by misinterpreting a World Health Organisation (WHO) report, he argues that diet supplements correct micronutrient deficiencies and protect against disease, thus supporting a business worth ?400m per annum. Clayton is wrong; the solution is much simpler. The WHO report mainly recommends eating more fresh food and taking exercise.
Graham Mackenzie
Edinburgh
PRIVATE SCHOOLS 1
6th June 2003
Adam Swift (June) advocates an education system that ignores wealth, because it is distributed unevenly and can be inherited, in favour of selection by intelligence. Unfortunately intelligence is also distributed unevenly and can be inherited. Surely, as a champion of justice, he should propose a system of equal outcome. The state would be obliged to educate everyone to the same level-say seven specific GCSE subjects. If a child passed these seven exams aged 12, they would leave school at 12, and the state would have fulfilled its duty. If it took until they reached 25, the state would be obliged to pay for their education until then. This would be fair to all-regardless of wealth and genetic inheritance. We could then abolish universities-which select on grounds of ability and therefore discriminate unfairly against those without ability-and with them Swift's job.
Dan Goodhart
London SW15
PRIVATE SCHOOLS 2
9th June 2003
What a disappointment that the private schools debate was conducted between an academic (Adam Swift) committed to their abolition and a private school head (Anthony Seldon) who argues for means testing, declares his dislike for "privilege," believes that "creaming off children into independent schools impoverishes the state sector" and demands that private schools should be "compelled" to form state school partnerships. Seldon settles for a plea in mitigation, rather than the defence that independent education deserves. I have nothing against state school partnerships. Ampleforth (where I am headmaster) has had extensive and happy experience in this area. But private education needs no such politically correct justification. The charity commissioners should retain education in itself as a sufficient justification for charitable status.
"Privilege" is a loaded word. It implies a status that cannot be attained by outsiders. "Advantage" is a fairer and more neutral term, and describes the opportunities offered by the founders of scholarships and schools from William of Wykeham to Peter Ogden and Peter Lampl. Of course independent schools offer and create advantage, and it is strange to hear a headmaster of such a school proclaiming his dislike of it. People may seek advantage for themselves, but often, with greater passion, they seek it for their families. They make sacrifices to provide their children with the happiest and most secure future possible.
Swift writes: "It is obviously unfair that children's prospects in life should depend on their parent's ability and willingness to buy them the advantages you describe." Well, their prospects will not "depend" on these advantages, but they certainly might be improved. But why "unfair"? Why "obviously"? Is the egalitarian fury driven by a dislike of all advantage, or is it the paying that offends him? Swift is all for parents being able "to interact freely with their children"-so long as, it seems, they don't pay for anything. The logic would be to level the playing field still further by removing children from parental influence as much as possible, rather as the Chinese did during the cultural revolution. Unlike Swift and Seldon, I do not dislike privilege, as they call it, especially when it is provided for a child through the effort of a loving parent. That powerful instinct is universal.
Part of Swift's problem may stem from his failure to understand the purpose of education. Good teachers address the development of the whole child, not merely the future corporate executive. If two boys leave Ampleforth, one to lead a life without riches or distinction, while the other goes on to prominence, wealth and public acclaim, we would consider the first a success if he has been a loving father, a devoted husband and a responsible citizen. The other, in our view, would be a failure no matter the public distinctions, if he had failed in these crucial measures.
Surely it is time to make the value and power of independent education available to all? What if all schools became charities, with responsibility to set their own fees, and if parents had vouchers to use at choice? Refusing parents the right to spend their money on education, as Swift wants, cuts the private nose to spite the public face, which would gain from large extra funds spent on education. Means tests, such as Seldon wants, would be a form of added taxation. In fact, there are substantial scholarships and bursaries already available, and a voucher system for basic fees would bring many more within reach of them.
Leo Chamberlain
Ampleforth College
