Letters

Correspondence

Letter of the Week

In defence of Dr Johnson

George Eaton (Autumn Books, 12 October) absurdly rebukes Samuel Johnson's latest biographer, David Nokes, for letting "Johnson's reactionary Toryism and sectarianism pass largely uncriticised".

That could be because Nokes is very much better informed - on the Johnson who denounced the slave trade before William Wilberforce was born and who, 200 years before Beveridge, advocated "a decent provision for the poor". Again, if Johnson was sectarian, why did he write so mildly about Catholics and the Mass?

Eaton dismissively wraps up all this "reaction" as "Tory". A first look into 18th-century history would show him how the meaning of that word has changed out of sight.
Edward Pearce
York

Blond moment
Phillip Blond (Red Tory, 2 November) writes of the need to "square the circle" of tackling poverty while spending less. His column goes on to demonstrate that this operation is as impossible in politics as it is in geometry. Blond talks variously about the need for "new Tory thinking", "a new economic model" or to "rethink the way we organise society". But by failing to provide the slightest detail as to what these great new approaches may look like or what they involve, his analysis is reduced to smoke and mirrors.

This theorising may pass as useful in the think-tank world or in Tory high command. Meanwhile, in real life, people need the concrete action of continued spending on public services and a fiscal system that requires the better-off to do more to help the less fortunate.
Richard Mollet
Labour Party PPC for South-West Surrey

Crime-time TV
Peter Hain outdid himself with his reported reaction to Nick Griffin's presence on BBC's Question Time (Politics Column, 2 November). To quote: "Yet what normal party has a convicted criminal as its leader?" What a short memory the ex-secretary of state for Northern Ireland
has. I wonder if this will jog it - Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Sarah McNeill
Craigavon, County Armagh

Manifesto matters
As a fellow Cumbrian, I couldn't agree more with Jamie Reed MP (Letters, 2 November) when he states that "England, too, is essentially a progressive country, despite its tendency to be governed by an overpopulated and largely conservative south-eastern bloc". So will Reed now help to tackle this imbalance by ensuring that Labour's 1997 manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons becomes a reality?
John Reardon
Green Party candidate for Carlisle

Tell it like it is
It was sad to find Will Self (Madness of Crowds, 26 October) and Graeme Thomson (Critics,
26 October) using the discredited and marginalising expressions "schizophrenic" and "schizophrenia". Readers look
to the NS to tell it how it is, and in good humour, not to recycle reactionary and stigmatising tabloid-style clichés. Finding these words in what was otherwise another excellent edition interrupted the enjoyment of my train journey rather more than the inevitable Quiet Carriage mobile-phone user, two seats away.
William McMorran
London SE24

Hideous kinky
I greatly enjoyed Jason Cowley's trashing of Philip Roth's latest novel, The Humbling (Books, 2 November), which must be a leading contender - once again - for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize. However, my weekly treat in reading the NS is Nicholas Lezard's Down and Out in London. Not only is it horribly funny and written in the true Orwellian vein of miserabilist journalism, it cheers up one
of my best friends who is also 50, and in the throes of his own hideous divorce.
Amanda Craig
London NW1

Count me out
I am not surprised that Tony Benn struggled to answer the question "What is your greatest achievement?" (NS Interview, 2 November). Is it that futile gesture, the short-lived, ever-doomed Meriden Motorcycle Co-operative? Is it the production of supersonic flight on Concorde for the super-rich, which utterly misread the future of air travel? (Clearly it never occurred to Benn that the masses would want to start flying one day as well.) Is it closing down pirate radio stations? Or perhaps it's the obsequious interview with Saddam Hussein.

Benn would like to think that he encouraged us. Count me out.
Simon Jarrett
Harrow, Middlesex

Teenage kicks
I read Tim Jackson's piece on consumerism and climate change with interest ("I shop, therefore I harm", Ten Days to Save the World, 26 October), in particular because he gives one of the few mentions in your Copenhagen conference supplement to the role of young people. He is right that our teenagers are under immense peer pressure to reinforce their social standing through what they buy, wear, talk on and listen to. But teenagers don't start off like this. This is behaviour they learn from the rest of us. It suits multinationals to use our youngest generations as pawns
in their viral marketing games, regardless of the consequences to them as individuals, or to the planet. However, some young teenagers are far more aware of the impact of their actions than the rest of the world appears to be.

The Hansard Society recently ran a forum about climate change, and the young people involved did not have a "consume now, worry later" attitude. They thought it was up to them to act, that "scientists should be working out how to save our planet, not how to improve the unimprovable phone", and that Gordon Brown should set a better example by using less energy. They were far more passionate and inventive in their methods to tackle climate change than many adults seem to be - yet I fear that if adults can't think of another vision of the good life to sell to children, in ten years' time their environmental instincts will be lost.
Beccy Allen
Hansard Society
London WC2

Why no?
Where's the vino? Roger Scruton was a grumpy old codger with an irritating predilection for claret, but must you chuck the baby out with the old soak? Why not find someone else - preferably someone unafraid of an obscure appellation, who doesn't run shrieking in fear from a bolshie New World icon, and maybe even someone who eats with their wine and wishes to share that experience - to replace Scruton? Your back section is so good: elegantly written, thoughtful and intelligently planned. But at the moment it looks a little parched.
Nina Caplan
Via email

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