All living organisms are the product of predecessors who have succeeded in passing on their genetic material. Their strategies all have their own advantages that work in their particular niches. Why can’t one of our advantages be our minds? And what is the objection to the idea that the mind has evolved, rather than just appearing de novo in homo sapiens? We are still unique, as we remained when we found that the universe didn’t revolve round the Earth.

Perhaps Raymond Tallis’s prostate is trying to remind him that he is subject to physical laws, despite what his mind tells him.

Les Hearn, UK

Black quotes Daniel Dennet: ‘There is only one sort of stuff, namely matter’. While I do not think Dennet’s book quite lived up to its perhaps impossible title, Consciousness Explained, it did make the case for the alternative proposal having even more logical difficulties. Does Black not feel he gives too much support to the other side (lets say that side is mind-brain dualism) by promoting Tallis’s critique of over simplistic materialists ?

Steve Maller, UK

I don’t think we’re determined by evolution or neurobiology to do this or that. I do think we are outcomes of evolution by natural selection and developmental biology, especially neurobiology. From this perspective, many cruel and whimsical phenomena become comprehensible. So I find this model attractive. To convince me it was wrong, a better alternative would need adumbrating. This the article doesn’t provide, and I find the invocation of homo economicus to be just silly.

James McClellan, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11029/

Letters responding to: London’s burning: a mob made by the welfare state, by Brendan O’Neill

I am no defender of the welfare state, but I do think it is unhelpful to target welfarism as the causal factor in the ‘me, me, me’ culture of Britain’s youth today. The original rationale of the welfare state, as a temporary ‘safety net’ to appease the labouring classes, was born in an era when the masses were regarded (feared) as all too capable of organising themselves politically and socially. However, today’s welfare state has little in common with this historic assumption.

A careful reading of O’Neill’s article points the finger at the more recent imperative in British public life to ‘therapeutic welfarism’; this has institutionalised large swathes of the public into emotional and economic dependency because they are deemed incapable – by both the political class and community advocates – to prosper by their own resourcefulness. Over the last quarter of a century, therapeutic welfarism has educated ordinary families and communities that they cannot and should not depend on each other; it’s not just your neighbours you can’t rely on, the therapeutic state has systematically undermined the family as a safe haven too. Grandparents are assumed at risk of elder abuse and kids are imagined as neglected.

The contemporary welfare state inflates a sense of grievance and malice in community and family life, not because it explicitly wants to expand welfare dependency. Welfare advocates honestly imagine that ordinary families and communities are simply incapable of functioning without state support.

Collecting the dole is not the problem, it’s the silent war on the emotional and social resilience of ordinary people and communities that has produced the ‘me, me, me’ victimhood that lies at the heart of the political and moral vacuum displayed by the riots across the UK.

What’s most striking about the thuggery, thievery and vandalism of the rioters, is that we are so keen not to blame. What is most annoying is that the most likely response of those at the top will be to further cultivate welfare dependency in the form of soft initiatives that aim to ‘understand’ the imagined grievances of the looters. A first step for inner-city communities and families in rejecting the pathetic horizons of welfarism would be to call for an end to the ‘soft’ interference in our private lives by neighbourhood policing initiatives and community empowerment schemes. We need to start trusting our neighbours and families to reclaim our streets, discipline each others’ kids and share moral values. If we don’t do it, the state will continue to drive a wedge in our personal relations between young and old, healthy and ill, idle and active.

Steve Daley, Ireland

Interesting article. Perhaps Cameron and company are wishing that ‘young people’ would follow the example of Spanish youth and their ‘15 May Movement’, where people bent over backwards not to offend anyone, where all manner of opinions were allowed and discussed in open public street assemblies, where the ‘demonstrators’ made a special effort to clean up the places that they’d been ‘revelling in’, and where unfortunately, these self-same young people got a bloody nose at the beginning of August when the erstwhile benevolent state disallowed their benign protesting and occupied Madrid’s central square, Sol, with bristling police in full riot gear.

One reason for the enormous difference in response (to what exactly?) could be the very fact that Spanish youth are very much ‘located’ in their respective ‘communities’, with about 70 per cent of 19-24 year-olds still at home with their parents.

The notion that young people in Spain are ‘suckled and mollycoddled’ by the state doesn’t exist here. They are ‘suckled and mollycoddled’, however, by their families.

Gareth Edward King, Spain

I agree that from a distance, the London riots hardly seem to be a political protest. Marx came to mind for me as well – something about alienation perhaps rather than ‘mollycoddling’. My sense of British welfare state history may be flawed, but as a middle-aged woman (the same age as the scolding shopkeeper in the article), I view myself as part of the offspring of the welfare state.

The young rioters, however, seem to be Margaret Thatcher’s progeny. Could it be that they’re okay shitting on their own doorsteps because their leaders have set the example.

Ester Ignagni, Canada

I’m not convinced by the claim that the welfare state is what has destroyed any sense of community solidarity. I agree that something has, and I agree that this rioting does not appear to be political in any traditional sense of that word.

My thought, though, is that it is at least as likely that the destruction of community solidarity is attributable to policies that undermined the welfare state from the 1980s onwards and which convinced us all that we are first and foremost individuals and that ‘there is no such thing as society’. Isn’t it the pursuit of individual goals and the glorification of those that does most to undermine any sense of community? The idea that it is more important to acquire material goods for yourself than help your neighbours?

Mick Devine, Australia

What a disappointment. O’Neill’s take on the riots seems more right wing than the Tories’. His view that the paltry sum of welfare, which is reluctantly given back to the masses, who are being pushed further and further back into a corner by lack of work and prospects over the world, is the cause of the problems is incredibly naive. It would not be better to let people suffer more. To strip them of everything, sounds like ‘character building’ of the worst kind. Social cohesion has not been ruined by welfare, but by the alienation of the vast majority who are unlistened to by the corporations and lack a stake in society. Despite the author’s claims, he came across as a right-wing idiot.

Rachel Cremnitz, UK

This is an excellent article. I am already getting sick and tired of certain commentators blaming unemployment/police/racism for these riots which to me suggest a sense of self-righteous victimhood and a couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude towards anyone else.

Of course this attitude has been festering for years and O’Neill has explained the reasons well – but I still can’t get over the blatant disregard shown by the rioters for their fellow human beings and their own communities. I have nothing but contempt for these people right now.

Linda Payne, UK

I very much agree that this mob does not have much of an agenda except for showing what they can do. But I think O’Neill’s totally off blaming the welfare state for this. I’m not familiar with the British welfare system, compared to the Scandinavian, German, French or Canadian ones. But altogether I cannot imagine it is so much different. The ‘interferences’ into the recipient’s lives which O’Neil blames for the loss of community spirit seem highly exaggerated. What welfare does is to keep the needy above the water. What is O’Neill’s solution: cut the welfare and make the needy beg, depend on donations from their neighbours or turn to crime? What about the kids?

No, if O’Neill needs to find a scapegoat, it’s certainly not the welfare state. That’s like blaming the firemen for the burning house. Rather more troubling is the reason that these people need to be on welfare in the first place. How about looking into that?

I do see the reasons for the rioters’ behaviour in the lassez-faire raising of this generation coupled with the almost total lack of discipline or guidance from schools. But yes, I do also see fault with capitalism, which is instilling in people, especially the young, purely materialist, consumerist and false ideals. All this leaves parents, who realise this, fighting windmills. I’m totally frustrated to see that my three kids are obsessed with their looks, their clothes, their gadgets, Facebook and computer games. For the future, all they think of is the money they might make and what they will buy.

If, with these new ideals, the young grow up in neighbourhoods with unemployed parents surrounded by all these unattainable carrots dangling, and see the lives of the idle and rich on TV, they would be right to riot. And I can imagine the satisfaction of showing the ones in power what they can do.

Rony Liebheit, Germany/Canada

I agree with the article. But it is also worth noting that disturbances like this are not unique to deprived areas but are very much part of the school summer holidays in English towns and cities everywhere. Fire-engine sirens signal the holiday’s arival.

The criminalisation of many aspects of our lives has resulted in wariness of our neighbours and creates distrust for fear of being grassed up or falsely accused. Honest hard work is treated with contempt by those on the make. No one enjoys hard work, paying taxes and such but we recognise its necessity.

Paul Gurnett, UK

We are a new generation, born into a world where every need is met. Suckled as a child, protected by silly rules and punishments. We go to your schools, we learn what we can. Then we grow up and are then tossed out into the real world.

A new generation of young adults is entering a world where every service and product need is met by the generations before us. We enjoy either the minimal wage or the welfare handout and we are burdened with silly rules and over punishments. And as a result we are never really allowed to grow into personally responsible adults.

Overall I’m not even trying to say that what the rioters are doing is right. They are just trying to do the only thing they feel they have left in there power. Is it selfish? Yes, incredibly, but so is the political and business environment that drove them to the bottom in the first place.

Thomas Sanders, USA

While no one wants to condone some of the anti-social elements of the riots (muggings and burnings of buildings attached to homes) what O’Neill fails to consider in his article is that there may be something positive in the act of rioting itself. You say that rioters ‘are simply shattering their own communities’ but this is a little one-sided as they are also building new communities through the act of rioting. A community is not a collection of shops but a relation between people. In riots new bonds are formed and a new sense of collectivity is established. In Hackney what was notable both immediately after and the day following the riot was the amount of people who had come out of their homes, away from their TVs and PCs, to just stand around discussing issues.

I also think that your article reinforces the misconceived idea, currently circulating, that these riots are somehow less authentic, class conscious, etc, than the riots of the 1980s, when presumably ‘rioters knew how to behave’. In fact I can remember exactly the same representations of those riots at the time in the mainstream media (and by sections of the left) – the rioters were depicted as criminals, smashing up their own communities etc. Some leftists today are bemoaning the fact that rioters lack class consiousness. This seems a little ironic – people who are staying at home watching the riots on TV are complaining when groups of proletarian youth come together to take on the police and loot shops. Of these two groups I know who I think is the most class conscious.

O’Neill writes: ‘In these new riots, smashing stuff up is all there is. It is childish nihilism.’ This again is not a new argument – I seem to remember Lenin saying something similar in Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. But if O’Neill wants his lumpen proletariat to be more ‘politically aware’, how would you like them to attain this awareness? By staying indoors?

O’Neill writes: ‘this violence is not political, just criminal’. I am not convinced that collective proletarian action is not political just because it does not articulate itself in political terms (although some people clearly have articulated themselves in this way). Nor do I have any objection to criminality per se – any act of collective appropriation of space or commodities is bound to be criminal. I am concerned with anti-social crime (and also anti-social actions that are officially sanctioned, like police shootings) but it is not clear whether incidents of anti-social crime increase, decrease or stay the same during riots.

William Linton, UK

Interesting take, and another single-factor explanation to add to the growing stock. However, I think O’Neill’s view is hard to reconcile with some of the facts. The 16- to 18-year-olds of today are the third or even fourth generation of people raised under the ‘welfare state’ so why have previous generations not looted Apple stores?

Equally, why have there not been outbreaks of looting in those countries that have done less to demolish their welfare states than Britain? I don’t think blaming welfarism works as an explanation at all.

Greg Mundy, UK

Now that Britain’s global reputation is at stake, Parliament is recalled. It’s criminality, yes, but let’s put it in perspective. There are bigger crimes than looting and rioting. As Aristotle observed: ‘The mother of revolution and crime is poverty.’

What about the Government and its wealthy supporters? They are morally culpable for creating the conditions that give rise to alienation. I don’t see the same anger directed at them. Although maybe that is beginning to change. Paradoxically, as a result of the riots ‘our leaders’ are now being called to account.

There are plenty ‘toerags’ on the streets and I’m all for ‘tough love’ in the home and discipline on the streets. What seems to have happened last week is that the ‘toerags’ broke out of their ghettoes and estates and rioted in commercial areas and city centres. Which is not exactly defecating on their own doorsteps.

That’s why supporters of the status quo are hopping mad. The violence is no longer confined to the ghetto

Michael Hallihane, UK

An excellent take on the situation. Although I do not believe that the idea of a welfare state should be completely abandoned, there ought to be more control to the give-and-take side of it. These yobs must be made to understand that ‘ya can’t get sumfin for nuffin’.

Tougher policing may not be the answer, but deeper community work and educating kids (and their hopeless parents) to respect what they have and not to ‘covet their neighbour’s ox’ may be a start. It will probably take a couple of generations to get it straightened out but where there’s life, there’s hope, as we used to say.

Stuart Barber, France

Except for O’Neill’s pining for ‘community spirit’, ‘social bonding’, and the like, this and his other pieces on riots were spot-on analyses. (My reservations are regarding ‘community spirit’ and the like are due to me being an unrepentant individualist.)

So yes, the welfare state is to blame for the disconnect between the rioters and the real-world in which things are produced, rather than just radically appearing, ripe for looting, and the government is responsible for inculcating that disconnected mentality and creating uncounted numbers of people burdened and stymied by the disconnect.

UK politicians, like many American politicians, are just as bad as the rioters; they haven’t the vaguest idea of what it takes to produce a single nail, never mind cell phones and Victoria’s Secret lingerie and shoes and sutures and other widgets, including the tons and tons of paper on which welfare state and regulatory state legislation is printed. To them, all that ‘stuff’ is just there. People somehow produce it, and it’s then there for the taking. Or, if you’re a politician or bureaucrat, it’s there for the buying using taxpayers’ endless dimes. So, aside from my reservations, my hat is off to O’Neill for his articles.

Edward Cline, USA

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10984/

Letters responding to: ‘The police are just scratching their arses’, by Patrick Hayes

From interviews and news footage of the so-called Enfield Defence League and the other mob in Eltham it looked to me like they were spoiling for a fight and were nothing more than gangs of thugs. They looked every inch ‘lumpen proletariat’, more so than the ‘rabble’ they were seeking to defend their areas against. It’s clutching at straws to see anything progressive about such numbskulls.

It’s apparent that radical, fundamental change is a pipe dream. It seems we are indeed ‘a nation of shopkeepers’. There are too many people with a stake in maintaining a system that protects the rich and criminalises the poor. We have the society we deserve. That much is apparent.

Michael Hallihane UK

I am confused as the article seems to be about the difference between a) local residents protecting themselves, their families and their properties and b) groups of people coming from other places to form a sort of para-military force to protect an area that is not their own. Did Enfield not have enough committed and/or able people to protect themselves?

I can certainly see that being the case but I believe that there is a qualitative difference between a) and b) which needs to be carefully described.

Residents, seeing people descending on their space, from the outside, may feel that there is little difference between their unofficial ‘protectors’ and the looters.

Ron Sherman, USA

What do the govenment expect residents to do when our streets in Enfield have become a no-go zone. I support these people for having the guts to police the local area.

Trefor Charles, Enfield, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11001/

Letters responding to: Climate-change alarmism: you couldn’t make it up, by Tim Black

Thinking of writing a scary novel about climate change? How about one about the scary consequences of climate dogma? I presume this is what Michael Crichton’s State of Fear is but I haven’t read it yet. I don’t think I can better Crichton so I’m not going to try myself but here’s an outline in case anyone else wants to try. It could have all the bleakness of The Road.

The novel is set in the UK between 2030 and 2040. Successive British governments have, under the influence of the greens, had a phobia about carbon dioxide which has led them to export much of the country’s manufacturing industry to the third world and the country is therefore very poor.

The phobia drove the authorities to turn to wind energy for electricity and large areas of Scotland and Wales are covered in wind turbines. As a result they have both lost their tourist industry making them even poorer than the rest of the UK.

Many of the older wind turbines have worn out and have ceased to function but there is no money to repair them and there is consequently a dire shortage of energy. To make matters worse, Western Europe had since 2030 been in the grip of another little ice age. Scientists had been warning of its possibility since 2010 but were ignored. There are widespread cold-related deaths.

It’s getting too depressing, so I’ll stop there. As you’ve probably guessed it’s far from being entirely fictional but there’s obviously some extrapolation.

Tom Addiscott, UK

All one can say, indeed all one ought to waste time saying, is that all those authors from Margaret Atwood to David Mitchell are deluded. The evidence that we are not experiencing catastrophic warming is as unequivocal as that which says we are not experiencing an ice age.

The green lobby have been proven liars time after time and nobody can honestly claim to believe a word they say.

Neil Craig, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11002/

Letters responding to: Don’t turn Norway into Europe’s 11 September, by Brendan O’Neill

Good to see that reasons are not attributed for the Norway massacre when they are not there.

Pathetic creatures such as Breivik are, as Brendan O’Neill explains, exceptional. Unfortunately this violence is probably something we can never predict as insanity has no reasoned logic. Brendan O’Neill’s article gives a most accurate assesment.

Paul Gurnett, UK

So it’s still multiculturalism’s fault according to O’Neill. Pathetic. Here we have a Christian, right-wing Fundamentalist and O’Neill still tries to blame Multiculturalism.

James Crabb, Australia

Bravo! Finally an article on the terrible tragedy in Norway that is actually worth reading, and which contains an analysis which sadly seems to be true.

From Canada, the leading national newspaper, ostensibly ‘conservative’, but imbued with lots of self-congratulatory liberal sentiment, has not hesitated to publish multiple analyses about Norway from the perspective of the liberal elites, specifically and exactly as O’Neill has identified.

But O’Neill’s insight that Norway might also be seen as derived from the very multicultural policies championed by these elites (not just phenomenally, as the monster imagined, but in a deeper way) is gripping and seems possibly true.

Why do our chav-hating elites to this? So they can keep ‘riding the horse’ and feel good about themselves at the same time? It goes without saying that our liberal elites do not wish tragedy. But they would also not like to read spiked, I think.

Jackie Jones, Canada

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10954/

Letters responding to: The rise of the eco-imperialists, by Tim Black

I agree with the article’s critique of the green lens to view human conflict.

But the notion of a climate-influenced war is not inconceivable. Over the course of human existence, climate change is thought to have contributed to migration, which has ‘caused’ wars.

What I find strange is that it makes any difference to the UN Security Council. The emotions and reasons for war have always varied between conflicts. Why is a green-helmeted military response different from a blue one?

I suspect the difference is moralising self-justification. Above all, a green-based intervention hands the UN a sense of higher moral purpose: ‘We’re not intervening to save human lives, but to save the planet’. That purpose could be used to justify more, heavier, and earlier, interventions.

Thank goodness for the commonsense of the Russians over the proposition.

Mark Blackham, New Zealand

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10955/

Letters responding to: ‘Of course I support a free press, but…’, by Mick Hume

Rather unorthodox line of reasoning used by spiked to defend News Corp. The proposition being advanced by spiked is that criticism of Murdoch is an attack on journalism. Does spiked believe that phone hacking is credible journalism? Is bribing the police, journalism? Does the media have a journalistic obligation to cover these crimes and scandals or ignore them? Does spiked want to be remembered for attacking legitimate journalism or defending lack of it (News Corp)?

Dan Lis, USA

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10921/

Letters responding to: After the News of the World, who’s safe? and What’s really motoring this anti-Murdoch crusade, by Brendan O’Neill

O’Neill misses the point again. No one was demanding the closure of the News of the World. I didn’t see people on the streets trashing Tescos for advertising in the paper. What massive numbers of people have been campaigning for is for media regulation to be effective in limiting the degree to which our national news and broadcasting outlets are owned by one company and, ultimately, by one man.

The reason for this is that power, including media power, corrupts. That power needs to be regulated – the principle is simple but the process is more complex. Just look at the BBC. The consequence of the accumulation of unrestrained power at News International inevitably led to the abuses we’ve all been disgusted by. If the liberal demons to whom O’Neill ascribes such overweening control were to become accustomed to being a law unto themselves like Murdoch’s journalists, then they too would have to be reined in.

Murdoch should have been forced to sell the News of the World. Neither the staff nor the readership matters to News International but the power over the politicians, the police and the establishment does.

Many commentators have said that Murdoch transformed the British media for good. In reality, he created a monster that is consuming itself and we will all be the poorer for it.

Simon Wood, UK

When I began reading spiked a few months ago I found some of the articles interesting and thought-provoking. However, after a few weeks I began to feel uneasy about the general tone and thrust of many of the spiked pieces. I began to wonder about its political stance and came to the conclusion that it didn’t have one apart from an almost childish, dislike and disdain for anything remotely liberal or left of centre.

This latest rant about the News of the World has just confirmed my growing belief that the magazine, and Brendan O’Neill in particular, just cannot be taken seriously. spiked takes the usual right-wing line that all educated liberals regard the ‘working classes’ as stupid and easily exploited by the media and advertising.

Ordinary people are not all thick and stupid, but they are exploited and influenced by our overwhelmingly right-wing media and its dubious agenda. If our education system really taught children to analyse and evaluate the images and language of the media, then perhaps fewer people would be taken in by some of the rubbish that appears in our ‘free press’.

spiked’s defence of the News of the World is as laughable as it is sad and I will now do what I should have done months ago – remove your silly site from my list of favourites.

Gordon Whitelaw, UK

I was always offended by the contents of this piece of crap called the News of the World while living in the UK.

Those people, week in week out, vilified and intended to hurt the most vulnerable people in society. They literally drove people to suicide. Dead or alive, they smeared, insulted and bullied whoever had the least means of defence. They were the brown shirts of the new Goebbellian state that the UK has become.

They ridiculed and insulted asylum seekers, homosexuals, genuine benefit claimants, and gay people just for fun. They delved into private lives of people they did not like simply to imply that the people that they did like were better.

The paper was patently xenophobic, racist and misogynistic, and had staggering double standards.

They failed to live up to any standard, blatantly acting as the media hitmen on behalf of a potentially criminal and politically racketeering organisation run by an individual who did not have the UK’s interest at heart. Quite the opposite.

Their moral manure has been spread over Britain for over 30 years and the flowers of contempt are blooming: being English now means being as nasty as possible while remaining polite and proper.

It’s a shame that nothing will change and that the British public, by and large, will continue to support this scum, as a not so secret pleasure, in one of form or another.

Your article is nothing but the sort of noxious dribble that may be expected from those addicted to thuggery and corruption in journalism. Shame on O’Neill and spiked.

Garbino Carballo, Spain

The News of the World was not harried to death – it was peremptorily closed by its proprietor to create a fire-break on a story that was out of his control.

O’Neill would do better to ask which politicians might have benefited from the intelligence gathered by the hacks’ hackers. One who employed a former editor of the paper perhaps?

Vaughan Birbeck, Portugal

Putting scandalous behaviour by hacks to one side, I find the most amazing part in all this is the breathtaking lack of self-awareness of Steve Coogan, and to a lesser degree Hugh Grant.

Really guys, nobody gave a toss about your phones being hacked. It’s was hacking of Milly Dowler’s that triggered the public abhorrence.

There’s something incredibly nauseating about an alleged user of prostitutes and an alleged Class A drug abuser attempting to take the moral high ground.

Dave Mac, New Zealand

Let’s have no doubt about this, the News of the World was shit, pure and simple. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Grub Street would have been eager to dissociate itself from Murdoch had it ever been given the chance. We should not forget what News International did to the miners, printers, anti-racist campaigners, etc.

Having said that though, I have always believed in Mao’s dictum of ‘Let a 1,000 flowers bloom’. Even if some of the flowers turn out to be weeds. I am more disturbed by the idea going around on Facebook, Twitter, CiF, etc, from what purports to be the left that the working class is so dumb it swallows any and everything from Uncle Rupert. That prejudice, which has been around since the political defeats of the 1980s, goes that workers have been brought off with bingo, birds and booze. According to this, working class people have no agency or ability to differentiate between fact and fiction.

Floyd Codlin, UK

Surely Rupert Mudoch closed the News of the World, and he closed it because of the antics of certain members of its staff? Either a pragmatic decision or a very cynical one, depending on your point of view. Who will be surprised if a Sunday Sun or a News of Sunday opens in a few months or a year? To lay the blame first and foremost at the feet of the Guardian et al is a bit of a stretch.

Stephen Richards, UK

The rage over hacked mobile phones is not unlike the hysteria following the Dunblane tragedy which eventually lead to the Firearms (Amendment) (No 2) Act 1997.

Russell Middleton, UK

‘What we increasingly have today is not real journalism, but rather printed sheets that cultivate a culture of voyeurism’, writes Brendan O’Neill.

Indeed we do and they are produced not by those up in arms about hacking but by hacks, editors and proprietors who are desperate to sell these sheets – or should I say shit.

In the bread-and-circuses, lowest-common-denominator, post-Diana, grief-obsessed and must-have-it-all-now world in which we live, what else does O’Neill expect? The nation’s psyche is terminally damaged by the obsession with celebrity that was the spark and New Labour’s promotion of debt for all that was the fuel. It’s all about greed.

Let them eat cake.

Martin Davies, UK

I believe it is the illegal and intrusive actions of certain members of News of the World staff that are generally thought of as unacceptable and not the paper itself. I’m pretty sure that the sentiments of most people are that those responsible for the phone hacking should be exposed and tried.

News international didn’t have to close the paper down and I don’t think that was what the public wanted to see. It is disappointing and unnecessary, and I’m sure will be met with cynicism once a rebranded Sunday tabloid appears.

JSK, UK

‘This was a longstanding public institution’, writes O’Neill. So was slavery. And it wasn’t sinister ‘liberal campaigners’ who shut down News of the World, it was Rupert Murdoch. His are the cojones that are in question.

John FitzGerald, Canada

Nobody ordered or required Murdoch to pull the pin on NOTW. In my opinion he only did so in an effort to protect the balance of his overly-substantial empire.

His actions were neither mea culpa nor apologia – they constituted just another business decision to protect his personal and family business interests.

The horse had already bolted but he wanted to be seen to slam the stable door.

How other media proprietors deal with the aftershocks is a matter for them and certainly if they aren’t up to it then perhaps they’re not deserving of particular sympathy.

Russell White, Australia

Opportunity knocks for everyone about to be made redundant at the News of the World. This is a group of people capable – right now – of turning out the world’s best-selling newspaper at an immediate profit. If those people don’t act collectively to launch their own paper (under a name of their choosing) owned by themselves, right now, then what can we say of them other than they are incapable of acting without being slaves to a master. The money to launch that new paper, especially beginning with a soft web-only launch, would be easy to find at a low interest rate. Never has there been a better opportunity for real change. Freedom calls.

Jeremy Adlard, UK

It is a desperate search for a sense of morality and values in an amoral and valueless age that is driving the anti-Murdoch crusade. Murdoch is someone who with good cause can be seen as a target by left, centre and even large parts of the right. There is also a palpable sense of joy that at last something so dire has been perpetrated in his name (and uncovered) that the shackles which his empire has imposed on civil society can finally be effectively challenged.

Paul Carolan, Hong Kong

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10751/

Letters responding to: Who’s really fibbing about Fukushima, by Rob Lyons

A good article.

Did Lyons notice this article in Sunday’s Independent: apparently 300,000 people every year in the UK die premature deaths from air pollution (mostly from car exhaust). Imagine if nuclear power killed 30,000 people a year in the UK? 30,000 people is one Nagasaki’s worth or two tsunamis’ worth.

As of 2008, the total deaths due to the Chernobyl disaster were 64. The UN estimates a likely total over time of around 4,000. The Green Party published a report in 2006 suggesting that over time the total deaths from Chernobyl might be between 30,000 and 60,000. Even if the Green Party’s figures are right, one year of burning fossil fuel in the UK is equal in terms of deaths caused to many decades of Chernobyl fallout.

Alistair McCapra, UK

The French nuclear sector is in financial meltdown. By 2018, 48 of its 58 reactors will be more than 30 years old, of which four will be more than 40 years old and should be shut down or upgraded.

Currently, of 21 more than 30 years old, only two have been subject to their 10 year inspections.

The regulator ASN has severely criticised EDF: ‘However, in the field of nuclear installations, ASN considers that EDF needs to improve its forward planning of a certain number of maintenance and component replacement operations. Belated decisions of this nature meant that EDF had to submit files to ASN to justify continued operation in degraded mode. These files were not felt to be acceptable by ASN from the safety standpoint. This type of management is neither efficient nor optimised, be it for ASN with regard to safety and the mobilisation of its resources, or for EDF.’ (Taken from the report on the state of nuclear safety in ASN’s 191 Review, April 2011)

The UK media has refrained from investigating the poor state of EDF, while Reuters and Bloomberg have done. Can spiked be more bold?

John Busby, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10680/

Letters responding to: A bit of youthful struggle never hurt anyone, by James Howell

It must be nice to have the luxury of somewhere to live and some money (from a student loan or parents) for food and transport in between terms in London to do internships.

Having left university three years ago, I returned for a Masters this year after being stuck in the exact scenario Alan Milburn described. I was doing administration jobs for a wage (which just about paid for rent, food and the odd cinema trip), for about three years because I couldn’t afford to do an internship in the areas (quite a few actually) in which I am interested. Namely, the third sector and politics (might I direct Howell to the recent BBC documentary which shows that it has become extremely difficult to get into parliament without entering at unpaid internship level). This is based on a good 2:1 honours degree, with a year abroad, from Exeter University –all of which should really work in my favour when it comes to finding employment.

My parents, who not only don’t live in London, don’t live in the UK anymore, couldn’t afford to fund me working for free on unpaid internships. It’s funny when not being paid in other countries amounts to slave labour, yet in Britain it is just an internship. I’d get more from being on the dole – what a great incentive to work!

I admit I have a sense of entitlement when it comes to wanting to be able to enjoy my work and career, but after having paid £16,000 (and rising) for my university education, which supposedly should have made me employable, and a further £12,000 for a Masters, you’d think that would make me well qualified for my Sense of Entitlement Certificate and Badge.

Funnily enough, even with my Masters, I’m going to have to go back to unpaid part-time voluntary work/internships to claw my way into the area in which I am very qualified to work.

Georgina Watson, UK

Does the term ‘I’m all right, Jack’ mean anything to Howell?

I am prepared to accept that the thrust of the book’s narrative was a prolonged whiny plea of victimhood since I haven’t read it. But Howell’s smug defence of what has become a pernicious blight in today’s job culture is almost nauseating.

It also ignores what has become a very real problem for poor (and not so poor) kids who are trying to establish themselves in fields where this genteel slavery flourishes. Not everyone has the right connections; not everyone can be bankrolled by Mummy and/or Daddy; not everyone lives with their parents in the Greater London area where the bulk of these jobs exist.

You do those people who complain about the unfairness of this practice a great disservice when you imply that they are not prepared to struggle. I know personally of several people, all educated to at least Masters level, who are very willing to go where the opportunities are, work hard and go without to get on in their chosen career. But none of them can do without a wage so, effectively, these areas are off limits to them.

I get it. They get it. Life is unfair but please don’t try and defend the indefensible just because things worked out for you.

Angela Watson, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10678/

Letters responding to Hollowing out the ivory tower, by Tim Black

This is an important article on the contemporary situation. It harkens back to an earlier conception of the good of higher education: advancing basic and applied knowledge. In this, Professor Alison Wolf is linked to the arguments of Jacques Barzun (The Scholar is an Institution (1947)) and CS Lewis (Our English Syllabus (1939)).

However, HE has become a growth industry and a philosophy of expansion – creating a larger zone of education trade – is often the criterion on which politicians and HE managers are evaluated and promoted; the institutional incentives line up growth ideology. Professor Wolf is again correct on two implied points: hyper-credentialism (attainment) removes the scarcity-value of a degree, necessitating a higher degree to separate graduates from the masses and, secondly, there is in fact a disconnect now between educational attainment and a commensurate level of knowledge and skill. Perhaps rethinking education more as a cultural institution rather than an economic one will help.

Steven Loomis, USA

Australia too constitutes a counter-argument to the idea that expanding higher education equals economic growth. It is one of the world’s most solid economies, and one of the few developed nations to weather the 2009 global crisis virtually untouched — but only about 15 per cent of its citizens go on to higher education.

Dan Martins, Australia

As I look despondently at the ever-expanding educational Sahara facing us, Black’s interview with Alison Wolf gives me some hope – if not a great deal of it – that it won’t be too long before more people realise we’ve destroyed what was best in Western education, without replacing it with anything of value.

To adapt a few of the ‘progressive’ educators’ more popular clichés, ‘In the education industry (and sadly that’s what it has become) when it comes to throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater, we’ve shown we can attain world’s worst practice levels at creating lose-lose outcomes’.

Surely it’s time the ‘progressive’ Tooth Fairy Brigade (who have done such an outstanding job destroying worthwhile education) are countered by more Alison Wolfs?

Norman Hanscombe, Australia

What Wolf described is a perfect example of the ‘signaling model’ of education, as explained by Bryan Caplan. College and graduate degrees are usually expensive, useless, wasteful plumage like peacock tails, which benefit the individual at the expense of society.

John Fast, USA

The 800-pound gorilla in the room is that in the majority of universities in the United States, the graduates would be lucky to read and write on a 12th grade level. Children who were unable to do high school level work are still given a place at the university as long as they can get money, primarily Pell grants. The USA has been able to hide this because they can ‘show the world’ that the top PhD programs (science and maths) attract future Nobel prize winners.

A piece of paper saying you have a college education is cheap to produce. The USA has a subgroup of entitlement children with neither skills nor a work ethic… but they have a piece of paper.

Vance McLaughlin, USA

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10677/

Letters responding to Father Kit: neither a monster nor a saint, by Patrick West

I agree that we are more complex than our darkest acts. But how can West refer to Father Kit’s crimes as ‘his earlier misdemeanours in Africa’? Check the dictionary: a misdemeanour is ‘a minor wrongdoing’.

I played a major part in organising the case against the Rosminian order on behalf of those of us abused at the two schools. I am the one who collected the testimonies (far more than those that eventually featured on the BBC film) and, in some cases, faithfully wrote down the verbal accounts of people who were in too much pain to commit them to paper.

Father Kit comes across as someone who looked around, saw that the abusers were getting away with it and, calculatingly, joined in as well as sadistically protecting his fellow abusers. And make no mistake: he damaged lives. That is not ‘a misdemeanour’.

I understand West’s desire to say, ‘Yes, he was a paedophile but...’. However, in so doing, he has set hiimself upon a tricky tightrope in a high wind generated by his victims’ pain. It’s an invidious exercise.

Use words like ‘misdemeanour’ and West will come crashing to the ground in a heap of bad judgement

Francis Lionnet, Canada

What a pointless article. ‘He never done me no harm’ doesn’t cut it.

That Father Kit Cunningham is to be admired for not committing crimes on his own door step and had the ‘decency’ to only misbehave in the colonies is a strange argument in these enlightened times.

I have never heard of Father Kit and I didn’t see the show, but the notion that one can atone for years of child abuse among some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised children in the world by offering up a church-funded bed for the night makes about as much sense as the bulimic who decides to gorge on salty snacks after having had too much of the sweet stuff.

Liz Wilson, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10674/

Letters responding to: In defence of animal experimentation, by Patrick Hayes

I’d like to congratulate Hayes on an excellent rebuttal of the lamentable and dishonest campaign by Animal Aid. I am a medical researcher working on multiple sclerosis who has to use mice as an experimental model of this disease. To suggest, as Animal Aid do, that this research is meaningless and can be replaced with tissue culture, microdosing, etc is not only completely wrong but insulting.

I won’t go into the thousands of cases where animal research has led to better treatments for human diseases but in my own case to give one example, research in my lab provided the evidence for the effficacy of cannabis extracts for symptoms of multiple sclerosis which has resulted in its approval for these symptoms around the world.

Gareth Pryce, UK

‘Unreflective beasts’? What century is Hayes living in? Who, apart from religious whack-jobs, still call animals ‘beasts’?

His assertion that only homo sapiens among all the myriad forms of life on earth have self conciousness is also bizarre. There is a growing mass of evidence that points to the intelligence of many species. Of course it is easier not to think about this and dismiss anyone who raises objections as being anthropomorphic. But no, we don’t think other animals are humans trying to break out, we think they have a right to life on their own terms and should not be tortured to death by us, just because we are the most powerful species currently alive, and we can.

Hayes’ call for experiments on great apes is probably the most disturbing aspect of his argument as virtually all ape species are now critically endangered (thanks to hundreds of years of being killed by humans). Should we simply wipe them out completely in our pursuit of cures for human diseases?

Crassly exploiting life on earth for our own benefit has indeed massively improved our material wellbeing, but it has also ravaged this planet. We have no moral or ethical right to torture animals to death even if it does mean extending the lives of members of our own species.

Richard Taylor, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10650/

Letter responding to: The Pipe: a pantomime in the bogs, by Rob Lyons

Finally, a great article about the film. Someone has finally pointed out that the movie is one-sided and at no time do we hear from locals who welcome the jobs or from workers on the site who have built houses, bought cars and gone on holidays with the great wages Shell is paying.

Lyons has clearly not fallen for the roaring and shouting in the movie. He sees that there’s a lot more to this story than The Pipe is telling.

Name withheld, Ireland

Your review of The Pipe does a great disservice to the people of north Mayo who continue to campaign against Shell’s planned pipeline.

First of all, the purpose of the film, I believe, was to present some balance, not to present a detailed chronological documentary of this decade-long conflict. The mainstream Irish media has never allowed the story of these people to be told properly and instead has merely toed the Shell and Dublin government line.

This film shows what life has been like and continues to be like for this small besieged community, a story that so far has not been told to mass audiences. For that reason, there are many misconceptions as to the motives of campaigners – and Lyons’ review is a perfect example of that.

Campaigners are not opposed to securing and utilising the gas. They oppose piping raw untreated gas through their community to be refined onshore. They have no issue with it being refined at sea, in line with best international practice, and then brought ashore when it provides no danger.

Secondly, this is not a clash between local and national interests. It is in the national interest that this pipeline and the giveaway of these natural resources to Shell, which will see no benefit to the Irish people, is stopped. There is no reason why these resources should not be nationalised, refined at sea and the vast wealth secured used to provide efficient and well-resourced public services in areas such as health and education rather than boost the profits of Shell’s shareholders.

Gerry Casey, Ireland

Lyons’ review concerns me. He opens by describing himself as a neutral and tells us that this film didn’t change this alleged neutrality. He then proceeds to write a review that’s most certainly not neutral, basing most of what he has to say on assumptions he hasn’t bothered to research or else lack the skills to do so.

Ireland will receive no tax revenue whatsoever from our gas.

The Corrib may well provide up to 60 percent of Ireland’s gas needs. But this is a point that really says nothing on its own, without contextualisation. Ireland will have to pay full market price for its own gas. And of course any gas supplier could sell us gas at full market price. I hope Shell won’t mind receiving an IOU for our gas, though I suspect they might!

Finally, because I want to keep this short. There’s no such thing as a neutral report. There are agendas and even the pretence of neutrality is the product of an agenda where one hopes one’s audience will see one as occupying the high moral ground. It might be more effective, if not more honest if one were to stick to facts (provided one researched them to begin with). But even then, due to the multitude of facts available, the very decision made on what to omit and what to print, necessarily entails a clear and present bias. On this occasion, there is an imbalance of opinion over fact and the spin on ‘neutrality’ is thus particularly galling!

Seán Ryan, Ireland

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10630/

Letters responding to: The double standards of prudish Slutwalkers, by Abigail Ross-Jackson

Ross-Jackson completely missed the point.

Clothes are only secondary in the points Slutwalk was making. The main point is that that Canadian police officer blamed rape on victims choice of attire when the last thing a rape victim needs is to be told that it’s her fault.

The thing is, by rape’s very definition, you cannot ask to be raped, whether verbally or by the length of your skirt, because then it ceases to be rape. Slutwalkers want a world where rape doesn’t happen, and until then, a world where victims aren’t blamed for the actions of their attacker.

I’m the person to whom Ross-Jackson refers here: ‘One woman who took part in the London Slutwalk later tweeted: “Thirty-seven people have taken my photo so far on #slutwalk. (Of those I challenged, it’d not occurred to them to ask.)”’ But all I was referring to was the irony that, on a protest about consent, virtually nobody thought to seek my consent before taking my photo. As it happens, I would have said yes to every single one of those people, had they thought to ask.

How would Ross-Jackson feel if she were on that march and 37 total strangers shoved a camera in her face without asking first? That is what happened; people were metres away from me, just. I don’t believe most people would be entirely comfortable with that.

Slutwalk doesn’t want to defend those who want to get their cleavage out, or wear a tiny skirt, while censoring the reactions of those who look on. It’s generally decent not to remark on people’s clothing uninvited as so many men do, but that’s not what Slutwalk was about.

Katie Sutton, UK

One of the great joys to be found in the works of WS Gilbert is the high quality of his wit.

In The Mikado Koko was in trouble because he, as Lord High Executioner, had not carried out any executions during his occupation of that office.

Now it happens that the only crime punishable by death was flirting and so the plot revolves round the search for a suitable victim.

At the time this was seen by the public as very amusing, The Mikado was one of Gilbert’s most successful librettos.

It is quite fascinating to discover that the feminist movement appear to take the plot as being a deeply serious, if perhaps early, exposition of their sociopolitical views by a man of undoubted literary genius.

I look forward to researching Gilbert’s other works for further indicators of important feminist agendas.

Dermod O’Reilly, Belgium

I couldnt have put it better than Ross-Jackon myself. The Slutwalkers seem to forget there is a natural attraction between men and women – this is how we are all here

Adrian Starks, UK

The main target of the Slutwalk event, as I’m sure you realise, is victim blaming and slut shaming. Yet, the main focus of Ross Jackson’s article seems to be a huge problem with the sign, ‘A kiss is not consent’. (It’s not, by the way).

Where some people like Ross-Jackson are getting confused with Slutwalk is that getting attention and getting raped are not the same thing. We’re sexual creatures, we get that. What some people have been trying to debate with me on these walls is that ‘some women go out obviously wanting attention…’ and I’ve agreed, and then said, so what? That gives someone the right to rape them? I entirely agree that some people (not all, despite what some may think by their clothing) do go out with the aim of attracting a partner – whether that be life-long or for one night – or simply to boost their confidence by getting some looks. That’s fine!

But what’s not fine is how often things like clothing, having a drink, flirting etc, is used within courts to justify the rapist’s behaviour. Has Ross-Jackson seen some of the awful statistics on how, as a society, we blame the victims? Take a look here: http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/documents/Rape

What we are fighting is the way that society stamps ‘public property’ on a woman wearing provocative clothing as soon as she steps out of the front door. Why are we not focusing on the people that sexually assault? We’re not saying there is anything wrong with being chatted up, but how is groping someone without their consent okay? How is following them down the street okay? How is shouting disgusting things at them in the street okay? These things go far beyond attention – these things are not in an effort to sleep with or get to know the woman. I mean really, is Ross-Jackson defending people who wolf whistle?

I have experienced all of these things, and felt intimidated and harassed by them all. I have also been chatted up a lot, and find it flattering and there is nothing wrong with that. Ross-Jackson is the one blurring the lines between harassment and simply asking a girl out, not us.

Her final paragraph shows how little research she really did on Slutwalk. What we have been defending, constantly, as a collective since Slutwalk began is that men are not rabid animals who will rape at the sheer sight of flesh. Rather, we have been asking why is the conviction rate so low in rape cases? Why they often dismissed on the grounds of what the woman was wearing? We have been fighting against exactly that mindset, namely, that men can’t control themselves. We contend that people can control themselves, and therefore the blame for sexual assault should always be on the person who commits it.

Aimee, UK

Reactions to the Slutwalk also highlight the confusion some people seem to experience regarding sexual violence.

Sexual violence is a form of violence. It has nothing to do with normal sexual behaviour.

Helen Pope, UK

Is Ross-Jackson perhaps missing the point a little bit? Surely nobody wants to ban positive attention, but the ‘come ons’ and ‘chatting-up’ that you mentioned come in many forms – they too can be degrading and violating! Or does Ross-Jackson not agree that there is verbal harassment?

And by the way, I’m definitely quite capable of dealing with the unwanted advances of men if I have to… but I don’t think I should have to. That’s harassment.

Salla Varkoi, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10609/

Letters responding to: UK capitalism: ‘Plan B’? A Plan A might be a start, by Mick Hume

While I agree that none of the UK political parties have a solution to the economy, I have to wonder if anyone has a real solution to the economy (and not just Britain’s). The fundamental problem seems to be this – the only sure fire way to get out of a recession is export-led growth (or rather, that’s what’s worked up till now). However, when the world economy also tanks, exports drop – which is why exporters such as Germany did so badly initially in the global recession.

Although the world economy has ‘recovered’, it seems to me that this has been a false recovery – ie, we’ve done it by bailing out the banks and pretending nothing’s gone wrong. When those debts start to bite though (and the highish levels of debt in Western economies have accelerated this process), and every Western country moves into an austerity period, surely trade will again crash, and the ‘fragile’ recoveries of most countries will plunge us back into an actual recession?

Surely the main problem is this – that austerity or export-led growth requires outside investment from other companies to create growth. However, if every Western country is moving into austerity (and surely, with the loss of Tata motors, it seems that non-Western companies aren’t too keen on investing in the West, too), there won’t be any investment, and thus growth will just decline for every country?

I’m not an economist, so I could just be talking rubbish (but then again, that hasn’t stopped most economists).

Guy Reading, UK

So is there a Plan H (for Hume)? If not, he should get off the plinth. There’s plenty of people around who have been critical of the IMF for a decade or more and remain so. I watched their disastrous best efforts in East Asia in 1997-99. But I wouldn’t know what anyone could do about a potential US default.

Which is what we’re actually looking at. (And, just so as people know, defaults don’t happen because the issuing authority decides that; they happen because somebody else important decides the paper is unlikely to be honoured). Do you know what to do then? The choices are agonising. What do you suggest? Debt repudiation? Austerity, as you correctly point out, is a way (the only way?) of postponing that hard question.

So, what next?

Peter Alford, Indonesia

I am really surprised at Guy’s comments (see above).

Firstly that export led growth is impossible because all the other countries are in recession, too. This is false. The IMF acknowledged that world growth last year was 4.8 per cent with China and India at double that.

Secondly, there are solutions. There is one known to all the politicians, it is just that they don’t want to do it because they would lose some of their power. If we simply allowed wealth creators to create wealth without having to jump through hoops they could do so: building cheap nuclear plants is very feasible; allowing house builders to build houses at 1/4 the regulated cost is easy; getting rid of the Health and Safety mafia, who destroy the effort of 4 million workers (and cost 1,000 times the lives they save), can be done; quitting the EU whose regulations even they admit destroy 5.5 per cent of GNP can be done. All of this amounts to the government getting out of the way, which is why the governors don’t like it but it would certainly work.

I do agree with Guy on economists though. Particularly those paid by the state who are, after all, being paid to produce solutions that don’t involve less state parasitism.

Neil Craig, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10604/

Letters responding to: How dare you set up a new university!?, by Brendan O’Neill

Whilst I agree that the vitriol towards the New College expressed in the mainstream media is largely unwarranted, I am nevertheless nervous about Professor Grayling’s initiative. It is explicitly modelled on the American system, and I think that any such move is regressive and undermines the equality of opportunity on which the British system is nominally based.

Although any move to ban such a university would be illiberal, and allowing that the university system in the UK is flawed, I would criticise Grayling et al for choosing to provide a good education for the privileged few rather than working to integrate their vision into the public system.

I think that O’Neill is unfair in lumping together those who dislike the notion of a private university with those who are demanding the immediate closure of the university.

Alexander Franklin, UK

I can’t speak for the cramped nature of higher education in the UK (other than that we have noticed a quite large number of UK academics applying for jobs here in South Africa, which is in inverse proportion to the usual colonial cringe mentality of South African academics swarming off to the metropolis in search of greener intellectual pastures). But I can certainly say that my disgusted gut response, as a young(ish) South African academic, to the Grayling academy is not because it is experimental (which it hardly seems to be) or ridiculously expensive (which it certainly is) – but that it is a very awful spectacle of Naked Emperors ‘barding up’ for the benefit of a few rich people stupid enough to pay to hear them prattle on.

There’s something awful about the egotistical corporatisation of (assumed) intellectual powers, to be dolled out at seminars to doting followers. It’s bad enough that we can’t get away from Dawkins and Ferguson et al as public intellectuals with foghorn opinions.

That said, perhaps I’m just a purist sick of grandstanding intellectuals who come across more and more as tele-evangelists rather than thoughtful interrogators of our cultures and societies. And of course it’s Grayling’s right to do what he likes with his cohorts and minions in tow. In turn, people have the right not to take any notice, it’s just that these intellectuals seem to be more about the money than the learning, and that is what grates with me, here down South, where we have our own problems, in HE and beyond.

Lauren van Vuuren, South Africa

The reason why British academia is in uproar over the New College is largely due to the crisis of legitimacy colleges and universities are facing all over the world.

I can only speak for America, but in the past 20 years we have seen a growth in for-profit schools, most of which provide an overpriced, substandard education. Also we have a rapacious student loan industry which charges anything from eight to 15 per cent on loans which cannot be discharged by bankruptcy. This is why an ‘anti-college’ movement is springing up in America; it is just too expensive to send a teenager to school beyond community college, and for the people in graduate school (which can drag on for a decade in certain fields) getting a job as a faculty member is nigh on impossible.

It should also be noted that niche schools like New College have a high failure rate, a thing they share with the small private grade schools. In full disclosure, I must say that I graduated from a small Christian high school which later collapsed due to certain infidelities between the staff, the church which owned the school, and the pastor of the church. We don’t keep records of defunct private schools in the US as far as I can tell, but from my own personal experience most only last a decade or less. In private US colleges the most extreme case was Founders College, a school founded by Ayn Rand fanatics; it only lasted a year (2006-07.)

In summation, colleges and universities don’t know where they are going because nobody knows where society or capitalism is heading, so they are grasping at straws like ‘online education’, having satellite schools on other continents, etc. Nobody is willing to take a wait-and-see attitude because trends have been everything for the last thirty years.

John Doakes, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10603/

Responding to A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, by Ann Furedi.

Ann Furedi’s article contains serious factual inaccuracies about the work of Life that could have been avoided by the simple expedient of contacting us and asking some questions.

As a counselling and care service, perpetuating untruths about our professional ethics is detrimental to our work. The three points I make below are perhaps the most important because they relate to the integrity of our counselling (we are, by the way, accredited members of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy).

Furedi writes: ‘they provide support for a specific group of women. But not all women. Women considering pregnancy termination, who stumble into Life’s counselling service on the misapprehension that they provide comprehensive, non-directive counselling, are ill-served: often subjected to gruesome videos of what abortion involves and information that exaggerates the risks of the procedure… When a woman requests an abortion, Life counsellors believe it to be in her interests to dissuade her – so they do their best to persuade her it’s a bad idea.’

1. It is not true that our counsellors seek to persuade women to not have abortions. Our counsellors offer person-centred counselling which seeks to help women explore their own feelings about a situation. Many go on to have abortion and we do not put any obstacle in their way.

2. It is not true that we only counsel women who have already decided not to have a termination. We counsel all women who come to us, and it often turns out to be the case that a woman will come to us for crisis pregnancy counselling, have an abortion and then come back to us for post-abortion counselling.

3. It is not true that we ever use gruesome images or medical misinformation to persuade women; not in our counselling, not in our education work.

Furedi continues: ‘the group’s poorly substantiated fantasy that [abortion] causes breast cancer, infertility and post-abortion psychosis’.

Life nowhere argues that abortion ‘causes’ breast cancer, nor have we ever argued for post-abortion ‘psychosis’. We have highlighted the fact that in numerous studies (and our long counselling experience), abortion has been associated with increased emotional and psychological traumas for many women, and has been associated by some studies with other health problems. Surely no-one can be opposed to full and accurate information?

As for other health problems, well – I’ll leave this to BPAS:

‘Abortions that are carried out safely and professionally, and with no subsequent complications will not affect your chances of getting pregnant again in the future. There is a small increase in your chances of having a miscarriage or pre-term delivery in the future.’

Niall Gooch, research and education officer, Life

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10595/

Letters responding to: Mladic, war crimes and the West: unasked questions, by Mick Hume

Undoubtedly there are double-standards about what constitutes a war crime and undoubtedly the victor gets to write the rule book but there is a difference between actions.

Last time I looked the British government weren’t arming, funding or tacitly supporting nationalist paramilitary groups formed with the sole purpose of removing all members of a minority group from the UK. Last time I looked there were no bank robbers with mafia connections leading government-supported paramilitary groups – recruited from, among other places, the ranks of the most audacious, class A football supporters – terrorising and murdering civilians that aren’t English. Last time I looked British troops, preceded by paramilitary henchmen, weren’t driving whole village populations from their homes before looting and then burning the villages to the ground.

Hey, I’m not saying it’s never happened, foreign policy is about the practical pursuit of class-based nationalistic self-interest, and no one’s hands are clean, but I am saying there is a difference between the state-sponsored, attempted destruction of a group of civilians that is ruthless, systematic and organised, and going to war against an opposing army.

All of the above happened in Bosnia.

My point? Just because an unrepresentative minority, ie, the media elite, gets up your nose, and international justice isn’t doled out in a way that meets Hume’s exacting standards of fairness, this doesn’t get round the fact that someone was in charge and responsible for the savagery that was unleashed on Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s. And why shouldn’t they go to prison for it?

Stan Cullerne-Brown, UK

‘This is not to suggest, as some do, that the likes of George W Bush and Tony Blair should also be tried for war crimes over the deaths of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that the assassination of Osama bin Laden should be deemed a crime. (Strangely, however, these critics do not seem to think Blair and Bill Clinton should be held to account for their ‘illegal’ 1999 war against the Serbs over Kosovo…) To sink into such legal cretinism would be to play their game.’

Sorry? Legal cretinism? Why should they not be tried for crimes against peace and crimes against humanity? Why should Blair and Clinton not also be tried for the same crimes?

Hume continues: ‘Whose war is it anyway? That was the title of a little pamphlet I wrote in 1997, criticising the way in which the Balkan wars had been turned into a moral crusade by British and Western politicians and journalists who were searching for a Cause that might give then some new meaning and sense of purpose so lacking in domestic politics.’

This is rubbish. Hume completely misses the whole point. In the former Yugoslavia, Western elites wanted to impose a new credo of humanitarian intervention to pave the way for unlimited military adventures without having to go to the United Nations Security Council. See Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya…

Its called humanitarian imperialism and it is the using of human rights to sell war. The west desperately needed a ‘genocide’ as an excuse to intervene, so they set up and financed a victors court designed specifically for that end.

David Sketchley, Spain

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10574/

Letters responding to: Australia: The world leader in illiberalism, by Chris Snowdon

If there is an inclination for anyone to produce a PhD thesis on why Australia is fast becoming the world’s number one nanny state, they probably would need to challenge the popular assumption that ‘rugged individualism’ was once ever a national virtue, but that’s another PhD I suppose.

The PhD challenge would have to allow for the fact Australia consists of a number of nanny-states, each varying with their severity (and stupidity) of nannying. For instance in Queensland you can’t eat a packet of peanuts with a drink in a DOSA (designated smoking zone). So even if you bought a $4.00 packet of nuts or crisps at the bar to eat with your $9.50 pint of beer to consume with your smoking friends huddled in the DOSA of said venue, you would be advised (very promptly) to leave and stand outside of the DOSA to eat the snack. The eating of peanuts or chewing of gum in DOSAs in other states does not appear to be against local laws.

Any disgruntlement at the farcical nature of the ‘rules’ in the Qld bar could result in staff accusing you of ‘appearing’ intoxicated (whether you’ve had a drink or not). They can then call the cops and have you fined a few $1,000 if you wanted to push your luck further. Strangely, it’s illegal to be intoxicated in an Australian bar, and your levels of intoxication rely upon the subjective skills of bar staff. I had a friend who was a junior Dr who wanted to unwind with a drink after a long day in what used to be called ‘The Press Club’ in Brisbane. He was as a sober as an Ozzie puritan at the time but refused his first drink at the bar for appearing ‘intoxicated’ by an overzealous barmaid who herself looked a day out of school.

Like ‘nicotine addiction’, maybe nannying is an addiction for the weak-willed and the very self-conscious. If so Australia’s nanny-state addiction could have started way back in the 1920’s when compulsory voting was introduced. Since then the adult population has been cynically induced by threat of fines and/or imprisonment for failing to vote in local, state and/or federal elections. Like many ‘addicts’ few see the problem until it’s too late. Few see compulsory voting as a problem, indeed many you speak to here think it is a great and truly democratic idea (as my children are being taught in school at the moment), and somehow superior to the notion of political parties feeling forced to mobilise the electorate through reason, rhetoric and the attempt to represent the aspirations of the adult population.

I guess once you have internalised over generations the need to be forced into voting, one can hardly cry foul when the ‘elected’ see us (the electorate) as their charges who constantly require the dead hand and ham-fist of the state to guide their every step in life… or else!

Dom McCarthy, Australia

Unfortunately, this article is so true. The stereotyped bronze Aussie rebel of 40 years ago, who bucked authority, helped women in distress, and got things done, is long gone. The majority of Australians (and I live here) are now acquiescing wimps who cow-tow to authority, and require permits to cut down their own trees, or even build a sandcastle on Yarraville beach.

Before long they’ll need a council “permit” to change their underpants! And most are so impotent, they’d probably go along with it. They are placated by incessant exposure to the government’s favourite diversion - sport, and dumbed down even further by the fluoride administered via their drinking water.
What’s happened to this country is a tragedy. Unfortunately most other countries have their own problems too; it’s just a shame to see a country that had such promise go down the gurgler.

Julian Hall, Australia

The author seems to have confused Australia with America.

Contrary to his claims, Australia was not known for rugged individualism but rather, rugged socialism. This has always been a country characterised by state paternalism and generally well served by it. Maybe that is why our life expectancy is the fourth highest in the world and higher than any major European country or the US.

Australians tend to be supportive of rules that improve the community’s health except where a worthwhile public interest case is made against it – something the author conspicuously fails to do.

Duncan McFarlane, Australia

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10557/

Letters responding to: Spanish protests: Viva, err… what, exactly?, by Mick Hume

It is fine to be an old-fashioned Marxist, just as long as Hume is not stuck in the past and ends up missing significant new trends. There are some important discussions emerging from Spain which mark what has happened there as something more than just an ‘emotional spasm’. One of the key political strategies being put forward is that of broadening support for ‘el consenso de minimos’ – a kind of political going back to basics or starting from first principles.

People want change – but what type of change is not clear. This will be better formulated when more people are asking the question and demanding an answer. Hume harps back to the Spanish civil War of the 1930s, but that war took place after nearly 70 years of political activism and in a political culture that had a very clear vision of what future it wanted.

Spain is a very different place today. As in the rest of Europe, the old political culture is dead and a new one needs to emerge. At this stage it is about being open to ideas and possibilities and experimentation. What society do we want to create? Partly that’s going to be answered by actually creating it.

Cristina Davies, UK

With high unemployment and continuing cuts in services I am pleased that these people are demonstrating their frustrations at a system which is failing them. I was beginning to worry as nothing was happening.

However, I have to admit that Hume’s article is woefully true for me, too. Many act like a generation denied a rosy future and are reacting to a system that hasn’t delivered the goods rather than at a system that never could.

Christopher Nash, Spain

A very intelligent, well written article. I have been wondering how long the sit-in will last in our town square. I live in Aragon and the Aragonese are famed for their stubborness. It will be interesting to see.

Ann Marie, Spain

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10556/

Letters responding to: This pity for bin Laden is just pacifist-nihilism, by Brendan O’Neill

O’Neill is correct to highlight the hypocrisy of those who are uneasy about the killing of Osama bin Laden while having supported many other acts of barbarism committed by Western regimes. However, I am disgusted that he declares that there is no principled moral stance that can be adopted in relation to bin Laden’s assassination.

On the contrary, this was a racist murder of an unarmed Arab man who was a hero to millions of Muslims around the world for having the guts to confront the menace of Western imperialism head on. If O’Neill, as he claims, is truly opposed to the modern form of the medieval Crusades, the so-called ‘war on terror’, then how can he not condemn the self-congratulatory posturing of Barack Obama and friends for supposedly achieving justice by flagrantly violating Pakistani sovereignty in dispatching bin Laden, even though the American and British governments have massacred far more people than any radical Islamist ever has?

I fear that if Colonel Gaddafi is likewise killed in a cowardly NATO airstrike, then O’Neill will be similarly unmoved. But a robust anti-imperialist position must surely dictate that the assassination of Obama, Cameron or Sarkozy would be far more richly deserved than that of either Gaddafi or bin Laden.

Rob Turton, UK

I routinely find the articles on spiked thought provoking and illuminating. But I don’t like this one at all. I assume it’s meant to be provocative? But there’s a rather a lot of gaps and leaps in the argument, never mind casual assumptions.

Surely people are very bothered by drones bombing people in their beds and all the rest, only it’s been going on for so long that it’s becomes dull saying so?

Despite O’Neill’s apparent irritation with the ‘opinion formers’ or whatever the word is for them, he surely can’t be happy with soldiers crossing the border into another country and killing unarmed people in their house. The moment something like this becomes allowable, principles and laws all become optional. This is the argument that allows the US to torture and detain without trial, all in the name of the greater good.

Tynan Dean, UK

No one respecting international human rights law can deny that bin Laden was killed unlawfully. Otherwise, we would have to redefine all international documents dealing with basic human rights and freedoms.

The bin Laden case is about America’s broken word. It showed how the American administration falls short of the universally accepted standards of human rights law.

Dusan Babic, Bosnia and Herzogovina

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10525/

Letters responding to: The tyranny of science, by Tim Black

Reading Tim Black on ‘The tyranny of Science’ I kept wanting to say, ‘Look, I’m a scientist, but Dawkins and Atkins are not speaking for me’. Oddly enough, Black’s depiction of them brought to mind old-fashioned Christian fundamentalists for whom the Bible had arrived from the Almighty ready formed via some sort of divine teleprinter. One had the impression that science arrived in a rather similar way. Where was the human element?

The Bible was written down by human hands and Science is very much a human enterprise too, so I felt a real sense of relief when Black got to Dimitri Pissarev, What Is To Be Done? and the leap of faith.

In his essay ‘Hypothesis and imagination’, The distinguished medical scientist Sir Peter Medawar said something very similar, when he emphasised the importance in science of the imaginative leap that reveals what might be. ‘Scientists are building explanatory structures’, he wrote, ‘telling stories, which are scrupulously tested to see if they are stories about real life’. He was talking, of course, about the hypothetico-deductive process.

At the end of his essay, Medawar drew attention to one question he had left unanswered about the hypothetico-deductive process. How does the hypothesis or idea come into being? Medawar offered no definite response to his own question, so we are left to seek answers elsewhere. One answer comes, probably to the horror of Dawkins and Atkins, from a former Bishop of Durham, Ian Ramsey, a mathematician with an interest in medicine as well as theology. One of the concepts he developed was that of the disclosure, which he saw as a situation where ‘the light dawns’ or ‘the penny drops’. ‘You begin with empirical, verifiable, flatly descriptive facts; these facts however are such as to invoke an insight, a disclosure of meaning or of the existence or the givenness of something not appreciated previously. ’

It seems axiomatic that a disclosure will come most readily to a prepared mind. The geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys once appeared on Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs, and I was amused to hear him use the expression ‘the penny dropped’ to describe the realisation that led to genetic fingerprinting. The bishop would have been delighted. Ramsey said that disclosures could occur in either a theological or a scientific context, and we could add that disclosures must surely occur in other contexts, in poetry, music or the visual arts, for example. There is as much of a creative element in good science as there is in many more obviously creative activities in the arts world. And, where does science come from, if not from human creativity.

Tom Addiscott, UK

There’s nothing worse than a scientist who loves his subject and thinks he might have more to say about life than a humanities graduate. How dare a scientist deign to know more about a flower than a poet does?

It’s much better to have a purely subjective description than a detailed, objective scientific analysis.

And the cheek of suggesting that believing in myths might not be as useful as studying the world carefully and truthfully.

Atkins (and Dawkins) should be locked up for thinking that being rational isn’t criminal. Don’t they know – science is the root of all evil.

Thanks for pointing all this out to us.

Paul Najman, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10527/

Letters responding to: The right to protest is not exclusive to the left, by Patrick Hayes

From Magna Carta to Asbology in less than 800 years. Many minds abroad are boggling. You’d think any group devoted to democratic freedom would have attacking the ASBO as one of its highest priorities.

John Fitzgerald, UK

Having read Hayes’ article about the use of ASBOs against the EDL members, it does seem quite draconian. And he’s right that the Left doesn’t squeak at all if it is someone not of their political orientation.

A few months ago I watched the lawyer Helena Kennedy being interviewed about the Julian Assange affair and she was protesting vigourously about his detention on various legal grounds. If it had been Nick Griffin or a member of the Tory party being pursued by the Swedish authorities you can imagine what a different song she would have sung.

Adrian Starks, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10526/

Letters responding to: The rise and rise of a pity-for-Obama lobby, by Brendan O’Neill

As a reader of spiked for the past six years, I’m quite taken aback by O’Neill’s article on the ‘pity-for-Osama lobby’ – I actually thought that it was a joke.

The strawman in O’Neill’s argument is obvious. He seems to preclude the possibility of a principled stance against the killing of an unarmed human being, and a principled stance against all Allied intervention in the Middle East. The fact that O’Neill refuses to express any judgement on the summary execution of OBL (other than ‘Fuck Bin Laden’) leads me to believe that he is the one guilty of moral cowardice.

Bredan Fernandes, UK

Is it terribly pompous to say that being ‘civilised’ might entail bringing an unarmed, unthreatening and hugely outnumbered enemy to justice rather then executing him?

And ‘humanitarian’ interventions are always exercises in self enrichment on the part of the interveners.

Keith Stael, Australia

I’m glad the Navy Seal Team drilled bin Laden, but I prayed for him anyway. That’s because I want to stay mindful of the Dread Judgment that awaits me and everyone else.

Tikhon Andrew Gilson, UK

Speaking truth to power (in O’Neill’s realm, the moralistic cognoscenti who rule by sniff and sneer) takes courage. I may rarely agree with O’Neill, but I respect his consistency, rational belief system, and the fact he has the guts to tell it like he sees it. Well done!

Gordon Glazner, USA

I thought this might be a good moment to brave these waters and ask if O’Neill might elucidate for me, as minimally as possible, how we might begin to understand his idea of a truly ‘principled opposition’ to any interference of one state in the affairs of another state.

I have always understood that our nature as mimetic beings alone makes interference with each other unavoidable.

J Laskitude, New Zealand

Brilliant article and badly needs saying!

On the BBC’s Question Time last week,only Douglas Murray spoke in any way that I’d recognise among ordinary people. He was howled down by Ashdown, Alibiah-Brown and Dimbleby – and I saw then that this chattering class of self-styled commentators and political hacks is finished. They are just so removed from the views of the majority of people!

Chris Hartnett, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10508/

Letters responding to: The democratic case against alternative voting, by Frank Furedi

Frank Furedi bemoans the lack of a principled debate on AV. So do I. But that is because both Furedi and I (along with most of the spiked writers) are part of the intellectual elite. To bring everybody else into the debate you have to talk about the other stuff – what the change means. Actually people are very interested in which parties would benefit or lose out – much though I think such arguments are futile.

Still, if Furedi deplores the lack of discussion of principle, he might at least try engage in principled arguments. All we have is a repeat of the rather weak argument about second preference voting encouraging weaker candidates. Actually the strongest case for AV is the prevention of perverse results from splitting the vote. On the day that the Conservatives in Canada have won their election because people decided to vote for the left wing NDP, this deserves some attention, at least.

Matthew Green, UK

I have been observing the AV ‘debate’ from the other side of the Channel with some despair: firstly, because of the appallingly low level of the debate (driven by party/self-interest); secondly, because there is a crying need for electoral reform, which is profoundly undemocratic in the UK (Tony Blair’s Labour party recieved around 40 per cent of the vote in 2002 and an overall majority of 160 plus).The current system effectively disenfranchises the majority of the electorate and no amount of Boundary Commission tinkering is going to change this.

At the same time, AV seems a poor solution. Why not look (and learn) from other European countries that have two round voting. After the first round, candidates below a certain level are eliminated and the electorate have a second chance to exercise their democratic rights – and believe me they do! AV forces a choice before you know the outcome of the first round. There seems to me to be nothing wrong with an elector saying my first choice candidate didn’t make it, so let me make a choice among those still ‘in play’. At least, the vote counts.

Richard Ward, France

Under the current British constitution we elect a parliament rather than a government. Parliament is supposed to hold the government to account on our behalf. But it contains members of the executive branch who wield powers of patronage over parliamentarians and ambitious MPs need to keep on the right side of those who hold that power. This is a constitutional contradiction.

The Alternative Vote is the wrong reform. We need constitutional change in the form of seperate elections for the legislature and executive. Such a reform, coupled with MPs being disbarred from executive office will take political debate out of the managerial arena and give it back to the people.

Robert Persey, UK

Furedi’s premise is an assertion without substance as alternative arguments can easily be made. Governments pass laws routinely without citizens screaming and yelling. If Furedi doesn’t like the substance behind this vote, explain the logic behind it (as it is used elsewhere), then give your reasoning for why, in your opinion, it may be unsuitable.

You’ve failed to make your case thus far.

Donald Isenman, USA

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10495/

Letters responding to: Tescophobia: a new middle-class malady, by Brendan O’Neill

There is a legitimate argument against suburban, car-centric development (and therefore by derivation against huge superstores, which cater primarily to car users), in that such development results in atomisation, loss of community and a stultifying lifestyle.

However, this is clearly not what propelled the recent riot in Bristol, as it was against a small Tesco Local outlet, not a superstore.

George Carty, UK

Down with good value food and conveniently placed shops! Bring back Londis and Fray Bentos and tinned vegetables! Why visit one shop when you visit five?

Michael Roden, UK

I spent some weeks in Aberdeen, and fondly recall shopping at the Aberdeen City Tesco. Well-stocked, pleasant staff, and, best of all, pleasant prices.

Over here in the States we’ve a parallel phenomenon: Walmart fever. The bien-pensant class abhors Walmart. Just like Tescophobia, it is a hatred not grounded in reality.

Walmart haters also get a bonus: WalMart is not unionised. Imagine the shock and horror of the arugula chompers, most of whom have yet to get their hands dirty actually doing physical work. They’re very unlikely to ever join a union or know anyone who actually works in one, other than so-called public employees’ unions. But they know what the correct received opinions are.

They love unions simply because that’s what they’ve been indoctrinated into believing. Actually, it’s business they hate, and anything (such as unions) that hurts businesses, must be a good thing.

Not only do poor people (ugh!) shop at Walmart, poor people work there (double ugh!). Not at all a place for the soft-hands crowd.

John L Rich, UK

We should not be too hasty in grouping the ‘elite anti-Tesco middle-class’ with proponents of animal rights. Peter Singer advocates a utilitarian ethical approach towards the treatment of animals. I’m not jumping on an ‘anti-democratic’ reactionary bandwagon – I shop at Waitrose and Marks and Spencer purely because they sell products from free-range sources. My wallet may be suffering somewhat from my ethical decisions but at least my dinner didn’t.

I shop at Tesco for everything other than animal products not because I care what the middle-class think of my weekly shop but rather because the mute animals exploited for meat should be given a political voice – voicing a preference for a pleasurable characteristic (free-range) life.

I may be one among few but every little helps.

Adrian Ball, UK

This sounds like the same ‘anti-Walmart’ diatribes we hear here in the States. We aren’t supposed to shop there because they ‘put mom-and-pop stores out of business with their cheaper prices’. I don’t know anyone who has shopped at a mom-and-pop store since the 1960’s.

Another argument against Walmart is that it ‘imports everything from China where people don’t make enough to live on’. Yet these same people who complain about Walmart will shop at other large retailers selling the same Chinese-made products. And don’t even get me started about how they supposedly pay their employees so poorly because they aren’t unionised! I have never noticed anyone being forced against their will to work there.

Well, I, and thousands of others, prefer to shop where I can save a few dollars.

Susan Palyo, USA

The competition commission states that for every Tesco superstore that opens the local community loses 276 jobs.

These are not jobs of the chattering classes, just as those protesters in Stokescroft who wanted to physically remove Tesco from their community were not members of the chattering classes.

A consumer boycott has zero impact on monopoly capitalism. O’Neill should be commending a community for attempting to retain their autonomy against corporate domination.

Matthew Hall, UK

I shop at Walmart frequently, and if I were in the UK, I’d feel right at home buying things at Tesco.

We have the same problem with Walmart, which is actually the US analogue to Tesco in the UK. That is, radical snobs want us to ‘buy local’ only to make those local items 25-50 per cent more expensive and have the salespersons look down on the great unwashed as morally and financially inferior.

My response to the radical twits? Why not spend a little time in Peru and do the jobs these ‘fair trade’ workers do? After a couple of days of long work and a $2.50 salary, they’ll see how wrong their argument is and maybe it’ll change their mind.

Brian J Colby, USA

The chattering classes in the media are too well paid to need to watch the pennies and limit their spending. Organic food, and free-range poultry and eggs are more expensive so those on limited incomes would have to forgo something else to afford them. Try living on benefits and buying only organic food and you’ll not have any money for water, sewerage, electricity and gas.

The Tesco-haters wouldn’t be seen dead in Aldi, Lidl, Netto, Asda, Spar, Costcutters or the Co-op because the great unwashed shop there. Instead they buy their food in Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and farmers’ markets at prices most people find too expensive or get Ocado to send it round.

It is precisely because the chattering classes and the anti-supermarket lobby are such a minority that their buying power has not been able to sustain those wonderful small independent food shops in the High Street which have closed because of the likes of Tesco and all the other supermarkets. Any ‘boycott Tesco’ movement will have little effect because the boycotters don’t buy in Tesco anyway!

Peter Hollander, UK

Most laughable was the Socialist Worker claiming the Bristol riots were an outpouring of protest from poor, dispossesed working-class people. They will find that most of the rioters were actually well-off anarchists who reckon smashing things up and fighting with the police is helping the ‘proles’.

Daniel Factor, UK

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10486/

Letters responding to: The art of pissing off Christians, by Tim Black

‘And make no mistake, Serrano intends to provoke. In interviews he may play the ingénue. “My goal in the end is to make beautiful objects from unorthodox materials”, he said in 1998 following controversy in Australia. “I was a bit naïve”, he continued. “I didn’t expect such reactions. I was surprised by the hatred that it caused.” But no one calls a work “Piss Christ” and expects Christians not to be riled.”

Has Mr. Serrano ever ‘intended’ to produce ‘art’ that would ‘piss off’ the peace-loving Muslims? I was just wondering how ‘brave’ he is that he can get cheap publicity from mocking Christians while not being brave enough to provoke other faiths.

I guess you don’t have to be brave to be an artist the left celebrates.

Gary Baldridge, UK