Back to the vet 24th January 2012
Off out around the park, tho other joggers, both clad in black is this the new fashion? Seems a bit silly to me you want the traffic to be able to see you. Some people overdo this with flashing LED lights, but its a sensible precaution to be seen. Dog walkers, commuters, but no one delivering newspapers.
Off out to the vets with Pud, weight down, temp low, she is eating, not gaining weight, perhaps she runs it off being pursued by Kitten. We shall have to take her back in a week when her thyroid symptoms stop masking her kidney symptoms, what a lot of fuss about a small black cat, not remotely grateful, just as you might expect.
The end of Series 3 of Doctor Who, the reborn Master as Prime Minister, my goodness he shoots a particularly irritating American President, who eerily looks like a mix of the Republican contenders. Lots of nce nasty alien invaders, how will the Doctor get out of being aged to 100.
Steak and ale pie, we watch Genevieve, John Gregson and Kenneth More in the London to Brighton vintage car drive, with Dinah Sheridan and the lovely Kay Kendall who died far too young from leukemia. They race on the way back. Excellent tuition in how to be an irritating husband.
Scrabble today I win again and get over 400, all without thinking about it, poor Mary, but I am sure she will get a suitable revenge.
Fave Letters:
Jonathan Freedland (There was no Labour U-turn, but not many are listening, 21 January) argues Labour is forced to support the cuts because there will be no money to reverse them in 2015 after Osborne has wrecked the economy. He is wrong: there is money available now, and will be even more in 2015.
What has been left out of the equation in all the public debate about the cuts over the last 18 months is the enormous ballooning of wealth of the ultra-rich. The Sunday Times Rich List published last May found that the 1,000 richest persons in Britain got richer by £77.3bn in the year to 2010 and then by another £60.2bn in the year to 2011. Nor was this just a freak jackpot. In 1997 the richest 1,000 had assets of £99bn; by 2011 they had grown to £396bn. Capital gains tax at 28% on the increase in the value of these assets over this period would raise £83bn, enough to pay off two-thirds of the deficit.
Why is a wealth tax a taboo subject when it has never been more justified? Or a super-tax on excess gains, exactly as Labour rightly imposed a levy on the super-profits of the utilities in 1997? Either of these options would allow the VAT increase to be repealed, which would significantly ease pressure on the poorest households and begin to generate growth by raising demand, and there would still be enough increased revenues left over to fund the creation of half a million jobs in much-needed house-building, infrastructure improvement, and laying the foundations for the green economy.
Too many people have resignedly accepted austerity for years ahead because they believe there is no alternative. But actually there is.
Michael Meacher MP
Labour, Oldham West and Royton
There are few enterprises sadder, in retrospect, than those whose timing is wrong: Navy Dockyards built for wooden ships in 1830; grand plans for canals in 1840; Edwardian country houses built just before war swept away both wealth and servants; British Railways steam locos built in 1960, and scrapped in 1965.
To which list will surely be added in future, the “new aviation hub” that you propose (leading article, 19 January). Rising energy prices are driving up the costs of all forms of travel; measures to reduce CO2 emissions add yearly to these costs; and disposable incomes are shrinking year on year.
While these trends reduce recreational air travel, IT developments are making serious inroads into the business market: why spend three days and £5k to be jet-lagged at a meeting in Hong Kong, when you can Skype it for free?
Henry Ford said: “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘Faster horses’”. Behind the trend as ever, our politicians have completely missed the cultural shift, and are still trying to accelerate the horses.
David Gordon
Hinton St George, Somerset
In your leading article concerning a possible Thames Estuary airport you convey the bizarre idea that “Boris Island” and the Isle of Grain are in east London; of course, both sites are firmly in Kent.
Although the Isle of Grain did once contain an oil refinery, it is part of the Hoo peninsula, a rural area of high-grade agricultural land, panoramic landscapes, magnificent skyscapes, attractive shorelines, seascapes and two RSPB reserves.
The peninsula is full of ancient villages and churches, including St James at Cooling, the churchyard of which is the setting for the opening chapter of Great Expectations. This area of north Kent, including nearby Rochester and Chatham, are known, worldwide, as “Dickens Country”; he lived and died at Gads Hill Place in Higham, on the western edge of the peninsula.
The greatest concern is that any development will spread over the whole of this quiet, unspoilt, rural area and destroy it forever.
DE Williams
Rocheste
Ascot standards
How standards have dropped at Royal Ascot. Your report (23 January) quoted the race organisers as requiring men to wear a “jacket and tie” in the Royal Enclosure. The correct name for the upper half of a gentlemen’s suit is a “coat”. As the redoubtable Hardy Amies once said “The only thing that has a ‘jacket’ is a potato”.
Stan Broadwell
Bristol
SIR – Being a proud Scot living in London, I am pulled in two directions over the debate about Scotland being a Celtic cash cow, as London, not Scotland, has the most spent per head of any region in the UK.
Greg Knox
London SE21
SIR – I, too, enjoy a great variety of ties. I currently have 58, including a wooden one.
The more outrageous patterns came in useful on the occasions when, as a deputy head teacher, I was sent a student who “could not find” his school tie. I would give him mine to wear so that he shouldn’t feel too disappointed.
Quite often, he would find his school tie fairly swiftly.
Mik Shaw
Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex
Obituary:
Professor Sir Michael Dummett was one of the most important philosophers of the English speaking world in the second half of the 20th century. Wykeham Professor of Logic in the University of Oxford, he was enormously influential through major publications and supervision of many outstanding graduate students. He also played a significant role combatting racism, and when he was knighted it was “for Services to Philosophy and to Racial Justice”. He was a world authority on voting procedures, a study of the problem of ensuring fair results as free as possible from distortion by tactical voting.
Brought up in an irreligiously Anglican family, and an atheist at 13, he converted to Catholicism at 18 and remained deeply religious to the end of his life. He pursued a passionate interest in the games played with tarot cards, and in the cards themselves, and published studies which have transformed understanding of the history of tarot. He also loved jazz, and was proud to have heard Billie Holiday sing (in 1956).
Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett was born in London in 1925. His father, George Dummett, was a silk merchant, his mother, Iris née Eardley-Wilmont, the daughter of a colonial administrator. Dummett began his secondary education in September 1939 as a Scholar at Winchester College. After a year on the classics ladder, he opted for science, then switched to history.
In 1943 he obtained a history scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, but went instead into the Royal Artillery and was sent on a six-month course in Edinburgh. While there he was received into the Catholic Church. After Basic Training he was transferred to the Intelligence Corps and sent to Bedford for a six-month course of training to translate written Japanese, and then to the Wireless Experimental Centre outside Delhi, in which intercepted Japanese messages were translated.
When the war ended, Dummett was sent to Malaya as part of Field Security. He wrote recently that “it must have been in Malaya that a passionate hatred of racism was first born in me. I learned of the means by which the British masters of pre-war colonial Malaya had maintained and acted out the myth of white racial superiority”, though Michael Screech remembers Dummett expressing anger about racism already while on the Bedford course and at the Wireless Centre.
He was demobilised in 1947, just in time to go up to Christ Church that year. He felt he had forgotten much of the history he had learnt, and chose instead to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). He was “soon captivated by philosophy”. In Finals he took a newly established paper in which candidates were expected to study four texts from a list of seven, one of which was Frege’s Grundlagen der Arithmetik, recently translated by JL Austin for this purpose. Dummett said later, “I thought, and still think, that it was the most brilliant piece of philosophical writing of its length ever penned.” His lifelong study of Frege’s philosophy has transformed our understanding of Frege.
After receiving a First, Dummett was appointed to a one-year assistant lectureship at the University of Birmingham. He also sat the Fellowship examination at All Souls College and was elected, but he fulfilled his commitment to Birmingham, rushing back to Oxford throughout the term.
The first project Dummett set himself as a Prize Fellow at All Souls was to read all Frege’s published work, most of which had been neither translated nor republished. He also visited the Frege archive in Münster to study what survived of Frege’s unpublished work. Despite his passion for Frege, Dummett began by thinking of himself as a follower of Wittgenstein, arising from the impact of the arrival in Oxford during his last year as an undergraduate of typescripts of The Blue and Brown Books and of notes of Wittgenstein’s classes on philosophy of mathematics, and his philosophical contact and developing friendship with his tutor Elizabeth Anscombe. By 1960 he no longer considered himself a Wittgensteinian.
In 1951 he married Ann Chesney, who had taken just finals in History from Somerville. In 1955 he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to spend a year at Berkeley studying logic and mathematics. He came to know Donald Davidson, at Stanford; they remained friends and philosophical interlocutors.
In 1958 Dummett spent a term at the University of Ghana, lecturing on the philosophy of time. In 1959 he published Truth, a seminal work and his most important single paper, which contains the seeds of all his later philosophy. It adumbrates the opposition between realism and anti-realism, as Dummett characterises these positions, and surveys a variety of contexts in which this opposition arises. Mathematical intuitionism is cited as a paradigm of anti-realism, but on a basis different from that of LEJ Brouwer, intuitionism’s founder. A connection between these considerations and Wittgenstein’s dictum that meaning is use is sketched.
This is a heady mixture of ideas which have taken decades to explore. In a Postcript to that paper in 1972 he wrote that the dispute between realism and anti-realism “is still a long way from resolution. On the one hand, it is unclear whether the realist’s defence of his position can be made convincing; on the other, it is unclear whether the anti-realist’s position can be made coherent. I remain convinced, however, that the issue between realism and anti-realism, construed roughly along the present lines, is one of the most fundamental of all the problems of philosophy.”
In 1962 Dummett was appointed to the Oxford University Readership in Philosophy of Mathematics. In 1964 he accepted a visiting appointment at Stanford, giving a course attempting to survey every variety of realism and anti-realism, which he planned to develop into a book that would realise the programme of his Truth paper, but came to accept he would never complete.
When he returned to Oxford in 1964, he and Ann decided “the time had come for organised resistance to the swelling racism in England”. For the next four years Dummett devoted himself to the fight against racism while keeping up with his teaching. He and Ann worked both to help individuals and to establish and strengthen organisations to combat racism as a trend in British government and society. He played a key role in founding the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants in 1967.
A graduate student newly arrived in 1967 and keen to discuss Truth with him recalls Dummett being available even while devoting himself to the fight against racism. A telephone call in the midst of discussing philosophy would inform Dummett that an East-African Asian attempting to enter Britain was about to be sent back, and transform Dummett from philosopher to activist, dashing to the airport to argue the case. He described this time as “the most exhausting period of my life”.
During this time Dummett continued to be an inspiring teacher and played a key role in establishing mathematical logic at Oxford. This resulted in a Lecturership in Mathematical Logic, an undergraduate course in Mathematics and Philosophy and a Professorship in Mathematical Logic.
The period in which Dummett gave the fight against racism highest priority lasted until spring 1968, when he spent a term at the University of Minnesota. Back at Oxford he returned to philosophy, working on Frege: Philosophy of Language, published in 1973. In the Preface he explains: “The alienation of racial minorities is now so great that a white ally in the struggle can, except in special circumstances, play only the most minor ancillary part.”
Dummett was elected to a Senior Research Fellowship at All Souls in 1974. In 1976 he gave the William James Lectures at Harvard, on “The Logical Basis of Metaphysics”. In 1977 he published Elements of Intuitionism, a remarkable accomplishment. Pedagogically, it’s a textbook of intuitionist mathematics and logic, which played an important part in making intuitionism accessible to study. Mathematically, it contains new results about intuitionism on many topics,. Philosophically it is extremely important, in establishing that intutionist mathematics and logic can be cast in the form of Dummettian anti-realism, and in this way has an integral place in the pursuit of Dummett’s philosophical programme from Truth. In 1979 he gave up his Senior Research Fellowship at All Souls to accept election as Wykeham Professor of Logic and Fellow of New College. He was now in huge demand as a graduate supervisor, and often was called upon to supervise as many as 15 students at a time.
In 1982 Dummett was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Research Prize, which he used to work on his book Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics at the University of Münster. In 1988-89 he spent the year in Stanford as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In this, his only full year of sabbatical leave, he finished two books, Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics, and The Logical Basis of Metaphysics.
Dummett retired from Oxford in 1992 and was knighted in 1999. He gave many lectures in retirement, including the Gifford Lectures at St Andrews in 1997 and the John Dewey Lectures at Columbia in 2003. He was elected a Senior Fellow of the British Academy in 1995 and received many other honours, including the Lakatos Prize in 1994, the Rolf Schock Prize in 1995, and the Lauener Prize in 2010, and various honorary degrees. His last major publication, Thought and Reality, in 2006, was a reworking of his Gifford Lectures. One can wonder how Dummett was able to pursue so many disparate interests to such great accomplishment in each. Part of an answer must be that he had an extraordinary facility at written expression: the speed with which he composed at a typewriter was audibly that of an efficient copy typist.
Everyone who knew Dummett has vivid memories of his smoking, which for most of his life he did using a short cigarette holder, tapping the end of his cigarette so many times before lighting it that this action came to be called “dummetting” by those around him.
Dummett’s philosophy lives on not only in his publications but in the many critical discussions of it, including eight books devoted to his philosophy, among them the ultimate accolade, a volume in the Library of Living Philosophers.
Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett, philosopher and anti-racism activist: born London 27 June 1925; Wykeham Professor of Logic, University of Oxford 1979–92, Professor Emeritus 1992; Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford, 1979; Kt 1999; married 1951 Ann Chesney (three sons, two daughters, one son deceased and one daughter deceased); died 27 December 2011.
Full Text:
Guardian:
We were pleased to see your report (An abuse of faith, Social care, 18 January) outlining the evidence of the numbers of black children subjected to violence linked to witchcraft. This is extremely concerning and many of us have worked with such children and adults from the black communities who have experienced abusive aspects of juju, Santeria, witchcraft and possession in the UK. While our major religious institutions are now putting safeguarding procedures into place, children (and adults) from smaller religious groups do not have that safety. We are also concerned as individuals and as a committee that the ritual abuse of white children (and adults) is less easily acknowledged (the Kidwelly case in 2011). It can be far easier, sometimes for racist reasons, to accept the ritual abuse of black children (witness the Adam Case known as “Torso in The Thames” in 2001), and especially from working-class backgrounds. The white middle-class children (and adults) and those who work with them and support them are subject to implications that such experiences, if the victim is not black, must be bizarre delusions. This makes it harder for disclosures to be made and for the police to help, and delays the understanding of the impact of ritual on all children and adults when used abusively.
Dr V Sinason, Rachel Wingfield, Prof Joseph Schwartz, Dr Sandra Buck, Dr Joan Coleman, Carole Mallard, Wilfred Wong, Deborah Briggs, Dr Pat Frankish, David Leevers, Orit Badouk-Epstein, Lynn Greenwood
Committee on Ritual Abuse, London
We were interested to read about the importance of children’s happiness to their development and wellbeing (Whatever happened to happiness?, Education, 17 January). Our school was designed with children’s contentment at its heart, for they learn best when they feel comfortable and safe. Good personal habits, including cleanliness and tidiness, are stressed. Inside, we have a colourful, stimulating and cheerful environment to excite very young children. Periods of work alternate with recreation. There are quick changes of subject, meaningful work and frequent breaks for movement and dance. Outside is a playground with flowerbeds where children spend around half of their time. This open-air “classroom” is where much of the social and moral learning takes place as well as play and physical exercise. Here, also, the children can be guided in self-restraint, mutual respect and to care for the living world and the property of others.
This approach is not revolutionary today, but it was when Samuel Wilderspin was pioneering this system of infant education in the early 1800s. Our school is now a museum – hopefully its educational principles will not be consigned to history also.
John Walker
Chair, Wilderspin National School Museum, Barton upon Humber
• Wellbeing has not been “cast into Ofsted’s dustbin”. Our new inspection framework focuses on what matters most: the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom, leadership and management, pupils’ achievement and their behaviour and safety. When judging teaching, inspectors consider how well teachers enthuse and motivate pupils to learn and foster their enthusiasm and curiosity. Inspectors closely observe conduct in lessons and around the school, and each pupil’s safety from bullying and harassment – a key aspect of pupils’ wellbeing. Happy, well-motivated pupils in safe, well-run schools learn best and leave school best equipped for success in life.
Jean Humphrys
Director, education and care, Ofsted
Over the past decade, a number of academic studies have indicated a worrying and disproportionate trend towards negative, distorted and even fabricated reports in media coverage of the Muslim community. Recent research at Cambridge University concludes that “a wider set of representations of Islam would signify a welcome change to reporting practices. Muslims deserve a better press than they have been given in the past decade.” And according to a recent ComRes poll, one in three people in Britain today believe that the media is responsible for “whipping up a climate of fear of Islam in the UK”.
The Leveson inquiry has so far failed to adequately address unfair media coverage as it relates to less prominent cases, including those relating to Muslims and Islam, focusing as it does on the impact of phone hacking on celebrities and other high-profile individuals.
An alternative inquiry is necessary to investigate what many regard as widespread and systematic discriminatory practices in reporting on Muslims and Islam in the British media. Victims – whether prominent or not – of alleged discriminatory media coverage have a right to have their testimonies catalogued and examined thoroughly by credible, independent assessors. Recommendations can then be made to improve ethical standards in the reporting of not solely the Muslim community but of all sections of society.
Imran Khan Human rights solicitor
Bianca Jagger Chair, Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation
Michael Rosen Writer
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Jemima Khan
Navnit Dholakia Deputy leader, Liberal Democrats, House of Lords
Mohamed Ali Harrath Islam Channel
Hajj Ahmad Thomson Barrister
Jenny Jones Assembly member (Green), London Assembly
Andrew Boff Assembly member (Conservative), London Assembly
Rabbi Janet Burden
Walter Wolfgang
Hugh Lanning Chair, Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Sanum Ghafoor, blogger
Jean Lambert, MEP, London
Peter Murray Former president, NUJ
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari Chair, East London Mosque
Dr Omer El-Hamdoon Muslim Association of Britain
Massoud Shadjareh Islamic Human Rights Commission
Sunny Hundal Liberal Conspiracy
Ahmed J Versi The Muslim News
John Rees Counterfire
Vivien Lichtenstein
Anas Altikriti Cordoba Foundation
Miriam Margolyes
Farooq Murad Muslim Council of Britain
Sarah Colborne Director, Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Dr Daud Abdullah Middle East Monitor
Moazzam Begg Cageprisoners
Phil Rees Out of Office Films
Nabil Ahmed Federation of Student Islamic Societies
Abdullah Faliq Islamic Forum of Europe
Rabbi Jeffrey Newman
Cllr Larry Sanders Oxfordshire county council
Diana Neslen
Shemiza Rashid Director, The Creative Muslim Network
Na’ima B Roberts Editor, Sisters Magazine
Asa Winstanley The Electronic Intifada
Richard Peppiatt Writer and former tabloid reporter
Shazia Arshad Human rights campaigner
Myriam Francois Cerrah Activist
Murtaza Shibli Journalist and author
Lindsey German Stop The War Coalition
Murad Qureshi Assembly member, London Assembly
Cat Smith Chair, Next Generation Labour (pc)
Robert Pitt Islamophobia Watch
Dr Alana Lentin University of Sussex
Robin Richardson Insted Consultancy
Cat Boyd Coalition of Resistance Glasgow
Baroness Pola Uddin
Sean Rillo Raczka University of London Union
Chris Nineham Enough Coalition Against Islamophobia
Mark McDonald Barrister
Dan Poulton Journalist
Yasmin Khatun Producer
Frances Legg Producer
Chris Bambery Journalist
Sadiya Chowdhury Journalist
Supporters of the The Alternative Leveson inquiry
When Jonathan Freedland tells us that “Labour will have no money to splash around reversing cuts or lowering taxes”, we have, indeed, swallowed more coalition economics than is good for us. It is a fallacy to assert that a sovereign government, with its own currency and its own central bank, is ever short of money. How do we think major wars were financed? If a Labour government is returned in 2015 with a programme for restoring output and employment it will have no difficulty in finding the money. It will have not only the usual flow of saving by the public, but also the Bank of England with its infinite powers to create money through “quantitative easing”.
The U-turn, apparent or real, is a foolish ploy. Labour needs to stop pandering to public prejudice, and become the party of full employment.
Michael Kennedy
Former economic adviser at the Treasury and British embassy, Washington
• Placing Tristram Hunt’s article (Socialism belongs here, 21 January) alongside Jonathan Freedland’s made for fascinating reading. Surely if the Labour party leadership were willing to acknowledge that “socialism belongs here”, they would be listened to more sympathetically by would-be Labour supporters. For instance, the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid in the public sector is enormous, and had Ed Balls indicated that those on below-average wages would be exempt from the 1% pay freeze, his arguments might have had a better reception. However dated some aspects of Marxism may seem to be, the mantra “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” surely has particular resonance in the current economic climate.
Carol Anthony
Quarndon, Derbyshire
• Polly Toynbee (Comment, 20 January) claims Labour has “lost the Keynesian argument” and is therefore correct to support Tory cuts. The inconvenient truth remains that the Labour leadership never reached out and interacted with grassroots activists, trade unionists, students, the Occupy movement and other civic groups formulating an attractive alternative policy prescription to Tory (and now Labour) austerity. Unfortunately, they seem unable to escape the Westminster bubble and the cuts philosophy of its chattering classes. Moreover, Labour should know that what is morally wrong is never politically right.
Enrico Tortolano
Kingston upon Thames, Surrey
• Mulberry (expensive gear for the rich) booms; Peacocks (inexpensive gear for the less well-off) busts. Says it all really!
Chrys Henning
Alhampton, Somerset
The reorganisation of art galleries along thematic rather than chronological lines (We need art for life’s sake, 21 January) is in fact not only now widespread, but a disappointing failure. And, as if the visual arts aren’t encumbered enough with “interpretation” masquerading as meaning, the idea of highlighting the artist’s intentions as a way of providing a more didactic experience for the visitor is a pseuds’ charter. What is needed, if anything, is a higher standard of curating to allow the art itself to be seen with less institutional editorialising, not more.
Robin Greenwood
Director, Poussin Gallery
• Asda’s claim (Report, 23 January), supported by David Cameron, that opening new supermarkets is creating jobs, is a nonsense. We don’t all buy more things when a store opens; we transfer our custom from somewhere else, probably smaller shops that employ more people than a supermarket. It may transfer jobs to younger, lower-paid employees, but it does not result in additional jobs.
Martin Wright
Sale, Cheshire
• Deborah Orr (Who’d be a movie star?, 21 January) says Carole Lesley “starred” in Woman in a Dressing Gown. In fact she played a small supporting role in the film, which was produced by my father, now 94. The star was Yvonne Mitchell, and the leading female supporting role was played by Sylvia Syms.
Susan Cran
London
• Five of the top 10 non-fiction hardbacks are cookery books, and four of the top 10 non-fiction paperbacks diet books (The weekly charts, Review, 21 January). The average sale of each type was roughly the same! A win-win for publishers?
Peter Shilson
Leeds
• ”And everybody, from the secretaries and janitors up to the big guy, got paid in shares,” Gary Mulgrew says of Enron (A bad trade, Weekend, 21 January). Any comment from Nick Clegg?
Keith Bilton
London
• Hockney’s latest oversize canvases (Report, 21 January) are just the job for the parish panto backdrops.
John Lloyd
London
The Costa Concordia tragedy (Five dead, 15 missing, tales of chaos, and a captain who left his passengers behind, 16 January) raises a number of important questions for the cruise industry.
With business models based on very large ships being very full, Carnival and other cruise operators will want answers quickly. This is an industry that has provided high-skilled work for many thousands of UK seafarers since the boom years started in the 1990s. It is vitally important that speculation is kept to the minimum while the competent authorities examine precisely what went wrong and, most importantly, how to stop it happening again. It is therefore not helpful that much media speculation has already focused on the arrest of the captain and the first officer. Their experience and detailed knowledge of what led up to the accident, and the events that followed it, will be key in finding the answers to this tragedy. They should therefore be able to give their accounts to investigators whose responsibility it is to find out what happened, rather than to prosecutors trying to apportion blame. Anything short of this may not restore passenger confidence in what has so far proved to be a very resilient business.
Paul Moloney
Shipping consultant
• I welcome Ian Jack’s brave attempt to express sympathy for Captain Francesco Schettino of the Costa Concordia (How to be a good captain, 21 January). Even so, the article still contains that fatal phrase “but his transgression is enormous”. This may well prove to be the case, but given that no trial has yet taken place nor any inquiry come to a conclusion, a statement of this nature is alarmingly prejudicial. Were he a British citizen accused of a crime on British territory, no UK newspaper would be allowed to publish such an unqualified statement. Why should Schettino be denied the same standard of legal protection just because he’s foreign?
Jeremy Muldowney
York
• Ian Jack commits an understandable error in making Lichfield the birthplace of EJ Smith, since it was in the city’s Beacon Park that the statue to the captain of the Titanic was ceremonially unveiled by his daughter in 1914. The official reason for its being placed there, rather than in Smith’s native Hanley, is because the Potteries town falls within Lichfield diocese, though the received wisdom is that Hanley refused the honour since it might lead to an unenviable association with an international disaster. The siting of the statue, which was designed by Captain Scott’s widow Kathleen, also stirred controversy in Lichfield. A hundred years later, both towns have been seeking to lay claim to her bronze of this resolute – if not heroic – son of Staffordshire.
Alex Went
Prague, Czech Republic
• In the wake of the Costa Concordia tragedy, and the potential leakage of fuel oil, it is worth noting that cruise liners boast one of the highest carbon footprints per passenger on the planet.
I asked Carnival for environmental emissions data for one of its Mediterranean cruises, so I could calculate a “per passenger kilometre” CO2 impact. It could not provide this. I believe it was scared to admit the truth and worried it would be taxed like air travel.
Tim Gresty
Congleton, Cheshire
Independent:
In your leading article concerning a possible Thames Estuary airport you convey the bizarre idea that “Boris Island” and the Isle of Grain are in east London; of course, both sites are firmly in Kent.
Although the Isle of Grain did once contain an oil refinery, it is part of the Hoo peninsula, a rural area of high-grade agricultural land, panoramic landscapes, magnificent skyscapes, attractive shorelines, seascapes and two RSPB reserves.
The peninsula is full of ancient villages and churches, including St James at Cooling, the churchyard of which is the setting for the opening chapter of Great Expectations. This area of north Kent, including nearby Rochester and Chatham, are known, worldwide, as “Dickens Country”; he lived and died at Gads Hill Place in Higham, on the western edge of the peninsula.
The greatest concern is that any development will spread over the whole of this quiet, unspoilt, rural area and destroy it forever.
DE Williams
Rochester
Boris Johnson’s grand idea for an airport in the Thames Estuary is nothing new. Older readers may recall that in the 1970s there were two public inquiries in the search for a third London airport site. Both enquiries came to the same conclusion – Maplin Sands. Neither was acceptable to the government of the time and it took a third inquiry to come up with Stansted, which is what the government wanted in the first place. The attraction of Maplin Sands was not dissimilar to that of “Boris Island”. It would have been “new” land with sufficient space for a very large airport with approaches over the sea. It is conceivable that it could have replaced Heathrow completely, thus releasing a lot of very valuable land for redevelopment.
David Winter
Yeovil, Somerset
Benefits cap targets the poor and weak
Mary Ann Sieghart’s defence of the Coalition Government’s benefits cap is a best disingenuous and at worst despicable (23 January). Large families may receive what seems like a large amount of benefit, but the amount they will have to subsist on per person will, in reality, be paltry. Defending the cap also assumes that if claimants migrate to cheaper areas, lower-cost housing will be easy to find.
Sieghart suggests that many traditional Labour voters stayed at home at the last election, “because they were angry with the party’s positions on welfare and immigration”. As a traditional Labour party supporter myself, I stayed at home at the last election due to disgust at the way the party had lurched to the right and now saw its role as representing the middle classes rather than standing up for the poor and low paid. I do however deeply resent the way the mega-rich evade tax and that senior bankers are not being held to account for the deficit they caused.
Tim Matthews
Luton, Bedfordshire
The Government’s proposed benefits cap will be easy to avoid. All that is required is for one parent in a family to carry out some sort of work for 16 hours per week to qualify for Working Tax Credit, which makes them exempt from the cap. Following a recent ruling, it appears working as a Big Issue seller for a few hours a day would qualify.
This would enable those such as the Somali family Mary Ann Sieghart describes to retain extensive taxpayer funding, as their continued benefits would dwarf earnings, even if they were forced by other Housing Benefit changes to move to a less salubrious area.
Simon Leadbeater
Benson, Oxfordshire
Your leading article of 23 January totally misrepresents my position on the Government’s proposed welfare cap.
You say my “decision to add my voice to all those campaigning against the Government’s proposed cap on welfare payments is regrettable”. It would be if I had done this. But I did not.
On the contrary, as I repeatedly made clear in the Sky interview to which you refer, I do not oppose the Government’s proposals for a cap. I am strongly in favour of a benefits cap, but am concerned that, as currently proposed, the transition mechanisms for this are not yet right.
Mr Duncan Smith is proposing an overall and much needed reform to the welfare system which I strongly support. But he himself acknowledged that there was further work to do on the transition mechanisms before introducing the benefits cap, when he said in the Commons, “We recognise that there must be transitional arrangements… We will make sure that families who need transitional support will receive it.”
These proposals have not yet been published. My Lib Dem colleagues in Government, led by Nick Clegg, are pressing for this. If and when they are published and contain proposals which do, as Mr Duncan Smith promised, provide the most vulnerable families with the transitional support, I shall have no difficulty in supporting these proposals.
Until this is done, I cannot give them my support. That’s what I said – no more.
Paddy Ashdown
Norton sub Hamdon, Somerset
May I suggest that a far more appropriate target for Iain Duncan Smith is the universal Child Benefit? If ever there has been electoral bribery on the grand scale it is payment to comfortably off people of money they do not need just because they have children. It is almost as blatant as the much smaller bribe tendered to married couples.
Kenneth J Moss
Norwich
Does the Labour Party not find itself in an awkward position on the Coalition’s proposed benefits cap because it has lost touch with those from whom it took its name? People who labour, or work as we usually say now, which is the vast majority of us in the increasingly squeezed middle.
Maxine Watt
Leeds
Physiotherapy is the way forward
I read with interest Harriet Walker’s “Notebook” (6 January) regarding lack of physiotherapy resources in the NHS. As an orthopaedic surgeon, I have for years fought for good post-operative physiotherapy in order to not only improve the results but also prevent complications.
Unfortunately pressures on the NHS are now such that even diligent and conscientious surgeons have to prioritise. We at the Droitwich Knee Clinic have been trying to spread the gospel on the importance of good rehabilitation post-surgery and while we agree that in many cases physiotherapy may not make a difference to the long-term outcome, there are many patients who do need significant help post-operatively and the only way to identify this is a good physiotherapy assessment. Even that is denied to some patients, not only in the NHS but in private practice too.
Unfortunately the attitude among some orthopaedic surgeons is: “My surgery is so good that physiotherapy is unnecessary.”
Mohi El-Shazly, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Droitwich Knee Clinic Worcestershire
Double standards in City of London?
Residents of the streets around St Paul’s will be fascinated to learn (report, 19 January) that lawyers for the City of London Corporation have argued successfully in the High Court for the eviction of the Occupy London protesters on the ground that “alcohol and other stimulants fuel noise levels that have caused complaints”.
This is the same Corporation that licenses bars, clubs and pubs to operate late into the night in the area regardless of complaints about exactly the type of anti-social behaviour to which it here objects.
Clearly, the Corporation takes a different view of what constitutes a public nuisance when the offender wears Prada. It will be interesting to hear what its officers have to say when its lawyers are quoted at the next licensing hearing.
Mark Wheeler
London EC4
This mansion is my family home
In 1970, my husband and I bought a wreck of a house with a jungle for a garden in Highgate for £18,000. Slowly, over the years we tended it, improved it, and raised our family in it. Now, as my retired husband approaches 80 years old, Mr Clegg informs us that it is fair to tax people, which would include retired people on fixed incomes, who live in houses worth more than £2m. Does he really believe that it is reasonable to force elderly people out of their lifetime family homes by imposing taxes they cannot possibly afford to pay because of the vagaries of the London housing market?
Judith M Steiner
London N6
Save the date
Outside Holland Park in London there is a plaque confirming that Lt Lapenotiere R.N. arrived there on 5 November 1805 with the news of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar. So we can legitimately continue to remember and let off fireworks on the glorious 5th, without celebrating the abuse of Roman Catholics or the preservation of governments as opposed to peoples. Rebranding the date with honour may also help to take minds off the coming humiliation of being kicked out of the last outpost of Empire in the Falklands.
Nicholas Taylor
Little Sandhurst, Berkshire
Ascot standards
How standards have dropped at Royal Ascot. Your report (23 January) quoted the race organisers as requiring men to wear a “jacket and tie” in the Royal Enclosure. The correct name for the upper half of a gentlemen’s suit is a “coat”. As the redoubtable Hardy Amies once said “The only thing that has a ‘jacket’ is a potato”.
Stan Broadwell
Bristol
Yacht argument
David Cameron has a blind spot where fairness lies. This, I think, is self-evident. But surely even he can see that a royal yacht paid for by a bunch of UK tax-avoiders is a royal yacht paid for by UK taxpayers.
David Woods
Hull
Noisy cinemas
Cinema sound (Letters, 23 January) is loud to drown out all the munching of popcorn throughout the auditorium, so keep the decibels please…
Nicky Ford
Guildford, Surrey
Telegraph:
SIR – Seville oranges are beginning to appear in the shops, marking the start of the marmalade-making season. Last year, I read your feature (February 1) on Diana and John Knott, who had been making marmalade together for 54 years.
I tried their recipe, which was excellent – it uses one kilo of fruit to one kilo of sugar instead of the more usual ratio of one kilo of fruit to two kilos of sugar. But as I have neither the patience, as it takes two days to make, nor a willing husband to cut the peel carefully, I adapted their recipe.
Scrub the fruit, remove the eye, cut into eight, put into water in a pressure cooker for 15 minutes. Skim off fruit and allow to cool while adding the warmed sugar to the water and boiling rapidly for 15 to 30 minutes.
When fruit is cool, remove the pips and discard. Slice the peel and cut into shreds. Add the peel to the mixture and leave for 10 minutes to cool – the fruit will be more evenly spread, instead of rising to the top of the jar. Screw top into place.
This makes delicious marmalade.
Jeanette Brown
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
SIR – Should the unthinkable happen and Scotland unilaterally breaks the treaty of 1707, we would not need to redesign the Union Flag. The Union Flag predates political union by over 100 years. It signifies the union of crowns, not the union of governments, so unless Scotland became a republic there would be no reason to alter the national flag.
The flag was created by King James I (James VI of Scotland) in 1606 as a royal banner. That is how it has remained, but it became adopted as the de facto national flag in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, the only clarification of this status is a couple of answers in Hansard to parliamentary questions on the subject before the Second World War.
We do not have a statutory national flag because there has never been a Flag Act in the United Kingdom. So if Scotland goes her own way and a new configuration is defined for the UK, we will surely need a Flag Act to secure our national flag constitutionally. After more than 400 years of loyal service, is it not time our flag was dignified by a statutory instrument declaring its status in law?
Malcolm Farrow
President, The Flag Institute
Petersfield, Hampshire
SIR – Britain’s coastline is over 11,000 miles long, plus offshore islands, and it includes ports, fuel depots and fisheries.
We once had a big coastguard service, customs boats, helicopters, a reserve naval auxiliary service for coast-watching and shipping control, all largely co-ordinated by the Royal Navy. All that has been fragmented among agencies including the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency, run by the devolved Scottish executive. Yet three years ago the House of Commons Defence Committee described the forces to protect our coasts as “too small, disjointed and reactive rather than intelligence led”. Nothing has been done about this since.
Whatever else David Cameron agrees in talks with Alex Salmond, he should not make this mess worse: we need to get coast and fishery protection back under British control and give it the ships and men it needs to do the work.
Lt-Cdr John Parfitt (retd)
Painswick, Gloucestershire
SIR – Being a proud Scot living in London, I am pulled in two directions over the debate about Scotland being a Celtic cash cow, as London, not Scotland, has the most spent per head of any region in the UK.
Greg Knox
London SE21
SIR – The parties to the treaty of 1707 which led to the Acts of Union were Scotland and England. Alex Salmond speaks for Scotland in the current debate, but David Cameron can speak only for the United Kingdom, which was not a signatory. The English interest, enormous though it is, is unrepresented and unheard.
Nicholas Guitard
Bude, Cornwall
Pictures for posterity
SIR – Kodak’s troubles come as no surprise (Comment, January 20). It is regrettable that so few people bother printing their photographs any more, which will surely deny future generations of important family and social history.
Who can be trusted to safeguard our digital images long term, even if we leave behind all the passwords? How much information and how many photographs are languishing on obsolete technology like floppy disks, zip drives or CD-R? And no one backs anything up.
What chance do the grandchildren have of enjoying family photographs if nobody sticks them in a book?
Michael Powell
Tealby, Lincolnshire
SIR – The demise of the once iconic Kodak company sent me racing to the loft to retrieve the photograph albums collected by my family and me over many years, which have been gathering little more than dust and the smell of age.
But I was not planning to head off to the nearest refuse tip and throw away the past. I sat down and went through them all, simply recalling the many memories they brought back, of those people and places I once knew.
Would I put them back in the loft to collect dust over the next 20 or 30 years? No. Would I throw them in the bin? Definitely not. They have been dusted down and put on a bookshelf. They will provide much amusement among younger members of the family in years to come.
Stephen Ivall
Truro, Cornwall
Reorganising the euro
SIR – There is some logic to the argument that contributing to the International Monetary Fund eurozone bailout fund would be cheaper than a chaotic collapse of the euro (Comment, January 20). All the more reason, if we do pay up, that we should insist that the short-term bail-out, for which IMF funding would be used, should be accompanied by more fundamental plans and a commitment to orderly currency reorganisation in Europe.
The main problem is that southern Europe is 35 per cent uncompetitive against Germany. The southern European economies cannot recover without a material devaluation. This means they cannot share a currency with Germany. A possible solution would be to split the eurozone into two: a weak currency for the South and a strong currency for the North.
A standard ingredient of IMF help is the requirement for devaluation. Without this, merely financing short-term requirements is throwing good money after bad.
Lord Flight
London SW1
Take a bow
SIR – My friend Ron Kirby has 31 ties, one for each day of the month (Letters, January 20). He will know (not precisely) that I have 117 bow ties.
Tie-my-owns, naturally, not the ready-made variety.
Peter Hiley
Poole, Dorset
SIR – I, too, enjoy a great variety of ties. I currently have 58, including a wooden one.
The more outrageous patterns came in useful on the occasions when, as a deputy head teacher, I was sent a student who “could not find” his school tie. I would give him mine to wear so that he shouldn’t feel too disappointed.
Quite often, he would find his school tie fairly swiftly.
Mik Shaw
Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex
No room in the Lords
SIR – There seems to be a contradiction in Government policy. It proposes a reduction in membership of both the House of Commons and the Lords, but at the same time has increased membership of the Lords to 900 Members.
Now some peers have to occupy seats reserved for the public due to lack of space. But apparently this is going to get worse. Following the defeat of the Government’s Welfare Bill during three divisions last week, it is rumoured that the Government will now recommend another 60 new peers to increase its ability to win divisions.
As well as making space in the Chamber more scarce, an increased membership will mean that debates will require more time, and thereby delay the Government’s legislative programme.
Lord Kilclooney
Independent Cross-Bencher
London SW1
Missing appointments
SIR – My hope is that fines for patients who miss appointments are brought in as quickly as possible (report, January 16).
When playing bowls a few years ago, one of the members, turned up unexpectedly. A friend said to her: “I thought you had a hospital appointment today?” The reply was: “I had, but it’s such a lovely day I thought I would play bowls. I phoned them and said my husband was ill and could not bring me.” However, he had driven her to the match.
I cannot believe the research finding that 30 per cent of people “simply forgot”; but if they did, they should go to the end of the waiting list.
Ralph Broad
Hope Valley, Derbyshire
SIR – An adviser to the Coalition suggests that patients who fail to turn up for appointments at hospitals should be financially penalised. Has the adviser ever tried to telephone a hospital to change or cancel an appointment?
I cannot be the only person to have spent a futile day trying a telephone number which is permanently engaged.
Rosalie Brentnall
Brentwood, Essex
Union heavyweights
SIR – Is it compulsory for union representatives to be overweight? There have been many in the news lately and I’ve yet to see a thin one.
John Maddox
Totnes, Devon
Oxbridge is not the answer for every student
SIR – Matthew Norman’s article (Comment, January 21) makes me wonder why people are so obsessed with Oxbridge. Our daughter chose not to apply because the courses were not right for her; and in one case not good enough. She passed her A-levels with top grades and is now an undergraduate at King’s College, London, which was her first choice.
The paradox of Oxbridge is that if people were so clever, they would realise that there are other universities just as good, if not better in many subjects.
Mark Westaby
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire
SIR – Matthew Norman’s thoughts on Elly Nowell’s “rejection” of Oxford and his own toe-curling account of an interview at Trinity, Oxford, brought to mind my equally humiliating experience across the road at Exeter College. Unlike Miss Nowell and Mr Norman, I went to Eton. Like Mr Norman, I tried to pretend I had read more than I had, in my case Plato.
Having been tied in knots tighter than those administered by Socrates, I was then asked, witheringly, whether I felt entitled to any more privileges in life. Not surprisingly, I was rejected. What this shows is that Oxford dons can be intimidating to anyone: their main aim is to test the applicant. However, I was not too proud to reapply and was admitted to another college, up the road from Trinity, and one built entirely of red bricks.
Archie Berens
London SE11
Irish Times:
Troika troubles
Sir, – Recent public debate over whether and how we might be allowed to spend money from the sale of Irish State assets has failed to highlight the extent to which our sovereignty has been undermined by the Troika. Given that the total national debt – including debt issued by private banks but underpinned by a State guarantee – is well over €300 billion, while the value of Irish State assets is of the order of €15 billion (only a fraction of which would ever be bought by the private sector), the sale would only be a drop in an ocean of debt.
The alarming fact is that we are being told to sell, and that our Government is willing to do it. The huge losses incurred by financial speculators has presented an opportunity to push full steam ahead on an ideological drive towards privatisation. And a compliant right-wing Irish Government, which includes the Labour Party, isn’t even whimpering.
It’s time that we the Irish people told the IMF, EU and ECB to get their hands off what is ours. – Yours, etc,
JOHN LANNON,
Raheen,
Ballyneety, Co Limerick.
Sir, – Is the Government now getting Vincent Browne to do its job for it, in asking the “hard” question of the Troika: Why do we have to pay the unguaranteed bondholders of the now defunct Anglo Irish Bank (Home News, January 20th)?
Where is the passionate outrage about our dire financial situation that they displayed before they were elected? Perhaps if they thought of the Troika, Merkel and Sarkozy as the Fianna Fáil opposition, we might get a little less “cap-in-hand” and more “hat in the ring”. – Yours, etc,
MARGARET GOODE,
Douglas Road, Cork.
Sir, – Well done Noel Whelan (Opinion, January 21st) for refocusing our attention on the real villains responsible for the nation’s current crisis. The Troika, far from being the cause of our travails, is actually providing the wherewithal to keep the country running, and therefore we have to dance to its tune.
In the meantime the real culprits – former Fianna Fáil cabinet ministers and senior bankers,– exit stage left with golden handshakes, and large pensions while those of us further down the food chain are left to tidy up their mess.
It is high time some of our misguided journalists and Opposition politicians used their investigative and oratory powers to delve into the past and current activities of this infamous “elite” rather than biting the hand that is feeding us, namely the Troika. The words mote and eye come to mind. – Yours, etc,
MIKE CORMACK,
Ardagh Close,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Wanted: emergency budget
Sir, – Thomas Ryan (January 21st) is wrong to criticise a group of people who have taken the time to try to end an economic policy that they find unfair.
They are among the many people in our society who are against policies of the Government, feel betrayed by broken promises and believe the best way to effect change is in a non-partisan way – in this case anyway.
It is irrelevant that many of them are academics and high earners. They are calling for the more equitable path of recovery, and I’m sure many of them would not object to more taxation, if it was for progressive reasons. Many of these people are well qualified economic experts, and their reasoning should be examined, not subjected to an attack on their organisational structure, lack of party structure or personal finances.
I’m also quite sure they would be satisfied with any of the more acceptable alternative and opposition budgetary submissions. Their efforts to effect change are to be commended, or at least debated, not swiped at and picked on with repetitive jibes. – Yours, etc,
JEFF MCLOUGHLIN,
Cove Park Road,
Tramore,
Co Waterford.
A chara, – I cannot speak for my other academic co-signatories (January 20th), but I can assure Thomas Ryan (January 21st) that the majority of people working in our universities do not earn even a significant fraction of the €150,000 salaries that are referred to in his letter.
Like all public sector employees, cuts to the funding of universities have affected us, too – in all sorts of ways, including increased workloads, and yes, in our pay. I can also answer his question, and thereby further reassure him, in stating that reading and signing the letter took no more than a few minutes. Thus, I was able to attend, without significant disruption, to my regular work of the training of teachers and guidance counsellors, and my research into helping schools to prevent and counter bullying and violence.
While the latter has not been a particular concern for successive governments (unfortunately, the “concrete proposals” I have made have been largely ignored), I have found that many teachers and parents (and yes, the taxpayers who contribute to university funding) do find this area to be of importance.
Finally, given the disastrous social and economic implications of centre-right policies pursued over recent administrations, let me say that I find no insult at all in being characterised as “left-wing”. – Is mise,
Dr STEPHEN JAMES MINTON,
School of Education,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.
Thrice charged for services
Sir, – Ireland has for many years been skilled in the art of making people pay for a service three times over. Classic examples are health care (health levy, VHI and hospital charges), television (licence fee, advertising on RTÉ and the fee to NTL/UPC for something watchable) and now refuse collection (general taxation, local authority charges and the household charge). Water will shortly be added to the list. Owners of septic tanks will find themselves deeply in the mire.
This trend has now advanced to the emergency services. There has long been a charge for the ambulance service. We are now to pay directly should we be foolish enough to call the fire brigade. (We’ve already paid twice and anyone who claims that this will not cost lives is either a fool or a knave!) The logical progression is to extend the charge for use to all emergency services. The most obvious and immediate candidate is the Garda Síochána.
Given the planned programme of station closures, revenue is clearly needed. A charge for Garda services would also result in a dramatic reduction in the crime rate, well the reported crime rate at least. The RNLI does not make a direct charge, and deserves our respect and support for it. – Yours, etc,
Dr ANDREW ROUS,
St Aubyn’s Court,
Killiney, Co Dublin.
How best to prune an economy
Sir, – As all good gardeners know, plants, shrubs and trees occasionally need pruning to supply additional energy for the healthy development of the plant. Pruning plants from the top down will generally result in a more vibrant and healthy plant, but improper pruning can ruin or greatly reduce a plant’s potential and its future growth.
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan is currently wielding a very large shears and he is chopping away at the economy like a man who has heard that pruning can regenerate growth; but he hasn’t a clue where to start.
Perhaps he should dispense with his expensive economic advisers and hire a few horticulturalists, who will tell him to start at the top and work down. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’CONNOR,
Grange Park Road,
Raheny,
Dublin 5.
Wannsee recollections
Sir, – I read with interest Derek Scally’s excellent article about the Wannsee Conference which took place exactly 70 years ago (World News, January 21st).
Not only did the German senior government officials and top Nazis endorse the plans to annihilate the Jews of Europe, Adolf Eichmann presented them with a list containing the number of Jews in each European country who the Nazis intended to murder – Ireland was on the list with 4,000 Jews. – Yours, etc,
LYNN JACKSON,
Holocaust Education Trust Ireland,
Lower Fitzwilliam Street,
Dublin 2.
Beethoven’s shopping note
Sir, – With regard to your series of printed letters and comments on Beethoven’s shopping note (Breaking News, January 10th Letters, January 16th-23rd). This avid reader of your esteemed newspaper notes that your letter- writers are having a Field day and obviously Ravel in the subject matter. Gluck to them all. – Yours, etc,
JAMES CAVANAGH,
Mannix Road,
Drumcondra, Dublin 9.
A chara, – In this age of increasing sax and violas, I have little symphony for those readers who can’t Handel this seemingly well-orchestrated effort by some to be humorous.
Their unease though is entirely Previntable. I suggest tea in the Four Seasons would help them regain their composer. – Is mise,
CIAN de hOIR,
Dundrum Castle,
Dundrum, Dublin 16.
A chara, – Huge thanks to all those who contributed punny composer letters recently. I have cut them all out and thrown them on my compost heap.
Messrs Lizst, Bach, Beethoven et al can now peacefully decompose! – Is mise,
JERRY TWOMEY,
Fr Russell Road,
Limerick.
Sir, For those gentlemen who wish to emigrate because of Beethoven’s Liszt, as Rimsky said, let the Bums take Flight because of Korsakov they will Bee Bach. – Yours, etc,
NOEL HUGHES,
Lansdowne Park,
Knocklyon Road,
Templeogue, Dublin 16.
Sir, – These punsters are a pain in the Bachside. If I Caccini of them I’ll give them a good telling Orff. It Beethovens you, Sir, to put an end to this nonsense – Für Elise sake. – Yours, etc,
EDWARD HANLON,
Loreto Park,
Troys Lane, Kilkenny.
Sir, – I can Bruch these musical punster no longer. I am tempted to make a Fauré into their camp, armed with gun and Holst-er, and let them have a good Haydn. – Yours, etc,
SEAN CARNEY,
Sooey, Co Sligo.
Sir, – Enough. Far too many people are starting to Ravel in all of this and it lowers the tone of your publication. A Bachwards step indeed. I am getting crotchety. – Yours, etc,
PAULA FALLER,
Kincora Avenue,
Clontarf, Dublin 3.
Sir, – I suggest all these Beethoven punsters just go and get Garfunkel’d. It’s been Cohen on for long enough. I’m on the Edge, and it seems there is no Lennon up on the Harrison. It’s giving me Bocellism. – Yours, etc,
PAUL BARNES,
Sugarloaf Peaks,
Kilmacanogue,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – Enough of these E.Grieg-ious puns. Please call them Orff! Yours, etc,
FRANK HENRY,
Circular Road, Galway.
Sir, – I hate to harp on about this, but I’m delighted to note your lieder-writer hasn’t tuned in to all this composer pun nonsense. – Yours, etc,
PADRAIG DOYLE,
Pine Valley Avenue,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
Sir, – May I protest at the amount of utter drivel that has been appearing in the hallowed Letters page. Quite frankly it has all been all Grieg to me and given the current economic situation I am under enough Strauss already.
For God’s sake man get a Holst of yourself and bring back a sense of decorum. – Yours, etc,
IAN KAVANAGH,
Suir Road, Kilmainham,
Dublin 8.
Sir, – After reading the many letters on the above subject, I took to the bottle and got properly Franz Liszt! – Yours, etc.
A LONG,
Rushbrook Park, Dublin 6W.
Holding on to retiring teachers
Sir, – Is it too much to expect that the leaders of the teacher unions would encourage their members, who are taking early retirement with a generous exit package, to continue working as volunteers until the end of the school year, particularly for the benefit of pupils who are due to take important exams? – Yours, etc,
E MOLLOY,
Zion Road, Dublin 6.
Burning of Ballyconree orphanage
Sir, – Niall Meehan (January 20th) seems to have a problem about there being any element of sectarianism here during War of Independence and after, and he quotes a Protestant Convention in May 1922 in Dublin.
However, I would rely on individual Church of Ireland ministers and bishops to know what was going on throughout the land, and indeed land was often the operative word. And we owe it to the burned out boys of Ballyconree that neither their religion nor the views of their warden were justification for what happened to them.
In June 1922, the Church of Ireland Gazette also made it clear that “in certain districts in Southern Ireland inoffensive Protestants of all classes are being driven from their homes, their shops and their farms in such numbers that many of our little communities are in danger of being entirely wiped out.” Mullingar, Athenry, Loughrea and Nenagh were mentioned. In Tipperary on August 5th, 1921, the Bishop of Cashel Dr Miller said: “Five of our members have been foully murdered without the slightest justification” and he appealed to Protestants in the area not to emigrate in the face of intimidation.
Local Rector Rev Sterling Berry wrote on June 10th, 1922 that in the area of Templederry, Silvermines and Ballinclough there was “scarcely a Protestant family which had escaped molestation, houses have been burned, Protestant families have been forced to leave the neighbourhood, altogether a state of terrorism exists”.
As my late father, who was involved, told me, there were many idealistic individuals involved in War of Independence, but this sectarian element was also present. Sadly many Protestants and their clergy remained silent about this and kept the heads down just to be left alone. Indeed on October 7th, 1921, the COI Gazette reported that even the migration of younger clergy had begun. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN CAFFERTY,
Ballina,
Co Mayo.
A hot topic in the vineyards
Sir, – In response to Jim Ryan’s letter (January 16th) on John Wilson’s article “Now for something different” (Magazine, January 7th), I would strongly disagree with his claim that a 0.81 increase of a degree Celsius is “hardly enough for . . .plants to notice.”
Whilst the increase seems insignificant in the greater scheme of things, it is actually the hotter temperatures during the growing season and in particular more frequent spikes in temperature that are causing problems for grape producers. Grape-growing conditions are a complex subject and are affected by numerous macroclimatic conditions. Sunlight, rainfall, altitude and continentality, as well as what is referred to as heat summation, all have a role to play, with heat being responsible for 75 per cent of the grape growth and ripening. Grape growers refer to the amount of heat generated during the growth season as growing degree days (GDDs).
Added to this, mesoclimatic factors such as aspect, soil, wind exposure and bodies of water also have an influence on the ripening of grapes on the vine.
GDDs are calculated by taking the mean temperature for a month, subtracting 10 and multiplying this figure by the number of days in the month. The GDDs for each month are then added together across the growing season (April-October in the Northern Hemisphere) to get the heat summation figure for the whole year. Typical GDD readings for well-known grape growing areas are: Bordeaux 1440, the Barossa Valley, Australia 1680 and Burgundy 1100. These figures are used by the grape-growing industry to help assign the correct grape variety to the correct area. For example, the Syrah grape requires 1250 GDDs to ripen to a stage where it can be used to make dry table wine and therefore while not suited to Burgundy, it would easily ripen in the Barossa Valley.
Having obtained even fairly recent historical information from the weather station at Frankfurt airport in Germany, it is clear to see that Mr Ryan’s assertion that a small overall temperature increase has no effect on grape production is wrong. In 1997 the GDDs recorded at the station were 1317 and yet for the following 14 years they were recorded at an average of 1474. In fact only 2010 had a lower reading with 1287 while the memorable heatwave summer of 2003 came in at 1700 GDDs.
Under the 1997 reading, a grape-grower would have been recommended to plant varieties such as Chenin Blanc for whites and Merlot or Syrah for reds. In the intervening period that same grape-grower would have regretted that decision as the advice today would be to plant traditional Mediterranean grape varieties such as Grenache Blanc and Mourvedre for whites and reds respectively such is the climatic change in the growing season.
As for the traditional Riesling grape so commonly found in German vineyards, has Mr Ryan not noticed that these wines are no longer found to be at the previous alcohol levels of nine or 10 per cent but more likely at 12 to 13 per cent? Riper grapes equals more sugar which equals more alcohol.
In addition, I don’t think any wine lover would dispute Mr Ryan’s claim that Germany has been making good Pinot Noir for a long time, but with the change in growing conditions I think it is safe to say that they are now doing so more regularly! – Yours, etc,
SIMON TYRRELL,
Tyrrell & Co (Wine Importers)Ltd,
Kilmeague, Naas, Co Kildare.
If you don’t have a TV . . .
Sir, – In reply to Edward D Rafferty (January 20th Jan 2012), I think he should remove “hospital trolleys” from the suggested “movement levy” as it would be paradoxical. – Yours, etc,
JONATHAN WORMALD,
Strand Road,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.
Sir, – Surely an overlooked benefit of changing to the universal broadcast charge is that we will be spared those incredibly irritating ads about TV licence inspectors, carrier pigeons and the like? – Yours, etc,
COLM MAGEE,
Vernon Avenue, Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Irish Independent:
John Daly’s report on the legal case taken by Percy French against the directors of the West Clare Railway in 1897 (Weekend Review, January 21) brought to mind a dramatisation performed in Ennis Courthouse on the centenary of the event in 1997.
A hilarious production by the Corofin Dramatic Society entitled ‘Laughter in Court’, and scripted by Brian Comerford of Kilrush, covered Mr French’s case, as well as that of a Mary Ann Butler. What a thrill it was to discover the script online recently.
While browsing, I also came across another script of Mr Comerford’s named ‘The Liquidator’. This was a play he wrote for radio in 1987, the theme of which was the arrival of representatives of Ireland’s creditor banks to Government Buildings to strip the nation’s assets.
How prescient that idea turned out to be.
John M Lillis
Lahinch Road,
Ennis, Co Clare
Dr Thomas O’Flynn’s thoughtful reflection on the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland (Irish Independent, January 18) is a very honest attempt to redeem the past and nurture the development of a renewed church.
The clerical abuse scandal led to a considerable loss of confidence in the probity of the institutional church. Sadly, as Dr O’Flynn notes, all the priests and religious have been tarred with the one brush. At the heart of this is an absurd tendency to expect the church to be perfect.
The church is not some kind of abstraction from the messy business of human living. It is corrupt and corruptible as we all are in some measure. It is fallible. The church is not a finished product. We have to work at it. Unfortunately, the acknowledgement in our religious services that we are all sinners tends not to rise above the level of ritual incantation. It is sometimes hard to accept that all of us are a work in progress.
The declaration of the infallibility of the Pope in the 19th Century added to the growing belief that the church could do no wrong. The fact that some priests engaged in aberrant sexual behaviour should sadden, shock but not totally surprise us; it is understandable, forgivable but not excusable.
However, it gives no grounds for the vilification of all priests. There are hundreds of deeply committed, dedicated and hard-working priests who continue to give their lives in the service of our people. It would be a huge injustice if they were written off.
The priests are in the best position to guide us away from the seductions of the three contemporary gods of riches, social and celebrity status.
It is expected that the forthcoming Eucharistic Congress will somehow restore the faith of our young people and cleanse us from the stain of recent history. This looks like a case of digging for gold whilst ignoring the diamonds under our feet. There is a real willingness amongst the Irish priests and people to engage more honestly and openly with what they actually believe, in the hope that church leaders’ faith in their critical voices will be strengthened and inform more radically the future direction of the church.
Philip O’Neill
33 Edith Road, Oxford
While it is tragic many Irish people are being forced to emigrate against their will, it is important to acknowledge that many of us have spent years living abroad by choice.
I am in my mid-30s and have emigrated five times in the last 15 years (to Sydney, Wellington, San Francisco, Edinburgh and London). Before, during and after the Celtic Tiger boom.
Each time it has been the desire to experience living and working in a foreign country that has taken me abroad. Like many Irish people I work in a heavily globalised industry and seeing how things are done internationally has been an invaluable part of my employment experience.
It is said we live on a small island, off the coast of an island, off the coast of Europe. Indeed some of the counties within California are larger than our country. If you’ve only lived and worked in Ireland you measure yourself against Irish standards. If you’ve lived and worked globally you measure yourself against the best in the world.
Shane Brett
Seacrest Manor, Dundalk
On reading Antony Beevor’s masterpiece ‘Berlin’, the story of the fall of Berlin under the Russian advance in 1944/45, one story of barbarity stood out.
Some Russian soldiers, bent on hatred for the Nazis, caught one German soldier, discovered that he could play the piano and proceeded to tell him to play, and that if he stopped, assured him he would be shot. That poor, unfortunate man played and played for 16 hours before slumping over the keyboard in a mix of despair and tears.
Then, as promised, he was patted on the back and shot through the head.
This appalling account of human cruelty instantly brought to mind the tragic pathos of our collective capture as a people, as the international capitalist troika came to listen to our desperate, jangling discords last week.
We, too, are being forced to play for our lives with the assurance that we, too, will meet a terrible end, should we end our dark night of the collective soul that is our dependence on the IMF/EU bailout.
To paraphrase Bob Geldof, ‘is this it?’ Are we destined to be drained of every last public asset, every drop of our collective and creative life-blood, only to get the bullet in any event?
Surely the time has come for Ireland to re-group, gather around us some sense of perspective, and, begin to unwind the greatest historical injustice ever perpetrated against us. . . the banking guarantee of September 2008. Or, are we going to continue to apply the terrible logic of that tragic German?
Are we going to ‘play on’ and fight against terrible odds on the basis that there is always hope?
Regrettably, this citizen soldier can hear the safety catch being taken off the gun of our tormentors.
Declan Doyle
Lisdowney, Kilkenny
I am writing in defence of Taoiseach Enda Kenny following his comments about Junior Minister Kathleen Lynch being a “doughty fighter” as evidenced by her “flaming red hair”.
To demonise Mr Kenny is absolutely ridiculous and gives credence to Kevin Myers’s recent article (Irish Independent, January 12). ‘Equality’ is simply the feminist right to whinge.
Any honest, fair-minded, individual will interpret Mr Kenny’s description of Ms Lynch as being highly complimentary. The ‘Webster International Dictionary’ defines doughty as being brave or valiant.
In the west of Ireland there is an abundance of red-haired people, synonymous with the term ‘fiery redhead’, fiery meaning passionate, committed, single-minded.
I would have far more confidence in our future if “doughty fighters” could be used to describe our government ministers irrespective of hair colour!
Don Byrne
Raheny, Dublin 5
Well I must be off
best wishes John
