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Compensation culture
Sir: The award of £4.5 million to the footballer Ben Collett mostly consists of lost potential earnings. Rod Liddle (Liddle Britain, 16 August) is worried not by the amount but by the fact that any compensation may have severe consequences for the game as a whole. Another way of looking at the matter is to consider that Mr Collett, who sounds like a refreshing change from the stereotype of the shallow, illiterate footballer, is now about to enter Leeds University, where new career opportunities will open on graduation.
Eventually Collett may find a lucrative city job and earn even more than he could have as a footballer. The injury could mean that he will end up financially better off, even without any compensation. Instead of receiving a payment, there could be an argument for him choosing to pay some money, perhaps to a sporting charity, if his future wealth exceeds that forecast by his legal team.
Laurence Kelvin
London W9
Confrontation the only way
Sir: I deeply admire Philip Bobbitt’s writings on constitutional orders and counter-terrorism, but his essay (‘A portent of perils to come’, 16 August) was off the mark in several respects. His claim that after 1991 ‘we were preparing for Russia to be an enemy once again’ does not square with the persistent Russian coercion — sanctions, support for separatism, intimidation — of its ‘near abroad’ in the 1990s. Revanchism preceded Nato wariness, because it had never ceased.
Second, Bobbitt is too timid to push his line of thought to its logical conclusion: that if Japan, Poland and Germany are worthy of collective defence by virtue of being ‘states of consent’, so too is post-2003 Georgia. Nato membership is beside the point, as the case of Japan shows. A consistent policy would see British and American troops guarding Tbilisi.
Third, it is astonishing that Bobbitt can conclude that ‘Nothing can have a higher priority than organising an international system that avoids confrontation.’ If the price of that is complicity in only the second UN-era annexation, then the only humane policy can be confrontation.
Shashank Joshi
Department of Government, Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Sir: Professor Philip Bobbitt refers to ‘the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939’. Finland has never been invaded by the Soviet Union. The Finns withstood the Soviet attack in the famous Winter War of 1939–40.
Carola Sandbacka
Swansea
Missing words
Sir: I have no doubt that Matthew Parris (Another Voice, 16 August) will be delighted to hear that the word smirr, meaning drizzle, is a Scots word which has by no means fallen into disuse. Likewise, he will be overjoyed to learn that the Scots word knapdarloch, referring to the matted hair or knots of dung adhering to the rear end of an animal (and also, although hopefully less commonly, around the human anus), is also in common use throughout Scotland’s agricultural areas. Neither of these words are native to Orkney or Shetland.
John Duff
Braemar, Aberdeenshire
Sir: For words meaning ‘the day before yesterday’ and ‘the day after tomorrow’, Matthew Parris might use the Dutch expressions: ‘ereyesterday’ and ‘overmorrow’.
Jolijt Hutchison
By email
Carbs vs cars
Sir: I enjoy Rod Liddle but my 13-year-old grandson points out a flaw in his recent piece (‘Green taxes are witless nods to fashions’, 9 August). He notes that, pace Liddle, it is not protein but carbohydrates that give you the energy to walk to the shops. So the killing of cows and the associated packaging for supermarkets doesn’t come into it. Driving a car is indeed less environmentally sound than walking.
Clive Turner
Paphos, Cyprus
Friendly bombs?
Sir: While I respect the right of John Mustoe (Letters, 9 August) to call my article on Vientiane ignorant and offensive, I suspect I am not alone in thinking that those two adjectives perfectly describe his assertion that Laos would have welcomed more bombs during the Vietnam war.
Robert Beaumont
Minskip, Yorkshire
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