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Sir: As someone who got married after a 20-month courtship, I am staggered that some websites advise that 24 months are required to arrange a wedding (‘The price of true love’, 29 August). I am reminded of a former colleague who, one December, when asked by a taxi driver if she had any New Year’s resolutions, told him that she had two, the second of which was to get married that year. When the cabbie asked what her other half thought of her plan, she confessed that she hadn’t yet found a suitable boyfriend, and, after only a brief hesitation, added: ‘That’s my first resolution.’
Kathy Walton
Herts
Worse and worserer
Sir: It isn’t just Attention Deficit Disorder (leading article, 5 September). For university students, the golden ticket is dyslexia. We dons are legally required to ignore illiteracy in marking the work of the many students who have a dyslexia diagnosis. But it would be very odd to penalise students whose writing is poor but not quite poor enough to count as dyslexic, while not penalising others whose writing is even worse. (In any case, in practice, the students with a dyslexia diagnosis seem to be not the ones whose writing is worst but the ones who know how to play the system.) So by now the profession has abandoned the attempt to encourage literacy in our graduates. Their employers must be tearing their hair out, but the Disability Discrimination Act gives us no choice.
Geoffrey Sampson
Sussex
Sir: May I suggest that you are missing the point (a rare occurrence) when you say that Attention Deficit Disorder is a fine present for a parent to give a child? Surely it is the child who is giving the parent a fine additional income in the very generous benefits afforded to such sufferers. This may well go some way towards explaining the increase of ADD in this country, which is not reflected on the continent, where a quick slap will put the matter to rights before it has a chance to develop.
Charles Mutty
Norwich
Bertie Wooster, PM
Sir: Sadly, far from Mr David Cameron being a possible reincarnation of John Steed of Avengers fame (‘Lessons from The Avengers’, 5 September), a straw poll among fellow octogenarian ex-service personnel reveals that most think he leans more towards Bertie Wooster. Pleasant and likeable enough — but is Osborne a match for the indispensable Jeeves?
Robert Vincent
Hants
Cuban cuisine
Sir: Spectator readers should not be put off visiting Havana by Elliot Wilson’s ill-informed comments. Communism is no more successful there than elsewhere, but $35 a head will get you a delicious dinner with wine from Spain or Chile at the (state-owned) El Templete in old Havana or the (private enterprise) Cocina de Liliam in Miramar. And he’s wrong about the hordes of tourists. There are no Americans, just Canadians, a few Europeans and mostly Hispanics from all parts. Of course, this will change when Obama allows the US citizens of non-Cuban origin to return, so go now!
Robin Worth
By email
Stalin’s tactics
Sir: Nick Winton’s theory (Letters, 5 September) that the atom bombs were dropped on Japan to forestall an invasion by the Russian army must surely be wrong, since Stalin did not declare war on Japan until two days after Hiroshima was destroyed; a classic case of waiting on the sidelines until the combatants exhausted themselves, prior to moving in to pick up the spoils.
We are so fond of recalling that the USA entered the war ‘late’, and that Russia bore the brunt of resistance to the Axis powers, that we tend to forget that Russia had no Battle of the Atlantic to fight, no bomber offensive to prosecute and no war to speak of in south-east Asia or the Pacific.
Joe Hayward.
Stanmore, Middlesex
Terrorists’ reward
Sir: The Spectator (leading article, 5 September) says, ‘It should be a basic principle that terrorists who kill British citizens should be punished and serve their sentence in full.’ Hear! Hear! But where does The Spectator stand on the terrorists who have been left unpunished and indeed richly rewarded in Northern Ireland?
Tebbit
House of Lords
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