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Bad times
Sir: Rod Liddle’s ‘How to get stabbed’ (Liddle Britain, 5 July) was perceptive and spot on in all respects. The last three homicides I attended involved multiple stabbings and sexual assault. All three perpetrators had imbibed vast quantities of lager and had snorted lines of cocaine. They had spent hours clubbing and having what is called ‘a good time’. All three victims had been similarly engaged using skunk cannabis and alcohol.
These six individuals were part of the 24-hour drinking culture, with alcohol available into the small hours in pubs, clubs and supermarkets. Those of us on the front line are seeing more violence year on year. As I write (4 July) yet another south London teenager has been stabbed to death. It is all very well Her Majesty’s Government telling us that ‘overall crime is falling’. This is cold comfort to the parents bereaved by these atrocious crimes.
Dr Robin Moffat
Police Surgeon, London
Consultant in Clinical Forensic Medicine
Brighton, East Sussex
Brown study
Sir: Matthew Parris is only partially right in his analysis of why the deep-rooted deficiencies of Gordon Brown were ignored in his apparently effortless rise to the premiership (Another Voice, 5 July). In fact, his bullying, foul-mouthed temper tantrums were widely known and commented upon for years — not the least example of which was Tom Bower’s biography in 2004. Brown is very good at reducing lesser mortals to tears. One has only to read the account of his first day at the Treasury to understand the combination of ruthlessness, arrogance and ill manners that go to make up ‘Gordon’.
Politically, his confused cocktail of old Labour attitudes, commitment to value for money and weak grasp of management accountancy is at the root of current economic failure. But the great tragedy of Brown is that although he is bright and intelligent he is not as bright as he thinks he is and he has an emotional intelligence nearing zero. He has, from childhood, been allowed to believe that he was especially gifted, cleverer than those around him and, for the past decade, cocooned in the Treasury unchallenged and surrounded by sycophants like the unspeakable Ed Balls. If only Blair had not surrendered social policy exclusively to the Treasury and moved Brown on to other, more difficult portfolios such as Defence or Foreign Affairs, the New Labour story might look very different today.
Dr Derek Hawes
Epping, Essex
Try before you buy
Sir: Charles Moore’s wife (The Spectator’s Notes, 5 July), in refusing to pay the postal surcharge on an unfranked postcard after she had looked at it, exactly explains why the penny post was invented. Before postage stamps, which for the first time introduced paying at the point of departure, and not on arrival, punters invented all sorts of canny codes to go on the outside of the letter. The recipients, having read the codes, politely returned the letter to the postman, saying they didn’t wish to pay to receive it, and the postman departed empty-handed.
Dominic Low
Fakenham, Norfolk
Not mocked
Sir: I would like to think that it did not occur to you for one moment that the front cover of your last issue would be deeply offensive to Russian, Greek or any other Orthodox Christians. I can understand that we are such a small minority that we can be safely disregarded, but ‘God is not mocked’ as St Paul teaches. Icons are holy objects that depict holy people, and treating them in this sacrilegious way brings its own consequences.
Nicholas K. Rushton
Liverpool
Break point
Sir: I am surprised that Roger Alton (Sport, 5 July) fell, like most of the media, for the obvious over Alla Kudryavtseva’s claim that ‘I don’t like her outfit’, especially as he is no fan of Maria Sharapova. It took Tracy Austin to point out what every woman watching must surely have realised, when she told John McEnroe and Sue Barker, ‘I think she meant to say something else.’ I would go further and suggest that Kudryavtseva meant to say something less — with ‘outfit’ being the extra word.
Clarke Hayes
Hastings, East Sussex
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