Already a subscriber? Log in
I should add that he was a man of moral discipline, sincerely held. However, his love of his boat proved more powerful than his principles. He contacted the previous owner and told him to come and collect ‘some forgotten furniture’.
The owner came and collected, and that was the end of the matter.
Michael Nicholson
Grayswood, Surrey
Brown’s scorched earth
Sir: Fraser Nelson (‘How to fund tax cuts’, 15 November) and your leading article both point out the desirability of tax cuts, but acknowledge that there is little scope for them. Gordon Brown is employing the classic scorched earth policy of one who knows he is going to lose the next battle but is looking ahead to defeating an enemy weakened by fighting over denuded ground. There is one way to fight this strategy — lose the next election.
By supporting sitting Tory MPs but putting up joke candidates in marginal seats it should be possible to arrange a Labour majority in the next parliament, when the sky will be darkened with chickens coming home to roost. Brown will be left having to explain to a distressed electorate that our serious man has emptied the granaries, eaten the seed corn and the bills are now due. Even Mandelson couldn’t spin that one!
J. Monk
Via email
Sir: I approve of Fraser Nelson’s multipronged proposals for cuts in government spending. As an additional, simple but surely effective measure, might I propose that anyone with any of the words ‘Diversity’, ‘Equality’ and ‘Outreach’ in their job title be immediately relieved of their ‘duties’? This would be win-win as, apart from the vast savings, there would undoubtedly be a benefit to the sum total of human happiness.
Philip Brooksby
Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan
Radio days
Sir: Kate Chisholm is wrong (Arts, 15 November) when she says the financing of the BBC World Service by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office is a hangover from the days when it was known as the Empire Service. The Empire Service, which was started on 19 December 1932, was financed by the BBC. Not until the Arabic Service started on 3 January 1938 did the Foreign Office provide any finance to overseas services of the BBC.
Not only did the British government refuse the BBC’s request for finance for the Empire Service, but because of the economic crisis it asked the BBC for a voluntary contribution to the National Exchequer. Amazingly, the BBC agreed to contribute £50,000 by March 1932 and £150,000 in the course of the financial year 1932/3. It was as part of that deal that the BBC agreed ‘to carry the cost of Empire broadcasting’.
Michael Nelson
London W11
Upmarket crudity
Sir: Apologists for the BBC cite the current adaptation of Little Dorrit as showing the high quality of its production. Perhaps they missed the line, inserted by the scriptwriter, in which Flora Finching speculates about the genitals of Chinese women. Andrew Davies is more subtle than Ross and Brand, but every bit as lewd.
Robert Solomon
London NW3
Some rump
Sir: James Forsyth (‘Tory lessons for the Republicans’, 15 November) refers to Barack Obama’s 365 electoral college votes compared with John McCain’s 173. In terms of the popular vote, though, the Democrats won 52 per cent and the Republicans 48 per cent. This does not support Forsyth’s view that the Republicans are now a rump party. It does, however, support the conclusion that the electoral college votes do not represent the popular will, but then that was the Founding Fathers’ original intention.
Garth R.A. Wiseman
London SE11
Wrong song
Sir: Having reread my letter (Letters, 15 November) about Matthew Parris’s article on (among other things) Australian birds, something struck me as amiss. So I checked the original source rather than repeat my lazy Googling of last week. Alas, it was not the skylark’s song of which Hopkins wrote the lines ‘through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring the ear’ but that of the humble thrush, in the poem ‘Spring’.
My apologies for two mistakes in one letter pointing out the mistakes of another. Pride comes before a fall.
Alison Pressley
Sydney, New South Wales
Also in Society
Also by The Spectator
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in