Letters | 22 August 2009

Conservative progress

Sir: So the notion of ‘progressive’ conservatism is roiling British politics these days (Politics, 15 August). Well, come on over to the colonies, mate, and get educated! We in Canada have had ‘progressive conservative’ political parties, at both the provincial and federal levels of government, for decades — they’re even officially named Progressive Conservatives.

Sadly, though, our ‘progressive’ conservatives tend, over time, to become indistinguishable from big-government nanny-state lefties. That’s why we in Canada have a derogatory term for ‘progressive conservatives’: we call them Red Tories, and we were doing so long before anyone in your Labour party imagined that they had coined a new slur.

Larry Hamelin
Toronto, Canada

Sir: Fraser Nelson may be interested to learn that the phrase ‘progressive conservatism’ was coined by Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz (1872-1946) to define his own theological position, as ‘religious advance without loss of traditional Jewish values’. This has a reassuring ring to it, but its precise meaning has proved elusive. One can see why it is an attractive phrase for politicians.

Benjamin Elton
London NW4

Sunday football

Sir: Richard Sanders’s ‘The great football myth’ (8 August) reminded us that Sunday schools also played a part is the history of football. The first Sunday schools were founded in 18th-century England as a way to educate and teach literacy to poor children. Some of these also offered sports and three major English soccer clubs — Everton, Aston Villa and Fulham — grew out of the Sunday schools.

Ray Hattingh, director, SAARP
125 Vasco Boulevard, Goodwood, South Africa

Rod Liddle’s python

Sir: Just as I was about to come gunning for Rod Liddle (15 August) on behalf of my two cats I had a sudden wonderful thought.

If it’s OK for a python to roam free in private gardens, then presumably there’s no law against having an anaconda instead. Left to its own devices it could keep the area free of children, leaving the rest of us to glory in the peace and quiet. No more mindless, ear-splitting shrieks and screams. No bicycles, motorised scooters or skaters continuously passing the door. Bliss! The risk to local cats and dogs would be minimal since the anaconda would, hopefully, have bigger prey within its sights.

Barbara Cowell
London SE4

Toytown Britain

Sir: Harry Mount (‘Beware the rise of Baby Chic’, 8 August) is right. Every time I see yet another bus sign that reads ‘Sorry, I’m not in service’ I grind my (certainly not milk) teeth at the conspiracy that seems to have taken us all on a one-way trip to Toytown and toddler-dom.

Serena Moore
Charlbury, Oxon

Sugar and spice

Sir: Despite being beaten and bullied at his grandfather’s loathsome preparatory school in Cirencester (or perhaps, heaven forbid, because of it!), I find myself springing to the side of Quentin Letts regarding Lord Sugar’s threat of legal action against him (Letters, 8 August). May I suggest, in case your correspondent’s plea to Lord Sugar falls on deaf ears, that a fund be set up so that Quentin Letts can properly fight his corner? My cheque for £10 is enclosed.

Gavin Marriott
Lower Foyle, Hampshire

Sir: When I studied law, I was taught that if you could prove that a statement was true, that was a virtually impregnable defence against an accusation of defamation. Quentin Letts is accused of calling Alan Sugar a telly peer who doesn’t seem to have an enormous intellect. As a former university don, I could understand if he were accused of minimising the truth. Sugar, in his TV appearances, has not merely demonstrated the truth of Letts’s comment, but has laced them with crudeness and rudeness, and I would be happy to give evidence against him in any action.

Kevin Holland
Westville, South Africa

Doesn’t rhyme with Dot

Sir: For once Dot Wordsworth (Mind your language, 8 August) is surely wrong in suggesting that what I suppose we must call the t-word should rhyme with ‘what’: a satirical rhyme of the 17th-century rhymes it with ‘cardinal’s hat’ — that being the passage that led Browning into his ridiculous blunder in ‘Pippa Passes’ in which he presumed that it was an item of religious headgear.

John Hart
Ox Hill Lea, Malvern

Grieving sons

Sir: As someone who lost his father very suddenly ten years ago I read with tear-stained eyes Matthew Parris’s article in last week’s edition (Another voice). He is so right — you don’t have to move on and compartmentalise, you learn to cope but never forget. It was the most emotional bit of writing I have read for a very long time and something all grieving sons should read no matter how long ago it was when their father died.

John Malcolm
Bridgnorth, Shropshire

Taki and the Wehrmacht

Sir: Mostly I’m a fan of Taki, but his love affair with the Wehrmacht needs blowing up. The monstrous behaviour of so many members of that army group, during their advance east, their retreat, also in their retreat across Europe after D-Day, has been well documented in many books, including the one I am reading now, Liberation, by William I. Hitchcock — ordinary innocent citizens, including women and children, shot or burnt alive again and again, often out of spite. Taking a positive view of this army and its campaign is an insult to the many thousands who suffered at its brutal hands. Come off it, Taki!

Michael Barnett
Freiburg, Germany