Video

Video 26th January 2012

Off out around the park, three other joggers one man two women, dog walkers commuters, but no Tai Chi this year so far, perhaps it has gone out of fashion? Cool and it will be colder later in the week.
Off out I go to pick up a video recorder from Freecycle, it doesn’t work, I now have a large selection of video recorders which don’t work. The sound is okay but no picture I don’t know if it is the video recorders the video tapes, the cable, or even the TV, but I will find out. I ought to go to see Joan, tomorrow perhaps, we are just too tired.
Sharland rings a mutual friend David Melville has committed suicide, leaving a note and his parrot Sunshine, who has gone to someones home. Poor troubled David he lived constantly on the edge of life and just slipped over. We feel that his problems what ever they were were just too deep and there is nothing that anyone could have done.
Partridge we watch Convict 99 dear old Will Hay, thrown out, literally from his old school, where he was a very dodgy headmaster, he manages to get a job as a prison governor. After first accidentally spending some time as a prisoner. He lets the prisoners run the jail, but is conned by Googie Withers, and gang. So they end up robbing a bank to put the money back in. Priceless.
Scrabble today I win but not bu much, but I am sure she will get a suitable revenge.

Fave Letters:

Shameless lying
I was saddened to read your leading story about declining standards of honesty (25 January). What concerns me most is the assumption that “everyone is doing it”.
As I was reading about it on a train from Guildford to London Waterloo, which was running on time, I was forced to listen to a young woman behind me proclaiming through her mobile phone that she was “stuck outside Waterloo” and was going to arrive late at her destination, wherever that was.
Not only is this an unfair calumny against the train company, whose trains are rarely late, but I was shocked by the utter indifference to her fellow passengers, who knew that she was lying. Should the honest person stand up and protest in such circumstances? I am sorry to say that all I did was to resolve to write to your paper about it.
Bob Tomlin
Caterham, Surrey

Legalising drugs
SIR – As a Labour councillor for Merton in the Nineties, I spoke with the local police chief about drug legalisation (Letters, January 25). He thought fighting drugs was a war that could not be won, and that it diverted scarce resources from other issues. He went on to say that nearly all the police he knew shared this opinion.
I then spoke with some doctors. Nicotine, they pointed out, causes more deaths than all the illegal drugs put together. Alcohol causes more aggravation to hospitals than all the other drugs put together. Deaths by overdose are not normally caused by increased quantities taken, but by changes in purity. The intelligent policy would be to legalise drugs and supply “hard” drugs on prescription.
In an open council meeting I called for this to happen. All three parties were united in their condemnation of me.
Mickey Spacey
London SW20

SIR – MPs say they want their chips in a tower. After their expenses shenanigans, maybe their wish should be granted.
M. Bolton
Birmingham

Obituary:

The role of Ruby Finch, the dim-witted, put-upon scullery maid in Upstairs, Downstairs forever dreaming of running away with Rudolph Valentino, brought Jenny Tomasin fame worldwide. The familiar cry of “Oh, Ruby!” from the Bellamy household’s cook, Mrs Bridges, in response to the accident-prone servant’s clumsiness, was perhaps the closest the saga came to having a catchphrase.
Tomasin joined the programme for just one episode in its second series, in 1972, but her portrayal of the downtrodden Ruby was so admired that she was kept on until Upstairs, Downstairs ended three years later. She was seen “downstairs” alongside others including Angela Baddeley as the grumpy but warm-hearted Mrs Bridges, George Jackson as the dour butler Hudson, Jean Marsh as the pivotal housemaid Rose and Pauline Collins as the day-dreaming parlour maid Sarah in the drama set at 165 Eaton Place, London, against a background of events from the Edwardian era and First World War to the General Strike and Wall Street Crash. In typical fashion, Ruby once shocked her fellow servants by announcing that she was leaving for a job in a munitions factory, only for it to be blown up with her inside. She took the long walk back to Belgravia, her face blackened, and was reinstated.
The programme was Britain’s most successful period drama of the 1970s, watched by 300 million people in 50 countries, including the US, where it won seven Emmys. When it ended, Tomasin felt a big hole had been left in her life and compared it to bereavement. Plans for Ruby to join Hudson and Mrs Bridges in a sequel, running a seaside boarding-house, were abandoned following Baddeley’s death.
However, Ruby was a double-edged sword. The character was popular but frequently described as “TV’s ugly duckling” and, Tomasin believed, left her typecast as maids, restricting her future career, while “upstairs” stars such as Simon Williams and Lesley-Anne Down saw their careers soar.
“I had to wear these drab outfits and no make-up,” she recalled in the 2002 television documentary After Upstairs, Downstairs. “There was one particular incident when I was out with my boyfriend for a meal. I was feeling sexy and attractive, and suddenly somebody yelled out, ‘Oh, look, there’s Ruby!’ I looked at my boyfriend and said, ‘I don’t want to stay here.’ It just felt awful.”
Born in Leeds in 1936, Tomasin had childhood ambitions to act or write. Despite her parents’ objections, she broke into acting and appeared on stage until she made her screen début in 1972 as a Young Conservative whose parents try to marry her off to the fraudulent Australian of the title (Barry Crocker) in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, a film written by Barry Humphries (who played Aunt Edna Everage) and the director Bruce Beresford.
Before she finished her run as Ruby, Tomasin took the carbon-copy role of a waitress, Florence Baker, in the motel-set soap opera Crossroads, which she played on and off from 1974-79. There were also one-off appearances in The Dick Emery Show (1976), The Onedin Line (1977) and the sitcom That’s My Boy (1985), as well as the small part of Mrs Simmons in the little-seen film Mister Quilp (1975), based on The Old Curiosity Shop. Tomasin also acted one of the child mill workers in later episodes of Midnight is a Place (1977-78).
After she played Naomi Tolly, whose farmer father died in a tractor accident, in Emmerdale Farm (1980-81) and Tasambeker, “ex-ter-min-ated” by the Time Lord’s nemeses in the 1985 Doctor Who story “Revelation of the Daleks”, Tomasin’s appearances became rarer. She took the role of a traffic warden in the 1990 film Just Ask for Diamond and was typecast as a maidservant in a BBC adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and the cook in Beeban Kidron’s television film of Cinderella (2000).
On stage and back to type, Tomasin played a parlour maid in a West End production of Man and Superman (Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 1982), starring Peter O’Toole, with the cast reprising their performances in a television film version the same year. She was also in pantomimes and national tours of Blithe Spirit (1988-89), as Edith, the maid, Lettice and Lovage (1990-91) and The Marquise (2004), in which she acted Kate O’Mara’s devoted maid.
Tomasin believed her television career might be experiencing a revival when she returned to Emmerdale (as the serial was retitled in 1989) in the role of Noreen Bell (2005-06), a cantankerous, palm-reading, wig-wearing pensioner whose garden fence was painted by Val Lambert as part of a community service order. Noreen became friends with Val but died in a gas explosion while looking round a show home.
It was Tomasin’s last screen role, but the character’s legacy lives on. The money bequeathed by Noreen to Val enabled her to buy a half-share in The Woolpack pub, where last orders are called with the Noreen Bell bell. However, Tomasin – who never married – always remained optimistic that more work would come along. As she said in 2002: “I’ve been through such hard times, but I can always bounce back again. I still believe great things are just ahead.”
Anthony Hayward
Jenny Tomasin, actress: born Leeds 30 November 1936; died London c. 12 January 2012.

Full Text:

Guardian:

We are alarmed by the imposition of a far-right director on one of Budapest’s leading theatres, and call on our foreign secretary and the international community to put pressure on the Hungarian government to reverse the decision before 1 February, the day the theatre is scheduled to change hands. Following the election of the rightwing Fidesz party, the mayor of Budapest sacked the director of Új Színház (the New Theatre), and appointed actor György Dörner in his place. Dörner supports the anti-Roma, anti-gay and antisemitic party Jobbik. Jobbik has been forced to disband its militia, the Hungarian Guard, but its presidential candidate recently stated that Jews were “lice-infested dirty murderers”. The party has 47 members of the Hungarian parliament.
Currently, the New Theatre presents both Hungarian plays and the international canon, from Schiller to Shakespeare. Dörner plans to reverse what he describes as a “degenerate, sick, liberal hegemony” in Hungary by stopping the production of “foreign garbage” and concentrating on Hungarian plays. These include the work of his friend and adviser István Csurka, an open antisemite, advocate of the Jewish conspiracy theory, and president of the Hungarian Justice and Life party. Several Hungarian writers have withdrawn their plays from the theatre in protest.
The change imposed on the New Theatre may not be the last. Jobbik and other extreme-right groups are campaigning and demonstrating against the Hungarian National Theatre, calling its work “obscene, pornographic, gay, anti-national and anti-Hungarian”. The campaign against a liberal Hungarian theatre, open to the world, is part of a move in Hungary towards intolerance and against democracy. The historical parallels are obvious and chilling. We support Hungarian theatre-makers in opposing this appointment, and urge our government to demand that the Hungarian government overturn this decision.
Artistic directors:
Michael Attenborough
Michael Boyd
Dominic Cooke
Daniel Evans
Nicholas Hytner
David Lan
Nicolas Kent
Josie Rourke
Erica Whyman
Actors
Rosalind Ayres
Eve Best
Simon Callow
Bertie Carvel
James Frain
Romola Garai
Gawn Grainger
Henry Goodman
Martin Jarvis
Toby Jones
Beverley Klein
Roger Lloyd Pack
James Purefoy
Antony Sher
Imelda Staunton
Dan Stevens
Janet Suzman
Harriet Walter
Zoë Wanamaker
Samuel West
Timothy West
Directors
Neil Bartlett
Gregory Doran
Richard Eyre
Kevin Macdonald
Trevor Nunn
Indhu Rubasingham
Tim Supple
Richard Bean
Howard Brenton
Moira Buffini
Playwrights
Caryl Churchill
April de Angelis
David Edgar
Michael Frayn
Lee Hall
David Hare
Terry Johnson
Mark Ravenhill
Laura Wade
Timberlake Wertenbaker
Arnold Wesker
and . . .
Bernie Corbett General secretary of the Writers’ Guild
Christine Payne General secretary of Equity
Malcolm Sinclai President of Equity
Joan Bakewell
Don Black
Geraldine D’Amico Jewish Book Week
Jessica Duchen
Denise Epstein
Ruth Fainlight
Michael Grade
Amanda Hopkinson PEN
Dennis Marks
Kate Pakenham
Lesley Megahey
Sharif István Horthy
András Schiff
George Szirtes

Simon Jenkins (Comment, 25 January) repeats the fallacy that a vicar’s stipend of around £22,000 takes him below the proposed benefit cap. The clergy also receive free housing, have their council tax paid and get many other benefits, taking the total to around £37,000 pa. And vicars with children get child benefit. Jenkins claims to remember no bishop warning that the “borrowing and spending spree could not continue”. He must have missed Bishop Peter Selby’s seminal book, Grace and Mortgage, published in 1997 and reissued in 2007 because it had so accurately predicted the current crisis. Bishop Selby spoke often in the Lords on this subject. Moreover, the bishops did not vote against the principle of a benefit cap – only the injustice of including child benefit within it when even fairly high earners receive it. You may disagree with the bishops being in the Lords, Simon, but inaccuracies and selective memories do not add up to real debate.
Rev Dr Malcolm Brown
Director, mission and public affairs, Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England

All Liberal Democrats should follow Paddy Ashdown in voting against this iniquitous benefit cap that will deprive thousands more children of decent housing and schooling, and thereby render them virtually unemployable in the future (Peers reject £26,000 cap that includes child benefit, 24 January).
If these measures are intended to force their parents into work, where are the jobs, thanks to this government’s self-defeating policy of austerity, and where are the affordable homes, thanks to the policy of selling off council houses?
The savings involved are paltry compared with the cost of Trident, or Afghanistan, or oil sanctions against Iran; and they are in stark contrast with the failure to rein in executive pay, or to properly tax the Tory party paymasters in the City of London, and the billions lost to the Revenue through tax havens.
We cannot leave it to the bishops to be the only opponents of one law for the poor and another for the rich.
Margaret Phelps
Colchester, Essex
• Gavin Poole, executive director of the Centre for Social Justice, defends the benefit cap in your pages (It’s not about the money, 24 January). Could that be the same Centre for Social Justice that warned that the impact of the cap is likely to be “devastating” for some families? Is devastating families’ living standards really likely to give their children “hope and aspiration for their futures” as Poole claims?
Ruth Lister
Labour, House of Lords
• Supporters of the household benefits cap do not seem to realise that a high proportion of that benefit goes directly to the landlord of the property the unfortunates live in. No official visit by the housing authority determines whether the residence is worth the rent being charged. Therefore, the scum landlord raises the rent, explaining to the tenants that they don’t have to pay it – it comes from the council.
In the articles from the Centre for Social Justice (what a fraudulent title!) I haven’t seen any hammer blows aimed at the criminal landlords. Of course, they are all pillars of respectability in their local Tory associations. Loudly proclaiming the advantages of free enterprise, along with all the other crooks. I am old enough to remember when we had a Labour party and a Rent Control Act.
Ken Bates
Nottingham
• Substituting “executive salaries” for “welfare benefits” and “the company” for “the state” in Gavin Poole’s piece makes for interesting reading.
John Stout
Aughton, Lancashire
•  In this Dickens anniversary year, perhaps we should remember Mr Micawber in the debate on welfare. Family on £26,000 benefits income, no child benefit, minus £20,000 rent (uncapped of course), equals £6,000 disposable income for living (minus removal fees to move somewhere cheaper; minus cost of school uniforms for new school), result – despair. Contrast this with working family on £26,000 wages, plus child benefit, plus housing benefit, plus working tax credits, result – no comparison. The prime minister and secretary of state are deliberately misleading the public.
Gillian Dalley
London
•  Charity works hard in a recession. Benevolent funds routinely patch and protect the modest social fund. London Catalyst’s Samaritan fund helped 62 social work agencies make 2,400 emergency grants to people in need last year. In the debate on the value of the social fund, as in Dickens’s time, we can overlook those hidden on the margins of society: migrant workers sloughed off by the contracting informal economy, overstayers, the undocumented and those coping with mental and physical ill-health are all ineligible. The estranged dependent on charitable strangers.
Victor Willmott
Director, London Catalyst
• Tim Leunig (Who can live on 62p a day?, 23 January) argues that the UK’s housing shortage could be addressed by allowing more houses to be built in the south-east, “over the objections of organisations such as the CPRE and the National Trust”. Contrary to this assertion, CPRE agrees that more housing needs to be built across England.
Research commissioned by the last government found that a massive increase in housing supply alone would have only a marginal impact on prices. For this reason CPRE doesn’t believe liberalising the planning system will lead to meaningfully lower housing costs. Leunig states that “standard supply and demand tells us that more houses mean lower prices and lower rents”, but experience shows that reducing house prices is not that straightforward.
Increased supply is part of the solution, which is why CPRE is calling for improvements to the government’s planning reforms. We want to see a planning system that delivers new high-quality, affordable homes to rent or buy, in places that are economically, environmentally and socially sustainable.
To secure a long-term solution to our growing housing affordability crisis, we must hold a national debate on the future of how we house ourselves, and how we pay for it.
Kate Houghton
Planning officer, Campaign to Protect Rural England
•  Tim Leunig is wrong to assert that the National Trust is opposed to housebuilding in the south-east. We need more houses, but we need them to be built in the right places. We also think more could be done to encourage the reuse of existing houses before we build on greenfield sites. After all, nearly 70,000 homes in London and the south-east have been empty for more than six months.
The government proposes to remove the national thresholds at which affordable housing must be delivered within development schemes. This will surely further damage the provision of housing for those who need it most.
Ben Cowell
Assistant director of external affairs, National Trust
•  The news is full of politicians and political commentators using fine rhetoric to pitch benefit claimants against the hard-working taxpayer, as if they were mutually exclusive. Does it not occur to anyone that a huge number of people currently claiming benefit have actually been (and will be again) taxpayers? Also, just because people are claiming benefit does not mean that they are not contributing to society in other ways: be that parenting, building bonds of friendship with other people in their communities or improving the surroundings of themselves and others who are in work.
Last October, my husband and I had to put our 15-year-old business into liquidation due to the current economic climate and a total collapse in our markets. Previous to that we had both always been self-employed or employed. While we ran our business we created jobs for hundreds of people. These were mostly high-skilled, well-paid jobs in an area of real economic stagnation largely dependent on agriculture (Herefordshire is, I think, second – with Devon – on the low pay scale).
I applied for about 70 jobs, from management roles to clerical positions. I heard back from about five companies but did not receive any job offers. So, with great reluctance, we had no option but to fall back onto the state. We have five children and a mortgage, so we are one of the 67,000 families who would be affected by the cap. By tight budgetary control and careful shopping we are able to live without hardship on the benefits that we are receiving and enjoy our frugal, if temporary, lifestyle.
I am not currently able to actively seek work or create a new enterprise because I am awaiting an operation date (which has been cancelled twice) so that I can donate a kidney to my husband, who is currently a dialysis patient. According to the NHS website the cost of dialysis is £35,000 a year. Hopefully, he will live for at least another 20 years; without the transplant the cost to the NHS would be £700,000 (in today’s money). The cost of the transplant is £17,000 and kidney transplantation leads to an average saving per year of £25,800.
Each benefit claimant has a different story to tell. I do not believe that the vast majority of claimants choose to be in the position that they are in or have large numbers of children just to maximise what they receive. Right now, my family needs every penny coming in. Not because we are lazy or worse than the “hard-working” taxpayer but because sometimes the picture is not black and white.
I would ask political commentators not to be so quick to judge, and news programmes not to always focus on the single, immigrant parent living in an expensive rented apartment. We do not need to fuel xenophobia. As people with authority and power, it is the job of leaders and newscasters to tell the truth and provide balance. Or am I asking too much?
Polly Ernest
Hereford
•  Gavin Poole’s argument that a benefits cap would reduce welfare dependency and increase claimants’ self-esteem is dependent on there being jobs and affordable housing readily available to enable people to haul themselves to a state of self-sufficiency. The simple fact is that there is a huge statistical gulf between the number of people seeking work and the posts available. Meanwhile the government is encouraging a swathe of potentially paid work to be undertaken on a voluntary basis, and large chain stores are getting away with employing people on an unpaid basis on the pretext of “training”.
At some point society will have to face up to the reality of a changing labour market and recognise that there will never be enough work again to move back to a state of full employment. Scapegoating the most vulnerable in society may help the supposedly squeezed middle classes vent their spleens but in reality will only end up increasing child poverty and all-round desperation among the poor. If only this resentment could be channelled towards the mega-rich and senior bankers who continue to thrive despite the recession and, in the case of their latter, their culpability for everyone else’s struggle.
Tim Matthews
Luton, Bedfordshire
•  I am very disappointed that the coalition government’s commitment to the Poor Law principle of “less eligibility” – to ensure the conditions of those out of work are worse than the lowest-paid – has not gone far enough. The revival of the Victorian workhouse would not only be popular but also secure the coalition’s social policy ambitions on a number of fronts.
First, the segregation of mothers from fathers and their children, in separate institutions, would send a clear message to the “undeserving poor” that they should not have more children than they can afford.
Second, it would deter workers into taking any type of paid employment, providing a rationale for reducing the benefit cap further and the abolition of the minimum wage (no fear that Labour will make any silly suggestion such as raising the minimum wage to avoid reducing benefits at all).
Third, it will give a boost to the construction industry. Capital investors could receive “payment by results” based on occupancy rates, and this would get round the Lib Dems’ bee in their bonnet about bonus caps.
Finally, it would give all those whingeing “do gooders” – charities, churches, Guardian readers and so on – something worthwhile to do. They could devote their energy to supervising “paupers’ outings” to respectable families so that children can learn the virtues of honesty, thrift and hard work from their betters.
Mike Stein
Pudsey, West Yorkshire

I’m a reader who needs the printed word. I have loved the Guardian for over 50 years now, but today (26 January), the paper has surpassed itself. Everything I want to read is there. Timothy Livesey profile, article on the hajj exhibition which portrays Islam in a favourable light, your special on Europe, Marina in the sports pages, the international topics, Comment & Debate and, as always, the letters page. Bless you.
Anne Spragg
Swinford, Co Mayo, Ireland
• Help. Silly female model picture in the centre of the front page (25 January). Why? Then page 3 – serious endeavour to tackle press sexism (It’s time to tackle Fleet street’s relentless sexism, women’s groups urge Leveson). What’s your game? Or am I just a dumb female?
Judy Marsh
Nottingham
• Well done, four real women on page 3 of the Guardian – and they had clothes on!
Gill Frances
Thames Ditton, Surrey
• In possible danger of overloading the jubilee, Scott, Dickens, Titanic, Olympics year of 2012, can I point out another achievement of the Queen? On 29 January she will become the longest-lived person who has been an English head of state by overtaking Richard Cromwell (4.10.1626 to 12.7.1712), who, ironically, was Lord Protector for only eight months (1658-59).
Barry Moore
Ipswich
• I wish the ageist, sexist letter writers (26 January) and the wretched Hadley person (Ask Hadley, G2, 24 January) would just pipe down about jeans on over-40s. First, you wouldn’t talk in the same way about women, it would be “you go girl”. Second, even if looks were so important, it depends on what jeans, what body shape and what else is worn. Some young people look daft in jeans; some older people don’t.
Brian Smith
Berlin
• 9.30am on 26 January and high up in the pale blue Yorkshire sky, two skylarks are singing their hearts out (Letters, passim). Where are the cuckoos?
Jean Samuel
York

Science is by its nature sceptical: scientists interrogate information and only on repeated investigation does data become science. The science of climate change has been established through numerous high-profile studies (IPCC, NOAA, Nasa) and was even verified by the sceptic-led Best report. In 2009 one of the world’s leading medical journals, the Lancet, declared climate change “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”. Denying the links between greenhouse gas emissions and man-made climate change is akin to denying the links between HIV/Aids and unprotected sex, smoking and lung cancer, or alcohol consumption and liver disease. In each of these cases, well-funded deniers have had to be exposed and confronted before appropriate health-promoting legislation was put in place.
The Climate and Health Council supports Nasa scientist James Hansen as he joins the campaign to uncover secret funders bankrolling climate sceptic Nigel Lawson and his lobbying think-tank (Climate experts back unveiling of Lawson thinktank donor, 23 January). The public may finally discover who is secretly influencing UK climate policy – contrary to scientific consensus – today (27 January), when the Information Rights Tribunal hears this key freedom of information case. Some anti-climate lobbyists routinely misrepresent and cast doubt on the work of climate scientists. Although Lawson and his Global Warming Policy Foundation have been discredited and attacked by numerous scientists and senior politicians, his thinktank continues to receive significant coverage, wrongfully distorting the public and policy debate over climate change.
Perverting the course of evidence-based policy on climate-change adaptation and mitigation damages our health resilience, our economic prosperity and our environmental stability. Transparency around climate-sceptic funders is essential. We support freedom of information to reveal those deliberately preventing the UK’s sustainable future.
Dr Fiona Godlee Editor-in-chief, British Medical Journal
Dr. Richard Horton Editor-in-Chief, The Lancet
Professor Ian Roberts Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health
Professor Hugh Montgomery Professor of Intensive Care Medicine
Professor Anthony Costello Professor of International Child Health
Rachel Stancliffe Director, Centre for Sustainable Healthcare
Dr. Robin Stott Co-chair, Climate and Health Council
Maya Tickell-Painter Director, Medsin Healthy Planet Campaign
• Citizens concerned about climate change are right to demand clarity about Nigel Lawson’s funding. Lawson established his shadowy organisation back in 2009 following the Climategate fiasco, when the emails of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were hacked. There have been five inquiries into Climategate, three in the UK and two in the US, and they have unanimously exonerated the East Anglian scientists of any scientific wrongdoing. If the rationale for Lawson establishing GWPF was Climategate, why has he not now closed it down? One suspects the answer lies in the recent report from GWPF on the new fossil fuel source, tar sand and shale gas, which states: “Shale gas is not only abundant but relatively cheap and therefore promises to take market share from nuclear, coal and renewable energy and to replace oil in some transport and industrial uses, over coming decades.”
Dr Robin Russell-Jones
Chair, Planetary SOS

Independent:

Good grief! Your editorial about bishops in the House of Lords (26 January) read like something out of the Sunday Express circa 1962. Bishops should stick to their pulpits; the “privileged” Church of England having a voice in Parliament because it’s the established church. Those arguments became boring many years ago.
Like it or not, we have a second unelected chamber in Parliament called the House of Lords, and for historical reasons, 26 of the 104 bishops of the Church of England have seats there. Since Parliament still sees fit to legislate for the Church of England’s internal affairs, I would call that a reasonable quid pro quo. If you want to change that system, then do: it won’t worry the Church of England.
Meanwhile we have, in the House of Lords, a group of fairly intelligent people, including bishops, who do not have to cast an anxious eye on what the electorate has been persuaded to think, and who have sufficient independence of thought to curb, or at least delay, the excesses of the government of the day. They are not afraid to do so; and, generally speaking, I would say that was a good thing.
You also go on to imply that religion, politics and ordinary life are three different things which must be kept apart, and that a leader in one field cannot possibly be permitted to interfere by commenting on another. When a bishop stands up in the House of Lords to protest about a piece of proposed legislation which he considers unjust, he is doing precisely what he’s paid for. It’s called freedom of expression, and it applies just as much to bishops as it does to newspaper leader writers.
John Williams
West Wittering, West Sussex
 
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Your editorial blithely asserts that representatives of the established church “must go” in the next wave of Lords reform. Why?
We have an established church that is as much the consequence of our social, economic and political history as of our spiritual past. Given the quantity of time-serving apparatchiks who have been rewarded with seats in the Lords, it seems a little extreme to single out precisely those who by the very nature of their work could be said to bring a much-needed ethical and moral approach to the proceedings.
The established church fulfils a role not dissimilar to that of the monarchy; it is a useful mechanism, nominally filling a space that would otherwise be the object of competitive acrimony and destabilising ambition.
And as we have seen, the meddlesome priests are not in anyone’s pocket. Perhaps we should put up with them for a while longer.
Christopher Dawes
London W11
 
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Your leader was astounding. Agree with them or not, the bishops who proposed the amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill on Monday were from dioceses with some of the most significant deprivation in the country. They are therefore in touch with clergy on the ground living in these areas – journalists and politicians don’t tend to. They know what they are talking about.
I would have thought that drawing people from this incredible network of parishes, which is what establishment is really about, is just what the second chamber needs. To say that they should not meddle in politics is to argue that faith is irrelevant to life. Secular does not equal neutral. By all means disagree with their maths and policy analysis, but they speak from serious engagement on the ground and therefore deserve hearing.
Canon Ian Black
Leeds
 
 
Badgers and hedgehogs
Michael McCarthy (19 January) is wrong to suggest that the link between the presence of badgers and the absence of hedgehogs is being played down. It isn’t, but from a conservation standpoint it doesn’t make sense to put it centre stage: it isn’t the case that fewer badgers would mean the decline in hedgehog numbers would be stopped. The link between badgers and hedgehogs misses the bigger picture.
The main causes for the decline in hedgehogs are almost certainly habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. And we are working hard to understand the cause better and to help the hedgehog cope with our very intensively used landscape, even when they are eaten by badgers, which – along with disease, accidental road casualties and a changing climate– is a fact of life.
The solution lies in improving the quality of the environment within which both hedgehogs and badgers have co-existed for millennia. They are, for the most part, competitors for the same food resource, macro-invertebrates such as worms. It is only when their habitat deteriorates that the relationship shifts into one that is predatory.
Hedgehogs and badgers frequently co-exist in urban areas, where there is no indication that badger numbers are increasing – but urban hedgehog populations are declining as fast as their rural counterparts.
Our project to monitor hedgehog hibernation emergence (www.hedgehogstreet.org) is part of a massive effort to understand better the ways in which we can ensure that the hedgehog survives and thrives. And part of the work is looking at how intensive farming depletes both hedgehog and badger food. Rather than getting side-tracked by a single dimension, please join in and help us understand the complexities better.
Fay Vass
Chief Executive, British Hedgehog Preservation Society,
Jill Nelson
Chief Executive, People’s Trust for Endangered Species
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
 
Shameless lying
I was saddened to read your leading story about declining standards of honesty (25 January). What concerns me most is the assumption that “everyone is doing it”.
As I was reading about it on a train from Guildford to London Waterloo, which was running on time, I was forced to listen to a young woman behind me proclaiming through her mobile phone that she was “stuck outside Waterloo” and was going to arrive late at her destination, wherever that was.
Not only is this an unfair calumny against the train company, whose trains are rarely late, but I was shocked by the utter indifference to her fellow passengers, who knew that she was lying. Should the honest person stand up and protest in such circumstances? I am sorry to say that all I did was to resolve to write to your paper about it.
Bob Tomlin
Caterham, Surrey
 
***
 
David Butland cites a number of his friends who claim to have rarely told lies, as evidence in the debate about national dishonesty (letters, 26 January). Unfortunately, I suspect that everybody he spoke to was lying.
Tim Matthews
Luton, Bedfordshire
 
Smart meters will help consumers
The Government is determined to see consumers benefit from the introduction of smart meters, and will study the Public Accounts Committee report carefully (“Smart meters ‘may lead to an increase in fuel poverty’ “, 17 January).
Consumer protection is at the core of the programme and we have been consulting closely with consumer groups over the past year. Smart meters will give us more control over how we use energy at home and at work, helping us to cut energy waste and save money, and will mean an end to estimated billing – so no more nasty surprises for consumers.
They also have a key role in modernising our electricity system so we keep the lights on and bills down. Energy companies will be able to do their job more efficiently, which will also mean lower costs for us all to pay for through gas and electricity bills. The benefits of smarts meters are £18.7bn from an £11.7bn investment – that’s a £7bn net benefit to the nation, and we want to realise it sooner rather than later.
Charles Hendry
Energy Minister, Department of Energy and Climate Change, London SW1
 
Fight again for the Falklands
Britain will go to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands only if the Argentines stage another unprovoked attack on the 2,000 or so innocent British civilians who live there.
Both your correspondents (letters, 26 January) are in effect suggesting that rather than defending those Brits we try to bribe the potential aggressors in pursuit of a quiet life – despite the certain knowledge that the last time round the invaders included people subsequently convicted of brutal crimes against their own people, quite possibly with death-lists of our fellow countryman in their pockets.
No decent nation looks to bribe such people. It makes it clear, as the PM has, that if necessary we will fight them again. The only real concern is to be sure that we can still do so successfully – which I hope we are, but fear we may not be.
R S Foster
Sheffield
 
Drink? A lemon would be nice
Starbucks is to sell alcohol in the USA. In the UK, I have yet to find a Starbucks able even to supply a slice of lemon to enhance a cup of tea. Over many years, I have suggested, by letter and across the counter that, to supply a slice of lemon for those who prefer it to milk would not affect Starbucks’ profitability too dramatically. Excuses for failing to do so, which have included good old “health and safety”, have come down to: “We don’t stock lemons for tea.”
Peter Williams
Faversham, Kent
 
Heartening
My father and his father both died of heart attacks. My GP insisted on testing my blood pressure a couple of years ago (since I was over 55) and discovered it was shockingly high. So, but for NHS policy of checking patients of a certain age and treating them, I might well have had a heart attack by now. So why should there be a mystery to the reduced heart death rate in England (report, 26 january)? It’s all down to sensible NHS decision-making.
Mike Park
London SE9
 
Be fair to Sir Fred
It would be unfair if Sir Fred Goodwin were deprived of the knighthood awarded in 2004. The honour was bestowed on the basis of a career of service prior to that time. Granted, things went belly-up later, but if, for example, a theatrical knight or dame turned in a lousy performance now, would that justify calls for their honour to be revoked?
Anthony Bramley-Harker
Watford Hertfordshire
 
Family mansion
Judith M Steiner is worried that she and her husband could be forced out of their family home by a mansion tax (letter, 24 January). There is a simple solution. Should a tax on dwellings of over £2m be introduced, residents who find it difficult to pay the tax immediately should be able to give a charge on their property to the local authority, who will collect the money the next time the property comes on to the market.
Harvey Cole
Winchester
 
Polite star
John Calder’s obituary of Nicol Williamson emphasised his aggression (26 January). But when reviving Inadmissible Evidence at the Royal Court in 1978 he was, I seem to remember, entirely courteous to all his supporting players.
Clive Swift
London NW8

Telegraph:

SIR – A focus group wants to restore England’s woodland to Domesday levels, when it covered 15 per cent of the country (“Plant one billion trees to ‘recreate Domesday forest’ “, report, January 12). In 1964, a small group of enthusiasts in the Colne Valley, in West Yorkshire, set about improving their environment by planting saplings to soften the harsh landscape.
Today, around 300,000 trees later, the improvement is obvious. The group, rarely more than 15 in number, plants every Saturday between November and March in almost all weather conditions.
Dare I suggest that the need is not for discussion groups talking about an idea, but enthusiastic volunteers willing to get their hands dirty?
Peter Wilbourn
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

SIR – Ruth Porter touches on the role of the House of Lords – “advocating for those who can’t advocate for themselves” – before discussing the responsibilities of the Church (“Why Church leaders should love the benefit cap”, telegraph.co.uk). But what of the responsibilities of the Lords?
There are powerful arguments on both sides of the case for welfare reform, not least the competing demands for fairness between those who pay for benefits and those who are recipients. That this competition is more keenly felt in times of austerity is not surprising. That it might need to feel unfair in order to support those who need it most is an argument that no one who is answerable to an electorate will readily espouse.
One of the responsibilities of the Lords is to ensure that the complexities of these arguments are not lost when reforms are made law. Welfare dependency can be debilitating and humiliating, and proper welfare reform is needed. However, what is also needed is careful and thoughtful dissent that results in considered reform.
Bishops in the Lords can provide that dissent, not as churchmen but as statesmen. Public demand does not always make the best public policy.
Tom Quayle
London SW15
Related Articles
Volunteers are reviving England’s old woodlands
26 Jan 2012
SIR – It is worth noting that the benefit cap of £26,000 a year only applies to families where no one is in work. This means the cap is easy to avoid: all that is required is for one parent to be in work of any kind for at least 16 hours a week.
For example, a family with six children living in North London, with an earned income of just £5,000 a year, currently pockets about £47,000 a year in state benefits – and will continue to do so.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has stated his key aim is to “make work pay” – perhaps he did not realise quite how true this could be.
Simon Leadbeater
Benson, Oxfordshire
SIR – There is nothing new about a benefit cap. In the Fifties and Sixties, such benefits were administered by the National Assistance Board, a forerunner of subsequent social security ministries.
No one was allowed to receive more in benefits than they could earn, regardless of the size of their rent or family. This was known as the “wage step” and was generally accepted by claimants, politicians and social workers alike.
T. A. Higgins
Gillingham, Kent
SIR – I agree that child benefit should be excluded from the proposed benefit cap. It should be withdrawn altogether. It is not for the state to assume responsibility for the number of children couples have.
They should be able to earn enough to support a family themselves. The work and tax systems should be adjusted accordingly.
Michael Webb
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Legalising drugs
SIR – As a Labour councillor for Merton in the Nineties, I spoke with the local police chief about drug legalisation (Letters, January 25). He thought fighting drugs was a war that could not be won, and that it diverted scarce resources from other issues. He went on to say that nearly all the police he knew shared this opinion.
I then spoke with some doctors. Nicotine, they pointed out, causes more deaths than all the illegal drugs put together. Alcohol causes more aggravation to hospitals than all the other drugs put together. Deaths by overdose are not normally caused by increased quantities taken, but by changes in purity. The intelligent policy would be to legalise drugs and supply “hard” drugs on prescription.
In an open council meeting I called for this to happen. All three parties were united in their condemnation of me.
Mickey Spacey
London SW20
SIR – Imagine the illegal drugs trade as the delta of a river. If the distributaries, the small suppliers, are opened up, more and more will flow in down the main channel.
Legalisation would undermine the stance of those fighting this evil trade. The present enforcement arrangements may be imperfect but they do offer vulnerable members of society some protection.
Alan Duncalf
Bampton, Devon
A breakfast medley
SIR – If Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, is unhappy about the number of women on the Today programme (report, January 25), I suggest that he switches on the television for BBC Breakfast. One of the two presenters is a woman, the economics presenter and the weather presenter are both women, and when we switch to the local (London) section, the sole presenter is usually a woman, and the traffic and weather presenter is also a woman.
I expect it is because they were reckoned to be best at their respective jobs.
John Duffield
Loughton, Essex
The trolley problem
SIR – I applaud the vigilance of the security guard at Tesco for refusing entry to a lady with dirty boots (Letters, January 25), but wish that my local Asda would stop parents from letting children sit and stand in the food sections of trolleys.
Elizabeth M. Michie
Falmouth, Cornwall
Pursuit of happiness
SIR – I agree with Kirsty Young’s views on contentment versus happiness (report, January 24). I’m sure that over-expectation of happiness is a cause of mental illness.
I lost one of my four beloved adult children, and now I am widowed. Without these people in my life I do not expect to achieve past levels of happiness again, but I am content to be content.
Marion Gilbert
Daventry, Northamptonshire
SIR – The happiness barometer is different for all of us. My daughter has just started her own business, which is proving to be very successful. Let’s speak up for young entrepreneurs who enjoy the work they do.
May I recommend to Kirsty Young a good walk on the beach or in the mountains, with the wind to blow all her worries away and a dog and children for company, and time to contemplate life’s natural wonders? I recommend Scotland or our wonderful Snowdonia National Park.
Dee Bentham
Harlech, Merionethshire
SIR – We tend to think of happiness as the obverse of unhappiness. But unhappiness can be a permanent and deepening state, whereas happiness is invariably transient.
Kirsty Young is wise to wish her children contentment.
Philip Styles
Cheddar, Somerset
SNP not representative
SIR – The early skirmishes in the Scottish referendum debate (report, January 25) have ignored the fact that the SNP won less than half the votes cast at last May’s Scottish Parliament general election on a 50.4 per cent turnout. This means that less than 23 per cent of eligible Scots implicitly voted for a referendum. Subsequent opinion polls have shown significant majorities against independence.
It is therefore imperative that the cross-party, pro-Union campaign is led by the most talented Scottish tacticians from each of the main parties. The three people best placed to successfully defend the United Kingdom and challenge Alex Salmond head-on are Michael Forsyth, Alistair Darling and Danny Alexander.
Philip Duly
Haslemere, Surrey
Stateside stripes
SIR – Keith Kneebone (Letters, January 25) might have noticed that English ties have a diagonal stripe rising from left to right, while American ties have stripes that rise right to left.
This was pointed out to me by my American brother-in-law who worked for American airline companies. Security officers would use this little-known fact as an indication of which country a passenger was from.
This information has been a curse because I can’t watch a film or TV programme without seeing if the costume designer has got it right or not.
Les McCallum
Isleworth, Middlesex
SIR – On a visit to Disneyland to celebrate my 50th birthday, I purchased a souvenir tie in a pleasant shade of mauve, ostensibly suitable for office wear. Closer inspection, however, revealed a discreet Mickey Mouse motif woven into the stripe. I derived much pleasure from wearing it at each monthly partners’ meeting thereafter.
David Lockwood
Worksop, Nottinghamshire
SIR – I have a collection of 365 ties. I am at a loss as to what to wear on February 29.
Martin Wigram
Bristol
Chunky chips are a waste of money and potatoes
SIR – The MP who complained that chips served in a bucket were “soggy” and that a tower formation was preferable (“Healthy appetite for moaning despite MPs’ £5.8m meal deal”, report, January 23) obviously has no regard for how much potato is wasted producing these chunky horrors.
I doubt the cooks care either. After all, it’s only taxpayers who subsidise the food.
David Eddy
Waterlooville, Hampshire
SIR – Chips are necessarily soggy, towered or bucketed. French fries are not.
Alan Carter
St Clement, Jersey
SIR – MPs say they want their chips in a tower. After their expenses shenanigans, maybe their wish should be granted.
M. Bolton
Birmingham
SIR – I am surprised that taxpayers subsidise MPs’ meals. Hospital doctors are expected to work very long hours with no provision for meals, subsidised or not.
These subsidies should be directed at NHS medical staff to ensure that they are in the best condition to look after patients.
Can we have a referendum on this issue?
Kevin Smith
Corfe, Somerset
SIR – At work, I always had to pay for my own lunches and often took a packed lunch. We should stop subsidising MPs. We know how the chips are stacked: in their favour.
Lynda Wigelsworth
Ossett, West Yorkshire
SIR – A glass of Merlot costs £2.35 in the Commons, due to the Commons Commission decreeing that prices must match high street pubs.
In which high street pub, anywhere in the south of England, can I get a glass of Merlot for £2.35?
Abigail Honeywell
Staines, Middlesex

Irish Times:

A pardon for Irish soldiers
Sir, – I was surprised to read Minister for Defence Alan Shatter has indicated that a pardon will be given to those soldiers who deserted Oglaigh na hÉireann during the Emergency period 1939/1945 (Front page, January 25th). There is a fundamental difference between those Irishmen who for whatever reason chose to directly join the British forces during the second World War and those who joined our Defence Forces and subsequently deserted during those years. It would appear that Mr Shatter does not accept this difference.
There should be no linking of the appalling horrors of the Holocaust and the proposed amnesty for those who deserted our country at a critical time.
How is it untenable that deserters were dishonourably discharged on returning to Ireland and as a result were excluded from State employment? Would Mr Shatter consider that the deserters should have been given parity for State employment with the circa 30,000 demobilised soldiers who had served our country loyally?
An amnesty for those who deserted will send out the wrong message to those currently serving in our Defence Forces and to those who will serve in the future. That such a proposal should be supported by the serving Minister for Defence defies credulity. – Yours, etc,
J FALLON Comdt DSM (Retd),
Jigginstown,
Naas, Co Kildare.
Sir, – While we should all be grateful for those who fought and defeated fascism during the second World War, including the circa 5,000 men who deserted the Irish Army to join the British army, the issue of a pardon is not as straightforward as your Editorial (January 26th) maintains.
Emergency Powers Order No 362 did not “strip these soldiers of pensions”; they lost their entitlements from the date they absconded. Not only were their entitlements paid in full up to that date but the Southern authorities made administrative provision to facilitate the payment of British pensions thereafter.
True, those deemed to have absconded (after a 180-day threshold, nearly six months), were barred from government-funded employment for a period of seven years. Apart from the stigma this was an irrelevance in practical terms since their desertion would have denied them a military discharge certificate, the necessary prerequisite for securing any employment. And in the context of the high unemployment and mass emigration of the post-war years it is a moot point as to what difference EPO 362 made in practical terms.
One of the grievances cited by campaigners (and your Editorial) is that these men were not dealt with through the normal channels of military justice. But would the rounding up, court martialing and imprisonment of nearly 5,000 men have been preferable, especially at a time when places like the Curragh were bursting at the seams with internees? Like neutrality itself, de Valera’s “one-size-fits-all” approach was a pragmatic (and fiscally neutral) response to a difficult and complex situation.
If there is to be a pardon we need to be clear what we are saying “sorry” for. Minister for Defence Alan Shatter’s speech on Monday at the opening of The Shoah in Europe exhibition provides a clue. “In the context of the Holocaust, Irish neutrality was a principle of moral bankruptcy”.
This is a nonsense and a classic case of reading history backwards. The war was fought by the Allies not to end the Holocaust but to defeat the Axis powers militarily. And, morally bankrupt or not, neutrality was the favoured policy of nearly every state at the time. Indeed, the two states that provided the vast bulk of Allied manpower, the USSR and US, were neutral – until they were attacked.
As a mark of respect for all those Irishmen who served at the time, whether on the beaches of Normandy or at home, this ill-conceived proposal should be dropped. – Yours, etc,
TOMMY GRAHAM,
Editor,
History Ireland,
Palmerston Place,
Dublin 7.
Sir, – Re: “Pardon on the way for Irish who fought, says Shatter” (Front page ,January 25th): My late father, George Watson, an Englishman from Co Durham, served in the fleet air arm of the British royal navy on small aircraft carriers escorting convoys in the North Atlantic and on arduous winter convoys to Arctic Russia. His ship was attacked by enemy submarines and aircraft numerous times and in winter in the freezing Arctic seas the ship was in danger of rolling over due to the weight of ice that formed on the decks or being overwhelmed by ferocious storms.
As with many veterans, my father rarely talked about his war-time experiences, but I remember vividly that he said the bravest men he served with during the war were men from the Republic of Ireland. When I asked him why, he said: “When they went home on leave to Ireland they were out of reach of the British military authorities and could have stayed safely at home if they wanted. There was nothing to force them to come back but even in the blackest days of the war when things were at their worst they always came back to fight. Every one of them without fail.”
Men like that are a rare breed and Ireland should be proud of them. Every one of them. – Yours, etc,
RICHARD WATSON,
Springfield,
Co Fermanagh.
Sir, – Pardon on way for Irish who fought, according to Minister for Defence, Alan Shatter (Front page, January 25th).
That is good news. But now let him take a good look at what happened to soldiers’ children, charged and taken to court by the NSPCC and the ISPCC, to be criminally charged and sentenced to an industrial school for up to 16 years or life. Yes, I mean life, because the nuns could have you sent to a Magdalene Laundry or a mental institution just because your father was in the British forces, and then have it put on your records (like it stated on my records that went in with me to the industrial school at the age of three years old). Letters that were sent to the industrial school from the parents were sent on to the Department of Education. So the children never got to see their parents; the Department of Education and the nuns made us orphans. When we were released from the industrial schools there was no family to turn to.
We also were to be given the worst treatment possible, because as you know Ireland did not like the British. The Irish government gave the British government the bill for the children and the British government paid.
The Irish people who did join the British forces must have been the bravest people going, knowing that they were very likely to face death; to find that if they made it back home to Ireland, their own government and people rejected them: and this is supposed to be a good Christian country.
Ireland did not just incarcerate its own children; it also incarcerated a lot of foreign children in the industrial schools as well.
Proud to be a British soldier’s child. – Yours, etc,
Prisoner 893 (Industrial school),
KATHY FERGUSON,
Jacox Crescent,
Kenilworth, England.
Irish doors ‘closed’ to Jewish families
Sir, – Regarding the doors of the Irish State being “firmly closed” to Jewish families from Nazi persecution (Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, Home News, January 24th): As a 21- year old German/Polish Jewish refugee in 1938, my late mother, Sabina Wyzsniak, was one of the lucky ones, in that prior to the start of the second World War she managed to reach these shores.
However, it was not any benign Irish State policy that eventually saved her. Rather, what undoubtedly saved her life were the simple compassionate actions of two Irish State-employed people: one, an official who simply refused in the end to “obey his orders” to deport her out of the State by putting her on a train from Dublin to Belfast, from where she would have been dispatched back to Germany or Poland; and the other, a garda who subsequently sheltered and protected her within the safety of his family as one of his own.
But had Irish government policy been implemented as planned my mother would have had her life taken away from her, a fate that befell her own mother, her 15-year-old sister, and most of her large extended family in Germany, Poland and France – for whom doors of every country were “firmly closed”. The only doors that did open for most of them in the end were those of the gas chambers.
Pointedly, Éamon de Valera’s closed door policy contrasts markedly with neutral Catholic Spain, where even a fascist leader such as Gen Franco directed his Spanish diplomats and consuls abroad to offer identity documents to persecuted Jews. This sympathetic Spanish policy, coupled with offering Spain as a temporary safe haven (for fleeing Jews who eventually obtained permanent refuge in other counties), resulted in an estimated 30,000 Jewish lives being saved.
This, of course, does not mean that de Valera lacked compassion. After all, he did manage to offer his sincere condolences to the German ambassador in Dublin on the death of Adolf Hitler – the dictator who invaded most of our European neighbours, and in the process deliberately targeted and systematically murdered many millions of innocent civilians they regarded as “Untermenschen” or “sub-humans”. – Yours, etc,
IVOR SHORTS,
Hermitage Close,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
Dipping into emigration debate
Sir, – In his excellent article “Politicians still steering clear of emigration debate”, (Opinion, January 25th), Prof Diarmaid Ferriter writes about the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan “daring to dip his toes into the waters of the emigration debate”.
He adds that the Minister joins the ranks of senior politicians who have “talked themselves into trouble by daring to give their assessment of Irish people’s reasons for emigrating”.
For the record, the Minister was not daring, he was dared.
I asked him a question on the subject at a news conference in Dublin last week, and he replied, in detail.
At the risk of extending the toe-dipping theme too far, Minister Noonan did not jump into troubled waters, he was politely pushed. – Yours, etc,
MARK SIMPSON,
BBC Ireland Correspondent,
Ormeau Avenue,
Belfast.
Bonds and bankruptcy
Sir, – Congratulations are due to the National Treasury Management Agency for creating a diversionary bond swap on the very day that it extracts €1.25 billion from our pockets to repay bonds in a defunct bank.
Any chance that Ireland could avail of the new bankruptcy proposals given that it has an unsustainable level of debt and clearly falls into the “can’t pay” category? – Yours, etc,
BRIAN FLANAGAN,
Ardmeen Park,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Holding on to retiring teachers
Sir, – E Molloy (January 24th) inquires “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 until the end of the school year”.
I would rather choose to acknowledge and applaud retiring teachers who have worked unselfishly and beyond contract. So, I thank the teacher who taught me and my 45 classmates in a class room with a turf stove in a small west Limerick town and who worked extra hours to prepare us for scholarship exams and who gave of their free time to train us on the GAA pitches.
If these teachers plan on taking early retirement, they have more than served their time and I wish them well. E Molloy’s censure might be better directed at the Government and the Department of Education for their poor sense of human resource planning. – Yours, etc,
JOHN GEARY,
Glen Abbey Road,
Mount Merrion,
Co Dublin.
A sticky encounter at the airport
Sir, – Paul O’Kane of Dublin Airport Authority (January 24th) assures us: “Any liquids or gels surrendered at Dublin airport security that are unopened are donated to charity”. Given that a reason for the ban on these substances is that they constitute an explosion risk, I wonder if the charities in receipt of these goods are aware of the risks involved. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN DAVENPORT,
Hilton Gardens,
Dublin 16.
Called to heel
Sir, – As one who daily cleans litter and fouling from a local public park, this writer is in a good position to assess the behaviour and attitudes of the general public.
Indeed Hibernia in duo partes divisa estbetween those who have a concern for others and those who regrettably have never given such matters a thought.
Both categories exist within all classes of persons regardless of income or gender with possibly a larger proportion of blame pertaining to those who should know better.
This is behaviour that should not only be inculcated at school but practised within the family. You cannot blame youngsters for acting as their parents might, or dogs who might well foul anywhere whether on a lead or not: their owners should always carry a waste bag with them wherever they go.
However, provision of more waste bins and regular collection to prevent filthy overflowing bins, which are the responsibility of local authorities, together with an action programme of local civic awareness would certainly do no harm. In short, locally we must clean up our own act. – Yours, etc,
LOUIS SMYTH,
Crosthwaite Park,
Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
Bloody Sunday 40th anniversary
Sir, – Forty years ago the Stormont government banned the Civil Rights march scheduled to take place in Derry on January 30th, 1972.   The ban was unsuccessful, but the British Tory government followed through its counter-insurgency strategy, which began with the introduction of internment in 1971, by shooting down peaceful marchers who came out on the streets in defiance of state terror. Today, another Tory government and its middle-management in Stormont denies human and civil rights by upholding internment while also trying, by some rather desperate means, to prevent people from marching again in defence of these rights.
On January 29th, we, as former Long Kesh internees, will join the march that will mark the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Derry.   We will march under a banner calling for an end to internment in 2012, and our numbers will include survivors of the “hooded treatment”, who were tortured in August 1971.   We call on every ex-internee and ex-prisoner to join us and help carry our banner.   People are now being held without trial in the six counties at the whim of an English Secretary of State.   This present-day internment is the same in all but name as that introduced in August 1971, and is the same type of repression that people marched against so bravely in January 1972.   We oppose internment no matter how the British decide to implement it – whether via the “suspension of licence”, the denial of pardons, the use of non-jury courts and the gamut of other repressive legislation at their disposal.
We will march in defence of human rights, in protest against present-day internment and in opposition to the torture that continues to be practised by the British state in Ireland and abroad.   In doing so, we will salute the memory of the brave men, women and children who once marched for our freedom and who were murdered, wounded and brutalised by the British army on the streets of Derry 40 years ago.   We will also remember our friends who died prematurely as a result of the torture – Pat Shivers from Toomebridge, Mickey Montgomery from Derry and Seán McKenna from Newry. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL DONNELLY (Derry), GERRY MCKERR, (Lurgan), PATRICK MCNALLY (Armagh), BRIAN TURLEY (Armagh),  FRANCIE MCGUIGAN, KEVIN HANNAWAY, JOE CLARK, JIM AULD, Belfast,
C/o Messines Park,
Derry.
Flashback to Achill
Sir, – A recent Irishman’s Diary (Hugh Oram, January 4th), which mentioned St Colman’s Industry and its founder Eva O’Flaherty, brought me back happy memories of the summer of 1948. With the loan of an elderly Baby Austin and the gift of some petrol coupons, we spent our honeymoon in Co Mayo. We stayed in the late lamented Amethyst Hotel in Keel and drove on the very rocky road to Keem Bay. We visited the thriving St Colman’s Industry and had tea with Ms O’Flaherty.
For years I enjoyed a hand- woven emerald green cardigan and scarf and often thought of the remarkable woman who brought such creative activity to such a remote and beautiful place. – Yours, etc,
LYNDALL LUCE,
Bushy Park Road, Dublin 6.
Beethoven’s shopping list
A chara, – Sight reading the recently pubLiszt breve and semibreve notes on Beethoven et al has caused us allegro and more than the minim of Faustration and concertnation. – Is mise,
CIARA Nic GABHANN,
Killyberry Road,
Bellaghy, Co Derry.
Sir, – Do you plan to bring this stream of punning to a close, or will it go on Fauré-ver and ever? – Yours, etc,
ADRIAN BRADY,
Menloe Gardens,
Blackrock, Cork.
Sir, – It’s Borodin on the ridiculous. I can’t Copland, it’s Weill. Any Chausson it will Weber stop? – Yours, etc,
PATRICK O’BYRNE,
Shandon Crescent,
Phibsborough, Dublin 7.
Sir, – I note it is high time The Irish Timesgot a Handel on this shopping Liszt of Beethoven and unRavel the story. It just Rattles me and has put me Orff your usual excellent score. I think he spent his money on the Barber instead. The letter-writers are a Mendelssohn and treblesome lot. – Yours, etc,
ANNE MCCLOSKEY,
Drogheda, Co Louth.
Sir, – Being Franck about Ludwig’s private Liszt, Weill he wouldn’t Telemann a thing nor Bruch any comments from Ireland or any Germann, he probably bought litres of Meyerbeer to assist him Wolf down the schnitzel.
Let’s bid Verdi-well to this Field of speculation. – Yours, etc,
RON BLACK,
Boulevard East,
North Bergen,
New Jersey, US.
Sir, – Arias all mad? Such un-entr’acte-ing, pun-ishing stuff! I Tell you my Head feels like broken Glass. I coda done with some baroque-a this morning! – Yours, etc,
OLIVER MCGRANE,
Marley Avenue,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
Sir, – Apropos of Beethoven’s shopping list, may I suggest that this subject is now ripe for decomposition. Allowing it to continue would be a new Loewe. Please say Gluck before I have to go into Haydn.
Bloch it now or I shall have to get Orff my head on Bellini – then my head would be Sor. – Yours, etc,
FRANK BYRNE,
Cormac Terrace,
Terenure, Dublin 6W.

Irish Independent:

Regarding the possible pardon of deserters from the Irish Defence Forces during World War Two recently announced by Defence Minister Alan Shatter: The most pertinent question we should ask ourselves is who do we pardon? The argument in favour seems to suggest that any Irish soldier who subsequently joined the British forces should be pardoned.
However, this point ignores the fact that not all of the deserters actually joined up again. Many left for higher-paying jobs in the labour-hungry British war industry. Do they deserve to be pardoned?
And, if not, does that mean that their contribution to the Allied victory is less than those who fought in the front line? We should not forget that some Irish soldiers simply deserted and went home to their families.
Another issue which needs to be addressed is the issue of the Local Defence Force. Irish military documents of the time show that the LDF’s effective strength was far below its paper strength for the duration of the war. The authorities had little doubt that the majority of these missing men had left for the UK. Are they to be pardoned also?
We also need to be wary of projecting our values backwards in time to a period where they do not fit.
The pardon campaign revolves around the fact that the deserters joined the fight against Nazism — that their contribution to the greater good outweighs their guilt for desertion.
I question whether this debate would even be taking place if thousands of Irish soldiers deserted and joined the Wehrmacht. We must be careful that we do not turn World War Two into a one-dimensional crusading conflict.
Finally, we need to understand Emergency Powers Order 362 in the context of the time. Dismissing the deserters from the Defence Forces was a way for De Valera to deal with them quickly and quietly. Enormous damage had been done to Ireland’s international image by neutrality, the American Note and De Valera’s visit to the German Legation in 1945. It can well be imagined that he was eager to avoid further negative publicity which would have resulted from prosecuting deserters.
The military context also needs to be considered. However ridiculous it appears to modern observers, the chiefs of staff reports throughout the Emergency make clear that the Irish military seriously considered a British invasion of Ireland a possibility. From their point of view, deserters were weakening the Defence Forces at a time of national emergency and joining the forces of a possible invader.
I have no hesitation in lauding the achievements of any Irish members of the Allied forces during the World War Two, but the deserter issue is one that needs to be very carefully considered.
Bernard Kelly
School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh

Well I must be off

best wishes John