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Sir: I write as an inmate of Rampton from March 1993 to October 2004, and can only conclude that Rod Liddle’s likening of John Sweeney losing his rag at a Scientologist (Liddle Britain, 19 May) to an inmate at Rampton’s reaction to having his porn allowance stopped is an attempt at humour. For Mr Liddle’s information, while some 10 per cent of paranoid schizophrenics commit suicide, it is my contention that the percentage of schizophrenics who would rail in the manner Mr Liddle suggests to be something less than 10 per cent.
Mr Liddle’s poor judgment in stating that, ‘Perhaps this is the way forward for all of the Corporation’s news and current affairs presenters — to abuse interviewees…. Brings in the punters’ is matched by his assertion that, ‘In fact, there are certain sorts of people whom the BBC thinks it’s all well and good to be fairly nasty to.’
Robert Mutty
Thorpe St Andrew’s, Norfolk
Dreaming of BR
Sir: Matthew Parris (Another voice, 26 May) asserts that ‘few of us would now dream of going back to British Rail’. Many of us dream of little else. Those among us, for example, who are used to standing for our entire journey every day, whose trains skip stops in order to arrive at the final station on time, who miss a connection and cannot take the next train because our ticket is only valid for one company, who are refused even nugatory compen-sation when things go wrong because the various companies pass the buck, or who notice that trains up to 10 minutes late are recorded as ‘on time’ (BR allowed five minutes).
Ken Bishop
Liverpool
Sir: Matthew Parris goes a step too far in congratulating John Major for privatising the railways. The operating model was botched, passenger fares have risen exponentially, and far from the public sector having divested itself of an enormous undertaking, we now find ourselves paying vast subsidies to private companies to provide a poor service. The railways are not a commercial undertaking, but a vital and key strategic part of our economy which was sadly let down by their privatisation.
Andrew Deveney
Back Road, Suffolk
Powell’s poll
Sir: I was glad to read Allan Massie citing Anthony Powell (Life and letters, 26 May) as evidence that novel-writing is supposed to be painstaking. The late B.A. Young, for many years an assistant editor at Punch, once told me that when Powell was the magazine’s literary editor he was writing his novel At Lady Molly’s and was concerned about what exactly General Conyers should play on his cello. Apparently Powell spent days roaming round the office posing this problem to his colleagues before finally coming up with ‘Air on a G String’.
It’s a salutary lesson for students of creative writing, but, in my experience, seldom accepted.
Tim Heald
Fowey, Cornwall
The wrong bird
Sir: According to Cressida Connolly, reviewing Rosie Boycott’s Our Farm (Books, 26 May), Mistress Boycott is interested in everything, including why robins’ eggs are blue.
There are only two possible answers to this question: neither lady can tell a robin from a hedgesparrow, or both are mentally on the far side of the Atlantic, where robins are thrushes.
P.G. Urben
Kenilworth, Warwickshire
Draining the meters
Sir: Please tell Theodore Dalrymple (Global warning, 2 June) that councils could easily provide car-park meters that give change. The trouble is each machine would need a float of £500 in small change, which would be routinely lifted at night by drug addicts to feed their habit.
Dominic Low
Barney, Fakenham, Norfolk
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