Letters: Charities and politics

Sir: As the manager of a non-charitable civil liberties campaign group (I write in my own capacity, and these are not necessarily the views of NO2ID) I have the greatest admiration for Baroness Kennedy, but I fear her piece "Charities must be free to engage in politics" (25 May) is politically naive. Charities Law has just undergone a revolution, and we have this weekend seen the consequence that many predicted: the state flexing its muscles and "suggesting" that charitable schools must do what politicians want if they are to keep their privileges. There will be more where that comes from.

For the 400 years before 2005 charitable status was not justified by a quid pro quo. Once a function was deemed charitable, and the organisation stuck to that function, it was safe from political interference. We've lost that already. Pitching charities fully into political sphere as Helena Kennedy suggests, would add to the institutional dangers.

She supposes charities would retain their present ethos, and just add to their public voice. However, when the massive resources provided by the public's generosity are potentially available to wield for advocacy purposes, charities and charitable conduct will become (more than the present administration has already contrived to make them) political battlegrounds, and political instruments, with a vicious circle of ever more regulation and more lobbying. The Electoral Commission would get involved. There would be a quango to check what was being said in political advertising, whether it matched the declared goals of the organisation, and to trace the funds used. Other non-profits would be smeared as "buying" freedom from regulation by not taking tax-breaks. To see where this ends look to Putin's Russia, where all private organisations must be registered, being suspect as potential enemies of the state.

It is a distinguishing feature of liberal societies, and British society in particular, that they have a private civil society with varied institutions having their own goals independent of power politics. That is in danger already. Pace Baroness Kennedy, we should fear the Office of the Third Sector's mission to "promote" voluntary activity; promotion inevitably means colonisation, as the compliant are weaned on subsidy and subsidy is conditional on compliance. We should welcome a political role for and in charities as warmly as we do MRSA in hospitals.

GUY E S HERBERT

LONDON NW

Will nuclear power arrive too late?

Sir: The Government tells us that we need nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions - but they will take at least 15 years to build. Meanwhile the scientists tell us we have only 10 years of high CO2 production before the world reaches a dangerous "tipping point".

Invest all that nuclear money in energy conservation and renewables and we could have immediate reductions in CO2 just in time. Carry on down the nuclear road and we these crucial 10 years on an expensive irrelevance.

ROBERT SMITH

HASTINGS

Sir: Why so much fuss over the Government's decision to go for nuclear generation of electricity? France has 19 power stations which generate 80 per cent of its electricity needs. It seems to have done this efficiently and non-controversially. What's the problem?

STUART RUSSELL

POULTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE

Sir: The Government is right to encourage new nuclear power stations, though it is 10 years too late and the number mooted is too small. Twenty-five could supply 50 per cent of the UK's electricity reliably, continuously and with no CO2. Nuclear power could also supply clean electricity for the future generation of electric/hybrid cars. Imagine plugging your car into a wind turbine on a calm day!

It is the absolute opposition to nuclear power from green interests over the last 15 years, supported by newspapers such as The Independent, that has led to the probable shortfall in electricity generation within the next few years. At least we will know whom to blame when the lights go out.

MARTIN HICKEY

SPORLE, NORFOLK

Sir: Simon Moore (letter, 24 May) states that nuclear power is "carbon free". This "fact" seems destined to become the received wisdom simply on the basis of its frequent repetition. However, the advocates of "carbon-free" nuclear power have yet to explain exactly how uranium is mined and transported without any carbon emissions being produced.

RICHARD WALFORD

KENTON, DEVON

Sir: I am surprised that nothing is being said in the options on future energy supply about combined heat and power.

I remember the first time that I went to New York I was surprised by the number of small power stations dotted around Manhattan - there's one right next to the UN building - and thinking that they couldn't be very efficient. But the answer is that instead of the waste heat being thrown away in cooling towers, it is piped to housing and offices. Other cities such as Utrecht and Stockholm do this.

I realise that this would mean digging up streets and installing heat exchangers in houses and offices to transfer the heat to central heating circuits, but if we are really serious about reducing CO2, why isn't this option being considered?

IAN K WATSON

CARLISLE

Thalidomide shows value of animal tests

Sir: I led the journalistic team which exposed the truth about thalidomide. Please allow me to correct Dr Jarrod Bailey's misleading letter of 24 May.

The makers of the drug got PR and legal mileage out of the fact that very few testable animals reproduce the long-limb deficiencies that thalidomide produces in humans. But that is beside the point. At the time the drug was developed, it was usual for drug companies to test what they called the "reproductive effects" of drugs in rats and mice. Most of the well-known tranquillisers were tested in that way, and showed no untoward effects there or in humans. Distillers, the UK promoters of thalidomide, did not do that.

The effect of thalidomide in rats and mice is sharply to reduce the number of pups per litter. Thalidomide causes foetuses to be "resorbed" in the placenta, leaving distinct scars.

Had this standard precaution been taken by a proper scientific team (which Distillers didn't have) there could have been no question of the the drug being marketed. Its ferocious teratogenic effect in humans would never have become part of our scientific knowledge. This history is a powerful evidence in favour of animal testing.

BRUCE PAGE

SHINGLE STREET, SUFFOLK

Sir: Jarrod Bailey argues that the essential advances in the development of the artificial pacemaker occurred in human applications. In doing so he understates the vital contribution made by animal research to overcoming practical difficulties.

For example in the late 1950s William Weirich published the results of extensive studies in animals which showed how an external myocardial pacemaker could reverse heart block, an advance that saved many lives during open-heart surgery.

A few years later Wilson Greatbatch introduced the world's first practical implantable pacemaker after studies in animals, and animal studies were again vital to his work in the late 1960s to develop pacemakers powered by lithium-iodide cells.

PAUL BROWNE PhD

CAMBRIDGE

The wrong reform of house sales

Sir: Having just completed a house sale, I'm amazed that the Government is to make the process more complicated and more expensive, for many vendors, and include another layer of bureaucracy by the introduction of Home Information Packs (letter, 17 May).

There are two changes to the system that could give us all a break. First, adopt the Scottish system whereby an offer is a legally binding contract - at a stroke taking away the biggest anxiety of all: will we actually get the property? Until a week before we moved into our new home we were unsure whether our vendor would take a higher offer. The information we need most for a fluid and speedy sale is a certainty the agreement will be kept, not easily obtainable legal and search documents.

Second, rather than create a system of penalising people for not having energy-efficient houses, why not band the energy efficiency of properties into council tax and create a bonus- incentive scheme? Houses could have an energy-efficiency rating similar to the A-F bands on white goods, with a reduction on council tax for being environmentally responsible. Energy efficiency would then be thought about consistently, rather than just when moving home.

JONATHAN ALLEN

LONDON NW2

Yet another press smear on Longford

Sir: My father, Frank Longford, would have been delighted that Jim Broadbent has won Bafta's best actor award with Longford (report, 21 May). Typically the long-distance runner, Frank Longford would have seen Jim Broadbent's success as wide publicity for penal reform, second as a lovely telly vindication of his own long patience under trial by Tory tabloid as "Myra's pervert lover, loony Labour peer".

To be resurrected as Jim Broadbent in a halo would have tickled him: but in the same breath to be labelled a Tory peer might have tried even my father's sense of fun. By the end of his long political life as an Attlee generation socialist he was sceptical of New Labour inequalities, and back to calling himself plain Labour. So how come the party of Michael Howard etc gets the credit for my father's long political fight for the underdog prisoner, for better justice, better prisons?

JUDITH KAZANTZIS

LEWES E SUSSEX

The Iraq vigilante should face trial

Sir: Michael Petek (letter, 23 May) is wrong in stating that even if the International Criminal Court had the power to try a case about the legality of invading Iraq, there would be no case for Tony Blair to answer.

It is uncontroversial that vigilante action is illegal. The case for the invasion was that Iraq was in breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 which called upon Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction or face serious consequences. It was for the Security Council to determine (from the report that Hans Blick and the other weapons inspectors were expected to make in due course) whether Iraq was complying with that resolution (as the Iraqi government claimed, with justification as we later learned), and if not, of what nature the "serious consequences" should be. No individual nation, not even the mightiest, has the authority to enforce UN Security Council resolutions on its own initiative.

The only reason that Resolution 1441 had been passed unanimously was that all the other members of the Security Council believed that there could be no military action without a further resolution. The US and Britain deliberately denied the Security Council the opportunity of voting on such a resolution.

If Tony Blair thinks he can justify his actions, he should be required to do so in a fair trial in a court of law. If the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court does not have the power to try the legality of the invasion, then, as at Nuremberg, there is a need to establish special war crimes trials that do have such power.

NIGEL HARRIS

NOTTINGHAM

Sir: Michael Petek's arguments against the prosecution of Tony Blair are based on biased interpretations. Contrary to the assertion frequently made by Iraq war apologists, UN resolution 1483 does not legalise the invasion. It merely reminds the UK and the US of their responsibilities as occupiers and requests that they collaborate with the UN weapons monitoring programme, which the invasion interrupted.

Mr Petek also mentions resolution 3314, article 2, which states that the Security Council might decide that an aggression against a sovereign state may be justified in the light of certain circumstances provided the consequences of the aggression are not grave. It is difficult to see how this article could be of any relevance to an invasion that caused 650,000 deaths and major regional instability.

The fact that the International Criminal Court is not yet competent to decide on the legality of a war of aggression may hinder attempts at prosecuting Mr Blair, but has no bearing on the issue of whether or not the war was legal.

FRANÇOIS GUESDON

SHEFFIELD

Legal muddles

Sir: John Charman describes family law as "muddled and incomprehensible". Sounds just like the rules and regulations covering insurance, which has provided the fortune from which Mr Charman will pay his ex-wife the obscene sum she has been awarded.

MIKE DUNTON

APPLEDORE, DEVON

Mysterious visions

Sir: Why does the Virgin Mary only reveal herself to scattered individuals in isolated locations such as Fatima (The Big Question, 24 May)? Would it not be more effective if she were to appear, say, in the middle of the pitch during the World Cup final?

JULIEN EVANS

CHESHAM, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

European role

Sir: Adrian Hamilton is patently right (Opinion, 24 May). The old nation states of Europe can exert influence only by presenting a united front. Thus, Britain has another opportunity to play a leading role in the enlarged - and growingly restive - EU. Imperial or transatlantic dreams are dangerous illusions. Evolution of global entities compels us to seek synergies of shared sovereignty. Surely, Gordon Brown is aware of this?

JOHN ROMER

LONDON W5

Babies out of touch

Sir: Your report that babies can tell languages apart by looking at the facial movements of the speaker (25 May) should make us think about the dangers to babies of forward-facing buggies. Strapped into a buggy, the baby can't actually see anyone in particular: just a mass out there of things and people. In the days of big perambulators there was Mum's - or on Sunday Dad's - face actually looking at one, and speaking English, or French, or Chinese or whatever. Now, no early language learning after what one heard from within the womb.

ELIZABETH YOUNG

LONDON W2

Ducks, dogs and cats

Sir: If beijingese dogs (letter, 23 May) then surely also Zimbabwean ridgebacks and Iranian cats?

VALERIE PASSMORE

LONDON N16