Letters: Bank lending

Jeremy Warner believes that the degree of regulation required to prevent the current mortgage fiasco would have been detrimental to the banking system's efficacy as a motor for prosperity (Outlook, 10 September). I do not believe this.

It has been obvious that the mortgage business has been heading for a crisis for some time – as it has done regularly since the Second World War. These crashes throw the economy backwards and ruin hordes of ordinary people, while the people in the banking system who caused the crash get away with huge rewards. I suggest that slightly slower growth is a small price for preventing the distress these crashes cause.

The essence of sensible mortgage lending is to lend no more than you can be certain of recovering in the event of the borrower defaulting, less a margin for safety. Lenders anxious to increase their business and commissions, politicians wanting to enable people with no money to buy houses and bankers involved in the derivative instruments business have all ignored this.

All that is needed to stop these collapses is a return to sound lending practices. Unfortunately, history shows us that this would have to be imposed by pretty fierce regulation because otherwise the clever-clogs in the finance business would find ways of wriggling round the rules. Just imagine: if in this country and the USA no mortgage were granted for more than 75 per cent of the purchase price, the current crisis would simply not exist, and property prices would be a great deal lower in most parts of the country.

I hope the Government institutes a thorough inquiry and gives the FSA the powers to prevent such a crisis happening again. I would also like to see the managers of the big banks lose their jobs, and there must be a move away from paying bank staff commissions of a magnitude that encourages recklessness.

Of course, none of this will happen. The politicians want to go on fostering the notion that everyone can buy a house, and they will be loath to upset their friends in the City who want to remain free to do just as they like no matter whom it hurts. How long before the next crisis? About 20 years seems to be the usual interval.

Dudley Dean

Maresfield, East Sussex

Palin taps into deep resentments

John McCain may look decrepit but he is no fool. After the extraordinary speech by Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention, it was clear to McCain's managers that a coup was needed, and the unseen hand of Karl Rove is written all over this unprecedented choice of Sarah Palin for the Republican vice-presidential slot.

Now Obama faces the worst of all possible situations. Palin's beliefs may seem outlandish, exotic and bizarre to UK residents, including some of those I have met on my current vacation in Devon. However, she is authentic and totally consistent with her backwoods culture and taps into class and cultural resentments felt by a huge swathe of the blue-collar, largely uneducated but immensely religious poor and rural communities in the red "fly-over states". She has also tacitly given power to the anti Afro-American resentments of a big portion of the US electorate. The dirty little secret of the US polls is the racism that drives 20 per cent of the electorate to hide the fact that they will never, under any circumstances, vote for a black presidential candidate.

Women will vote for Palin, alas, in droves; men seem to be smitten by her schoolmarmish, strict-librarian suppressed sexuality, and the end-of-times fundamentalists are already salivating at the prospect of one of their anointed at the helm of the ship of state, the moment John McCain keels over.

Barack Obama's single avenue to victory remains a massive, organised turn-out of every segment of society that understands a Palin presidency would destroy the last vestiges of civil liberties and herald a fascist state that would make Bush and Cheney look benign in retrospect.

John Harmer

Baker City, Oregon, USA

In the light of the Republicans' protests at Gordon Brown's apparent support of Barack Obama, I wonder why it should be a problem if the British Prime Minister did display support for one candidate. We are constantly hearing that if America sneezes, then we all catch a cold. Why shouldn't we display to the world who we think the best next US President is for the UK?

Throughout history America has constantly done more than simply express support for foreign heads of state. They have funded candidates whom they consider to be able to help US interests. They have helped to overthrow democratically elected heads of state who will not do as they are told. The US has constantly meddled in foreign elections in order to achieve the outcome that suits the US.

Paul Hollyer

Portsmouth

There is an unfortunate precedent for Gordon Brown's intervention in the US presidential election. During the 1888 campaign the British ambassador, Sir Lionel Sackville-West, received a letter purporting to come from a recently naturalised US citizen of British extraction. This asked Sir Lionel for his opinion on which candidate was more in the British interest. Sir Lionel commended the Democrat, the incumbent President, Grover Cleveland. Unhappily, the letter was a Republican sting. Sir Lionel's reply was instantly published, Sir Lionel was asked to leave the country and the Republican candidate was subsequently elected.

Robert Davies

London SE3

Philip O'Donoghue (letter, 10 September) wonders what we may conclude about Sarah Palin from the names of her children: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. I can only suppose that they're named after oilfields.

Mike Merchant

Newbury, berkshire

Students who shun Cambridge

Since there were only two male philosophy students starting at Johann Hari's Cambridge college in 1998, and since the other one did not attend a private school, I thought I must be the "Andrew" to whom Johann refers ("Oxbridge walls that can't be scaled", 4 September). In fact he tells me he did not mean philosophy, and thus did not mean me. Nevertheless, I think Johann's story about "Andrew" and "Laura" needs a reply.

There is no denying that a good education (whether or not at a private school) can put applicants at an advantage. Nor is there any denying that the distribution of good education in the British Isles falls short of being fair, on any reasonable measure.

But the people who interview Oxbridge applicants are academics: people who care about the subject they have devoted their lives to studying. They are looking for students who just might have the spark of something similar. They couldn't care less what school you went to or what your parents do for a living, if anything. And they hate more than anyone the unfairness of the system which puts many talented people off even applying.

That system includes what is said in the media and in politics. Johann, as a successful young columnist, is a part of the system, with a responsibility to try and make it fairer. And I too am part of the system, since these days I am involved in interviewing nervous little Lauras as well as cocksure young Andrews. I hope I will be fair. But there is little that interviewers can do for people who do not even apply: they are in Johann's hands.

Dr Alex Broadbent

Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

As a comprehensive-school student, and current Cambridge undergraduate, I can confirm Stephen O'Sullivan's experience (letters, 6 September): I regularly advise my privately schooled colleagues on what clothes they should wear, what music they should listen to, and which slang terms are in vogue.

I have personally found no evidence of a state/private divide in my time at Cambridge; my closest friends come from a variety of backgrounds, and to affix a single stereotype based on the type of school that they attended (streetwise or rugby-playing) would be unfair. Unfortunately, such crude stereotyping is rife within comprehensive schools, and probably contributes more to comprehensive under-representation than any other factor.

Arriving in Cambridge for the first time, I was concerned that I might be snubbed by private-school snobs; such ill-founded concerns about fitting in probably contributed heavily to the lack of applications from my school. From my sixth-form year of over 100 students, I was the only applicant. In the year below me, only two applied out of eight or nine good candidates. The same is true of the sixth form in the neighbouring town.

The real problem within the Oxbridge applications system is not only cultural advantage: many comprehensive-school students ruin their own chances by not even applying. Without the frightening effect of inaccurate and lazy stereotypes, perhaps more could be encouraged to put in an application.

Edward Kiely

Sudbury, Suffolk

Colliding with a strange new world

There has been much speculation that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will create a black hole, swallowing up the earth.

A scientific experiment usually begins with a statement of the questions it is designed to answer. A pamphlet on the LHC produced by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council gives five questions: What happened in the Big Bang? Why do particles have mass? Where's the antimatter? What's the universe made of? What kind of universe do we live in? What is striking about these questions is that they do not refer so much to the very small, and to the structure of fundamental particles, as to cosmology, gravitation and the theory of the Big Bang.

What may prove to be earth-shattering is that the absence of the expected observations from the LHC may herald a new era in physics and cosmology where the theories of dark energy, dark matter and an expanding universe starting with a Big Bang are not necessary to explain the observed behaviour of the universe.

Dr Hugh St A Hubbard

School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds

Purpose of the 'threat' to Israel

The "threat to Israel's existence" (letter, 9 September) is a lament that we have been listening to for decades. It comes from the only state in the region with nuclear weapons, almost unlimited conventional forces and enough finance to wall off another state (or what is left of it).

All leaders in all conflicts call for the destruction of the enemy; what this means in reality is always something different. One day, I hope, it will dawn on the civilised people of Israel that the insistence on a "threat to its existence" has more to do with keeping an uncompromising, bellicose and increasingly corrupt military class permanently in power.

Colum Gallivan

London SW17

Language was not made for pedants

Your 9 September letters page includes two contributions on the use of English. One is a sensible plea for more sensitivity on the part of native speakers of English when communicating with non-native speakers. The other is yet another complaint from a member of the "I'm better than you because I know where to put apostrophes" club.

Please could we have more of the first kind and less of the second? Apostrophes really don't matter very much. (And please don't publish letters from people complaining that I should have said "fewer of the second". That's a really bad rule.)

Michael Swan

Chilton, Oxfordshire

Briefly...

Expensive clean-up

Thirty-five thousand pounds to remove one word from a power station chimney at Kingsnorth (front page, 11 September)? Did E.ON get more than one quote for the job? I know a couple of Poles who would have done it for a hundredth of that amount.

Michael J J Day

Settle, North Yorkshire

Fine words

David Miliband's article "We badly need a treaty to control the arms race" (9 September) is most encouraging. Treaties are a huge tool in the hands of those who work to achieve a more peaceful and sane world, as well as for governments of benign intent. However, treaties, once established, must be honoured. David Miliband's words would have even more force if the UK government honoured its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to "pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects".

Jim McCluskey

Twickenham, Middlesex

Hang it all

In your story on the Abu Dhabi takeover of Manchester City (3 September), Amanda Staveley is described as a "lynchpin". What is that, I wonder? A peg or nail on which to hang a noose, maybe?

Godfrey Keller

Department of Economics University of Oxford

Been here before

I am old enough to remember both the fanfare that accompanied the launch of the Sinclair C5 – an electric vehicle boasting cutting-edge technology that, we were told, would do away with the need for cars – and its descent to popular object of ridicule ("Make way for the Segway", 8 September). If the Segway finishes its days as spectacular a commercial disaster as its British predecessor, it will be because it failed to take into account its cheaper, faster, greener and greatly more efficient rival – the bicycle.

Yannick Read

Environmental Transport Association, Weybridge, surrey

Advanced culture

Michael O'Hare (Letter, 11 September) looks forward to a stereotypical feature on Merseyside, illustrated by a burnt-out car on bricks. Does Mr O'Hare not realise that this year Liverpool is European Capital of Culture? Because of our new position in the cultural world, we no longer use bricks to jack up cars, but the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Jim Walker

Liverpool