Spectator articles from February 2006

Spectator archives from February 2006

Trust democracy.
February 4, 2006... The success of Hamas in the elections for the Palestinian Authority has provided a joyous opportunity for that small but sizeable body of opinion in the West which considers the Arab world unfit for democracy. The sight of the terrorist leaders...

Portrait of the week.
February 4, 2006... The government was twice defeated in the Commons in votes on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, making its provisions less broad. The government produced a form with a box to tick for people who wanted to prevent lifesaving treatment being...

Diary.(UK is a two-nation state)
February 4, 2006... The other day I went into the National Portrait Gallery gift shop to buy a postcard of George Orwell. There wasn't one. I then looked for Anthony Powell. Again, no luck. V.S. Naipaul wasn't there either. In the course of my search, however, I...

Cameron's battleground against Brown: civil society versus the state.(POLITICS)
February 4, 2006... One of the most successful smear campaigns in the modern era concerns Margaret Thatcher. It was alleged that she stood for a narrow, selfish individualism without reference to wider duties and responsibilities. This claim was based in part on a...

The spectator's note.(Rwanda)
February 4, 2006... Cyangogu, Rwanda It says something for the change that David Cameron has already wrought in his party that I find myself in Rwanda courtesy of Andrew Mitchell, the Conservatives' international development spokesman, and Lord Ashcroft (who...

Life, liberty and the pursuit of terrorism: Julian Manyon on why the Palestinians voted for Hamas--and why the terrorists will not be transformed into politicians by the realities of power.
February 4, 2006... Jerusalem Fundamentalists of any stripe are not to my taste but the leading ideologues of Hamas have a grisly fascination. Mild-mannered, often well-educated, including doctors and scientists in their ranks, they are nonetheless...

Bush: Palestinians good, but not great.
February 4, 2006... Washington In the 48 hours before George W. Bush took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, the presenter for ABC news was blown up in his flatbed truck by a roadside device near Baghdad, Martin...

Censorship wasn't all bad: restraints on speech have been abolished, says Daniel Wolf, but we live in a new age of social control.
February 4, 2006... We live in a culture that at one moment celebrates stupidity as wisdom, ugliness as beauty, insensitivity as honesty, offence as virtue, yet, in the next, sees dissent from respectable opinion as a cause for suspicion and the expression of...

A game of soldiers: the Europeans have betrayed Afghanistan, says Max Hastings. The enhanced Nato deployment is a charade.
February 4, 2006... The Defence Secretary John Reid's announcement that Britain is to send several thousand more troops to Afghanistan has prompted hand-wringing both inside and outside the armed forces. Civilians fear that Britain is being sucked ever deeper into...

Waiting for the British.(Afghanistan)
February 4, 2006... Lashkar Gar Afghanistan In a dusty clearing on the outskirts of Helmand's capital, the US army's Provincial Reconstruction Team had set up a mobile aid station. As we approached, a Humvee gunner swung his machine-gun towards us and shouted...

Ancient & modern.
February 4, 2006... In view of the new Tory leader David Cameron's call for 'social enterprise zones', where local communities deal with local social problems, it may be worth reminding him of the alimentary schemes that the Romans developed for helping the...

How growth stunts us: Aidan Rankin questions an economic dogma that unites Left and Right.
February 4, 2006... In mid-20th-century Melanesia there was a brief but traumatic fashion for 'cargo cults'. These movements often had political as well as spiritual dimensions. They did not offer salvation in the form of 'pie in the sky', but as the promise of...

The plane truth: the greens are again attacking cheap airlines--a sign, says Brendan O'Neill, of ignorance, mean-spiritedness and snobbery.
February 4, 2006... I could be in Galway this afternoon on a flight costing 50.99 [pounds sterling] plus tax. It never used to be like that. Growing up as the children of Irish immigrants in north London in the 1980s, my brothers and I loved spending our summers...

Second opinion.(human rights)(Column)
February 4, 2006... What a human catastrophe is the doctrine of human rights! Not only does it give officialdom an excuse to insinuate itself into the very fabric of our lives, but it has a profoundly corrupting effect upon youth, who have been indoctrinated into...

Mind your language.
February 4, 2006... The celeb Angelina Jolie is pregnant and was photographed last week with a tattoo around the growing bump that read, Quod me nutrit me destruit--What feeds me destroys me. A strange motto in the ekes, you might think. Not since David Beckham...

Brains not included: Rod Liddle marvels at the lunacies of inclusivity.
February 4, 2006... Sad news: apparently the forthcoming Festival of Muslim Cultures, which we have all been looking forward to, will not be accepting representation from any gay and lesbian Muslim associations. Yes, I know, I know. I hadn't been aware that...

Classics cups 2005.
February 4, 2006... The Undergraduate section of the Cup drew a disappointing field over the year, but there was nothing unworthy about the Cup winner--David Butterfield (Christ's College, Cambridge) from Round 1, with a brilliantly Ciceronian letter written by...

Turning science into profit: Sir Richard Sykes of Imperial College tells Martin Vander Weyer that Britain's world-class scientists hold the key to future economic success.(Interview)
February 4, 2006... Approaching Imperial College through the long tunnel from South Kensington station, I recalled that the last time I met the College's rector, Sir Richard Sykes, he was chief executive of Glaxo, the drugs group, and we were lunch guests of the...

Poles apart.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Lady Belhaven and Stenton Sir: I understand why Mary Wakefield decided to speak to the Federation of Poles in Great Britain ('The misery of the Polish newcomers', 28 January), but Andrzej Tutkaj does not speak for the Polish community...

A far greater harm.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Alexandra Gibbs Sir: Ross Clark ('Reefer madness', 28 January) disagrees with 'the libertarian view that cannabis is... a harmless bit of fun'. Many of us libertarians take the view that all drugs per se have their harms but that it...

The truth of war.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Jane Kelly Sir: So what is the truth about the Great War? Come along then, tell us. I haven't yet read The Great War." Myth and Memory by Dan Todman, but Hugh Cecil who reviewed it (Books, 21 January) obviously felt that Todman had...

Talking to Tehran.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Dr John B. Sheldon Sir: In a better world Andrew Gilligan's call for the United States to offer Iran a 'grand bargain' in order to provide a way out of the current impasse ('Washington must talk to Tehran', 21 January) would make...

The Swedish Mozart.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Professor John Poynton Sir: Peter Phillips (Arts, 21 January) regrets that Mozart's 250th anniversary will overshadow other anniversaries. Most regrettable of all, I would suggest, is the failure to mark the 250th anniversary of the...

Sacrifice.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From William Kelley Sir: While I enjoyed Taki's High life column last week, I feel I ought to point out that both Eton (1,157 killed) and Rugby (689 killed) lost more former pupils in the Great War than Harrow (644 killed). This is in no...

Power lines.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Eric Brown Sir: In 'The Spectator's Notes' (21 January), Charles Moore writes: 'The only part of mainland Britain where the North/South divide governs everything is Wales.' What about London? Eric Brown Bromley, Kent

Band of brothers.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Christopher Arthur Sir: Reading Leo McKinstry's very sensible piece about Ruth Kelly ('Hate, hypocrisy and hysteria', 21 January) and the pacdophile witch-hunt, I could not help casting my mind back to my days in a public school back...

Divide and rule.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Martyn Marriott Sir: Rod Liddle ('The politics of Pleasantville', 21 January) chooses a poor example of political correctness in stating that Africa's problems are really down to bad governance, not the legacy of imperialism. Bad...

Ashamed.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Anthony Howard Sir: Gordon Brown asks us to be patriotic and to plant Union flags in our gardens. He should have thought of that before he supported his Prime Minister in taking this country to war on a foundation of lies to...

Faith.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From John Bunting Sir: Dr Chris Scanlan's letter (21 January) and Richard Dawkins's effusions show the extent to which fundamentalism is now taken as representative of religion as a whole. If a thing is demonstrably true, I don't need...

Fallout.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... From Stuart Williams Sir: If I were a multibillionaire (And another thing, 21 January), I would buy an atom bomb from Mr Ahmadinejad and drop it on the Welsh Assembly. Stuart Williams Burry Port, Carmarthenshire

Now the truth can be told: Mr Cameron is the hair to Blair.(SHARED OPINION)
February 4, 2006... Important politicians are no longer content just to deliver their speeches. They or their spinners privately make known to lobby correspondents in advance the message which the impending speech will send to voters. But the advance spin is not...

A winter's day walk in the Quantocks.(AND ANOTHER THING)(Column)
February 4, 2006... I shall remember Saturday 20 January 2006. What it was like elsewhere I do not know, but in west Somerset it was the perfect winter's day. A great surge of happiness ran through me as I set off for my walk in the hills and coombs. It had been...

Georgia on my mind: John Spurling forgives the Black Sea state for giving birth to Stalin.(TRAVEL)
February 4, 2006... Georgia has a recognition problem. Many people confuse it with the former slavestate in America, others think of it as a breakaway province of Russia--the Russians themselves evidently still see it that way. But Georgia is a state far older...

Buddhas and baguettes.(CAMBODIA)
February 4, 2006... Phnom Penh lies at the confluence of three rivers. The Mekong is the grandest, rising in the mountains of China, and passing through Cambodia before eventually disgorging its waters into the South China Sea. From a plane approaching the city,...

In fez country.(MOROCCO)
February 4, 2006... I was off on the road to Morocco once more. (The warm climate and the soft landscape draw me back again and again. I must be getting old.) Those camels are hard on the spine so I decided to take a more comfortable riad. Excuse the wordplay, but...

Caribbean diary.
February 4, 2006... Before setting off, my wife and I are dreading our one-week holiday in Turks and Caicos. The problem is, we have two young children and we're facing a 14-hour journey. The hardest part is going to be the ten-hour flight to Miami, and, to make...

The Luther of Medicine?(The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... THE DEVILS DOCTOR: PARACELSUS AND THE WORLD OF RENAISSANCE MAGIC AND SCIENCE by Philip Ball Heinemann, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 416, ISBN 0434011347 [Telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 The man...

Very high dudgeon.(Cleaver by Tim Parks )(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... CLEAVER by Tim Parks Harvill/Secker, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 316, ISBN 0436205610 [Telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Harold Cleaver is a middle-aged man at the pinnacle of his career. A...

Blaming the wicked West.(Africa by Guy Arnold)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... AFRICA by Guy Arnold Atlantic, 35 [pounds sterling], pp. 1028, ISBN 1843541750 [Telephone] 28 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 An unkind thought keeps coming to mind as you read this book: perhaps Henry...

A pattern of islands.(Eleven Kinds of Loneliness)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... ELEVEN KINDS OF LONELINESS by Richard Yates Methuen, 7.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 221, ISBN 0413775577 [Telephone] 6.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road fell out...

Post-war feuds and dilemmas.(Camus at "Combat" : Writing 1944-1947)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... CAMUS AT COMBAT: WRITING 1944-1947 edited by Jacqueline Levi-Valensi, with a foreword by David Carroll Princeton University Press, 18.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 334, ISBN 0691120048 [Telephone] 15.16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds...

The man who saw the Jabberwock.(Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... ARTIST OF WONDERLAND: THE LIFE, POLITICAL CARTOONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF TENNIEL by Frankie Morris Luttterworth, 35[pounds sterling], pp. 405, ISBN 0718830563 John Tenniel's name means little today, but everyone knows his work. Tenniel was...

Not to the manor born.(The Guynd)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... THE GUYND by Belinda Rathbone W.W. Norton, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 293, ISBN 15493720157 [Telephone] 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Six years ago I embarked on a little redecoration of my...

The return of the native.(The Ford of Heaven: A Childhood in Tianjin, China)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... THE FORD OF HEAVEN: A CHILDHOOD IN TIANJIN, CHINA by Brian Power Signal Books, 19.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 216, ISBN 1904955002 Brian Power's book, like the best Chinese paintings, contains a lot of empty space. You can either concentrate...

Pressuring the press.(Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media )(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... GUARDIANS OF POWER: THE MYTH OF THE LIBERAL MEDIA by David Edwards and David Cromwell Pluto, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 241, ISBN 0745324827 [Telephone] 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 I feel I...

The Timon of Lyme Regis.(The Journals, vol. 2)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... THE JOURNALS, VOLUME II by John Fowles Cape, 25[pounds sterling], pp. 463, ISBN 0224069128 [Telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Dr Johnson talks somewhere of a Reverend Dr Campbell whom he calls...

Let there be light: Andrew Lambirth is entranced by the central purity of Dan Flavin's installations.(ARTS)
February 4, 2006... Many artists are involved to a greater or lesser degree with the depiction of light, but Dan Flavin (1933-96) made it his exclusive subject, and in the process was responsible for the apotheosis of the humble fluorescent tube. As an artist,...

Saving the spike.(Heritage)
February 4, 2006... It seemed a curious place for one of the grimmest of Victorian institutions, tucked under manicured downs, surrounded by handsome villas with flowering gardens and cosy cottages. But when the Guildford Union Workhouse was built in 1905, it was...

Once is enough.(Opera)(Correction notice)
February 4, 2006... Last week I accidentally sent the wrong review of La Traviata for publication--one of a performance at the Royal Opera a year ago. What appears below is a shortened version of the right one. Many apologies to all concerned. Second Movement...

Russian heroism.(Music)(Shostakovich)
February 4, 2006... While we're on the subject of Shostakovich, and his general worth as a composer and human being in this the 100th anniversary of his birth, I recently came across the story of an early performance of his great Seventh Symphony, called 'the...

Never say never.(Olden but golden)(giving up smokinmg)(Column)
February 4, 2006... I Promise I'm going to come up with some hot musical recommendations this issue, but I must thank those Spectator readers who wrote about last month's column in which I announced my intention to stop smoking. The letters--all from reformed...

Head turner.(Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)(The Soldier's Tale)(Theater Review)
February 4, 2006... Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Apollo The Soldier's Tale Old Vic Mary Poppins Prince Edward It's been 44 years since Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? made its debut on Broadway, but it still seems...

Making your mark.(Radio)
February 4, 2006... Until the row over the dropping of the UK Theme from Radio Four, I had no idea so many people listen to the radio at 5.30 every morning. If I'm awake at that time, I'm either struggling to get back to sleep or reading. The outcry over the...

Classic question.(Television)(Question Time; Boris Johnson and the Dream of Rome)(Television program review)
February 4, 2006... 'Why can't all our schools be like Eton?' the heroic Claire Fox asked on Question Time (BBC1, Thursday) last week, and the question was so shocking that the pinkos, class warriors and terrorist-sympathisers who comprise the majority of your...

Nobody's perfect.(High life)(Liberal Democrats)
February 4, 2006... Gstaad When excerpts of Truman Capote's ballyhooed opus Answered Prayers first appeared in Esquire, I thought the tiny terror had written his masterpiece. Taking a second look 30 years later, Capote's stuff seems dated, bitchy and forced....

Doorway to perdition.(Low life)(London)(Column)
February 4, 2006... I've come out of the West End theatre cowed as usual by the sheer unfriendliness of the metropolitan bourgeoisie among whom I'd been sitting. We'd seen a preview of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolff? They were willing to laugh when the lights...

Private Benjamin.(Bridge)
February 4, 2006... 'Benjaminised Acol', better known as 'Benji Acol'--and its variant 'Reverse Benji'--are among the most commonly played bidding systems in Britain. But until reading the obituary pages last week I had no idea that 'Benji' was a real person, a...

Restaurants.
February 4, 2006... I ask Egon Ronay, the man who first put the rosettes into British cooking and who has just published his 2006 guide to the best restaurants in the UK, if he'd care to have lunch, show me how he judges a restaurant, maybe teach me a thing or...

Hot property.(Walthamstow)
February 4, 2006... E17 may seem an unlikely candidate to be gracing the glossy pages of style magazines, but the area--birthplace of William Morris and home to the 'greyhound racing stadium of the millennium'--is blossoming. These days the association between...

Spectator mini-bar offer.
February 4, 2006... The French wine crisis grinds on. The great and expensive classics continue to sell well, but many in the middle are being swept aside by a tide of better, cheaper wines from all over the world. To some French people this is bewildering;...

Corus of approval.(CHESS)
February 4, 2006... Vesselin Topalov and Viswanathan Anand--joint favourites and respectively reigning and former Fide champions--have tied for first prize in the elite Corus tournament at Wijk aan Zee in Holland. Practically all of the world's best players were...

Alcohol-free.(COMPETITION)
February 4, 2006... In Competition No. 2428 you were asked for a piece of prose incorporating, in any order, 12 given words, using them in a nonalcoholic sense. Despite the fact that some of you occasionally groan at this type of comp, it always pulls in a...

More brain, less brawn.(SPECTATOR SPORT)
February 4, 2006... The basso thump of Six Nations' rugby begins this weekend--today Wales are at Twickenham and Italy in Dublin, and tomorrow the French collide with the Scots at Murrayfield. The reverberating crash-bang-wallop continues till the Ides of March....

Your problems solved.
February 4, 2006... Dear Mary Q. Speaking of pellets, as you did last week, may I ask something else? Whenever I have eaten birds, it has always been quite an informal occasion where one didn't have to worry about, well, what to do with shot. One could simply...

No joke.(cartoon of Prophet Muhammad, freedom of the press)
February 11, 2006... We are not publishing the cartoons which caused such offence after they appeared in Denmark, and we believe other British newspapers are right not to have published them. There is a history of irreverence at The Spectator, but there is a...

Portrait of the week.
February 11, 2006... Mustafa Kemal Mustafa, known as Abu Hamza, the hook-handed Muslim cleric, aged 47, was sentenced to seven years in jail on six charges of soliciting to murder, two charges of 'using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the...

Diary.(Column)
February 11, 2006... As this edition appears I will be back in Edinburgh for my latest bout of electioneering. The last time I appeared there was a massive crowd of students boiling away in a bar, and an alarming group at the back waving banners saying things like...

Why Tony Blair wears that look of virtuous but irritable bafflement.
February 11, 2006... The Prime Minister has long felt an unshakeable conviction that he brings to bear a unique insight into human affairs. There are great schemes to transform society and make a better world which he would undoubtedly accomplish if only...

The Spectator's notes.(cartoons of Prophet, press freedom )
February 11, 2006... The best thing would have been for all the British papers to have published all the cartoons of Mohammed that appeared in Jyllands-Posten. As well as collectively asserting the fight of freedom of speech, this action would have given readers...

A monster of our own making: Allister Heath says that by creating chaos in Iraq, the West has allowed Iran to emerge as a dominant and extremely dangerous regional power.(Cover Story)
February 11, 2006... Cyrus the Great, the ancient Persian king who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and wrote the first charter of human rights, must be spinning in his grave. Once the world's most advanced civilisation, Iran is yet again descending into...

The Blairs.(Cartoon)
February 11, 2006... HOW DARE THE CARTOONISTS SHOW ME, THEIR PROPHET, IN SUCH AN UNHOLY LIGHT! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

It's time to get serious: Theodore Dalrymple says that in the row over the cartoons the West has shown itself to be cowardly and decadent.
February 11, 2006... When the Taleban blew up the ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, there were no spontaneous or state-sponsored demonstrations in the Islamic world demanding that the feelings of Buddhists should be spared. Furthermore, the cartoonists and...

Why you never hear 'Muslim jokes'.(fanatical reactions to cartoons of Prophet Muhammad)
February 11, 2006... Muslim fundamentalists have decided that even if you never saw or heard of the cartoons, you deserve to be hit with rocks, have your car wrecked and your embassies destroyed. Ironically, the cartoonists were not insulting Islam; they were...

Mind your language.(epicenter)
February 11, 2006... Small earthquakes of rage rumble from drawing-rooms and studies all over the land whenever the word epicentre is misused, as it usually is. Its meaning is perfectly simple: 'The point over the centre; applied in seismology to the outbreaking...

Arctic arms race: global warming may open up the Northwest Passage, says Paul Robinson, and that could provoke an armed stand off between Canada and the US.
February 11, 2006... In 1981 a Vancouver couple, worried by the nuclear menace, decided to move somewhere truly remote, somewhere guaranteed to be out of the reach of war. They settled on the Falkland Islands. They weren't the first Canadians to make such a...

Blue-collar blues: Rod Liddle says the Rolling Stones' willingness to be censored at the Superbowl show merely confirms that they were never true revolutionaries.
February 11, 2006... Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields, Sold in the market down in New Orleans, Scarred old slaver knows he's doin' alright, Hear him whip the women just about midnight. And so begins the Rolling Stones' rousing contribution to the...

Ancient & modern.(European unification)(Column)
February 11, 2006... Boris Johnson and the Dream of Rome on BBC2 ended in nightmare: that, in Boris's view, only when the EU has the equivalent of an emperor can it hope to emulate the achievements of the Roman empire in uniting disparate peoples under a single...

Pick your own police chief; Daniel Hannan says communities would get the policing they want if they were allowed to elect local sheriffs.
February 11, 2006... You'd be surprised how many champions Sir Ian Blair has. Ken Livingstone thinks he's terrific. So does his Oxford contemporary and namesake, Tony Blair. The Guardian has devoted a huge amount of space to telling us what a good job he is doing....

Plight of the Poles.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 11, 2006... From Martin Oxley Sir: Anthony Browne's article suggests that demand from UK employers is driving mass migration of new EU nationals to Britain ('Invasion of the New Europeans', 28 January). The British Polish Chamber of Commerce can...

The poorest don't fly.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 11, 2006... Richard Laming Sir: I have no objection to cheap flights, but I do have an objection to irrational tax policies ('The plane truth', 4 February). The fuel used by planes on international passenger flights goes untaxed thanks to a...

A necessary horror.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 11, 2006... From James Strachan Sir: It is difficult to respond briefly to Jane Kelly (Letters, 4 February), particularly as we can all sympathise with her feelings of horror at the cataclysm of war, especially the first world war. The main motor...

Worse than Hamas.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 11, 2006... From Ralph Blumenau Sir: Your leading article (4 February) says that Hamas has power over its suicide-bombers and could, if it wanted to, control them. Maybe, but don't forget that Islamic Jihad, with its own suicide-bombers, did not take...

Educate, don't brainwash.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 11, 2006... From Paul Phillips Sir: Rod Liddle ('Brains not included', 4 February) is right to say that you cannot force people to be infinitely 'inclusive'. We have to sweep all this nonsense aside and produce a generation of teachers who understand...

Lesson of 1933.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
February 11, 2006... From Daniel Situnayake Sir: I must applaud Julian Manyon's article ('Life, liberty and the pursuit of terrorism', 4 February). For all the bitter lessons of the 20th century, we seem to have forgotten what happened the last time a major...