Letters: Death in Iraq

One more pointless death in Iraq - bring the troops home now

Sir: The 101st British soldier to be killed in action in Iraq was killed by a roadside bomb whilst he was on a patrol in a "snatch" Land Rover. My son, Major Matthew Bacon, was killed by a roadside bomb whilst he was on patrol in a "snatch" Land Rover. That was on 11 September 2005, one year five months and two days earlier than Private Luke Simpson.

I am incandescent with rage that this is still going on. Military commanders know that these bombs can be triggered without being detected by the sophisticated electronic counter measures carried on these vehicles, yet they still insist that patrols should go on being carried out using them. Soldiers travelling in Warriors can suffer the same fate but they do have a better chance of survival. In the "snatch" Land Rover there is no chance.

Our soldiers are not in Iraq defending Queen and country whatever the Prime Minister wants us to believe. Their present role seems to be to attempt to hold the ground for an elected government that cannot govern in the midst of increasing civil strife. In those circumstances it seems inconceivable that they should be sent out of their bases to die in a game of Russian roulette for no good reason.

And now the Americans, with the British joining in, are accusing Iran of being the purveyors of these lethal killing methods. But this is not new. At the time of my son Matthew's death this was known, but political expediency dictated that nothing should be done.

I despair for our servicemen and women. There just is no solution. They have to come home, as soon as possible. I despair for the Iraqi people but I cannot see that the coalition remaining in Iraq is going to solve anything.

ROGER BACON

COPENHAGEN

Greed and brutality damage our children

Sir: A wealth of research over several years has indicated that among developed nations Britain is doing something which is uniquely damaging to children's emotional and mental functioning ("Britain's children: unhappy, neglected and poorly educated", 14 February). Having turned round the lives of some of the most damaged of British children for over 35 years, we believe that we understand both the causes of their distress, and the solutions.

Our shared impoverishment is not about money. On paper our country is hugely wealthy. It's about how we relate to one another. That 10 per cent of the population owns 75 per cent of our vast national wealth is eloquent testimony to the deterioration of our social relations.

We seem to have reached a tipping point, when the promotion of individualism, with its associated greed and anxieties, generates a level of relational incapacity which accelerates the speed of decline, affecting our whole culture's emotional and mental functioning.

Margaret Thatcher's provocative "there is no such thing as society", which contained its kernel of truth, perhaps now needs to be balanced by our grasping that at a more profound level society, the family, the group, is all there is. There are no sane and happy individuals without healthy, self-sacrificing mutually supportive familial and social relationships, where greed, rivalry and anxiety can be relinquished. The opposite of the decadent brutality reflected back to us in Big Brother, in other words.

The recovery of damaged children requires their participation in a group of peers and adults who have a highly developed understanding and skill in how to relate to others, and to develop others' capacity to relate. The recovery of our society depends upon our developing a public space and culture which prioritises the needs of the family, the group, the "common weal", rather than the wishes of the individual, at every level.

STEPHEN BLUNDEN

CHIEF EXECUTIVE, CHILDHOOD FIRST LONDON SE1

Sir: I was helped through my teenage years by a scoutmaster, a youth club leader, a man who ran a football team and a couple of teachers who continued to take an interest in me after I left school to work in a factory. They came from the same class background as my family and, with the exception of the teachers, were untrained and had manual or low-paid clerical jobs.

They all nurtured me, the teachers seeing something that I had not seen in myself and encouraging me to be aspirational. I was loved by my parents but I found it important to learn in informal ways from adults outside the family circle. Not once did I feel at risk from these adults. They listened when I was wrong and when I was right they complimented me.

Today I wouldn't get involved if I was them. I would not fancy the ridicule of being a scoutmaster (nudge-nudge, wink-wink), the training needed to run a youth club or the responsibility of taking 12 lads across a city by bus. The teachers would have all on to meet their targets without trying to help a lad who had a lot to learn.

Teenagers find it hard to survive because adults are afraid of what might happen if they slip up, but also because of a more general culture of fear. Parents fear for their children when there is little to fear but fear itself.

BRIAN LEWIS

PONTEFRACT, WEST YORKSHIRE

Sir: In 1992, I was training a lady who had recently returned to work after leaving over 10 years ago to raise a family.

I wondered if her family had struggled for money during this time and she replied that they had, but the necessity of her being there for her children during their formative years was more important. She made the following statement which I have never forgotten: "Women may have got their liberation, but it's been at the expense of children, not the expense of men."

ALEX SCOTT

LIVERPOOL

Challenge the myths about rape

Sir: The BBC's celebrity rape trial programme The Verdict comes amid serious concern at the justice system's handling of rape (Johann Hari, 12 February). While we urgently need a debate on why the conviction rate is falling (it's only 5.3 per cent of reported cases) and rape crisis centres are closing, it's questionable whether The Verdict will engender informed discussion.

At least 50,000 women are raped every year in England and Wales, most by someone they know (a husband, partner or ex-partner). Crime surveys indicate that up to 95 per cent of rapes are never reported to the police, and of these only a tiny proportion reach court.

The Verdict's trial-only focus was extremely limited, virtually excluding key processes including the police's initial investigation, evidence gathering, or how the Crown Prosecution Service proceeds to trial. Recently, CPS and police inspectorates highlighted prejudices and systemic failures that women experience throughout the legal process. Policies need to be properly implemented, and training given to police officers, medical experts and prosecutors alike.

The Government should mount a high-profile campaign challenging myths around rape, including that women are generally raped by strangers.

HOLLY DUSTIN

CAMPAIGN MANAGER END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN LONDON EC2

Cannabis as a medicinal herb

Sir: Steve Clements (letter, 13 February) observes that cannabis is "after all, just a plant". The same might be said of henbane and hemlock, and of course barley, hops and the poppy. My 1923 edition of Potter's Cyclopaedia of Drugs and Herbs offers the following definition for Indian hemp, cannabis sativa: "Anodyne,hypnotic, antispasmodic. It is principally used to allay spasmodic pains of nervous origin where there is a marked nervous depression. It produces sleep without derangement of the digestive organs, and is therefore more suitable, in many cases, than opium. Used for smoking by the Arabs and other Eastern tribes."

No condemnation there, but then cannabis was still legal in some American states after this date. Nature offers us its bounty without malice and without pity. We must decide what we do with its gifts.

PETER CURRAN

KIRKLISTON, WEST LOTHIAN

Ambiguities seen in Manet's mirror

Sir: No art historian me, but has not Tom Lubbock got his appraisal of Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère totally wrong (wallchart, 12 February)?

"Look in the mirror again. None of the reflections quite work. The bottles on the table have shifted positions ... the woman's mirror image has jumped impossibly to the right ... The figure we view from the back looks smaller, cuddlier ...." and so on.

Surely, as I have always thought, this is a painting of a central bar in a room, being worked at on both sides by two barmaids. I've never heard the "mirror theory" myself, but it would seem plain as a pikestaff that it's nonsense. Of course there are a few ambiguities on my side of the argument too, when looked at closely, but no so many as Mr Lubbock's, which would seem to cloud and confuse a perfectly unmysterious and clear, as well as marvellous, painting.

DAN BELTON

BRIGHTON STUCKISTS

Government ignores petition at its peril

Sir: Steve Richards (Opinion, 13 February) is right to criticise petitions in general as blunt weapons which over-simplify issues. Its true, also, that any people, perhaps a large majority of those signing the current petition against road charging, haven't got a clear alternative. That's not the point.

The essence of democracy in this country is that we vote somebody in on the basis of a general set of principles and let them get on with the job, so long as they don't do anything too outrageous which upsets too many people. This petition gives an early warning that road charging is exactly such an issue. It sounds all kinds of alarm bells in people's heads - particularly the issue of civil liberties, which Richards lightly dismisses as a "red herring".

There's an overwhelming mood in the country which has built up around many different issues that the Government is already too powerful, too remote and too arrogant. They ignore this particular petition at their peril.

PETER HOPKINS

KINGSLEY, STAFFORDSHIRE

Sir. I signed the petition to "scrap road pricing plans" as a protest at the suggestion by the Department of Transport that they should monitor the movement of every vehicle using satellite technology and bill the owner according to the roads used and the time of day.

Such a scheme would be extremely difficult to operate. The technology may exist but the logistics of billing 20 million motorists each month would be formidable. The associated task of actually collecting the fees from 20 plus million would be the real challenge. Judging by the Child Protection Agency and similar computerised projects, the whole project is beyond the capabilities of the bureaucrats working within anything like reasonable operating costs.

Congestion is not a nationwide problem. The vast majority of roads never reach a level of congestion that is unacceptable. Something has to be done in some towns and cities, and on some major roads and motorways. Congestion charges, as in London, and toll roads, as overseas, would seem to be all that is necessary.

RON WATTS

KING'S LYNN, NORFOLK

Sir: Are the poor to be taxed off the road so a rich man can have congestion-free car use? Surely a better way is to limit car use to, say, three days a week, except for essential professional use, with only public transport or two-wheel vehicle use allowed on one's off-days. Or is it just a tax-raising exercise?

MIKE HUSBAND

HORSHAM, WEST SUSSEX

Drunken toffs

Sir: It's not Dave Cameron's smoking cannabis that worries me. That was a self-infliction. No, it's his membership of the Bullingdon Club when he was at Oxford University. This group of toffs, including Boris Johnson, went around in post-prandial drunken rampages, trashing restaurants. Are these people really fit to lead a political party, or be considered for government?

JOHN PINKERTON

MILTON KEYNES

Sleep of reason

Sir: Jake Chapman's response (Letters, 7 February) to Johann Hari's criticisms of his and his brother's art speaks volumes: when we have no argument, just insult the other speaker, don't address their views. Foucault's split of philosophy and practical life, and failure to see their (dialectical) interdependence may not have directly influenced the Chapmans, but both Foucault and they mirror a society in all spheres still driving wedges between thought and action, intellect and feeling, judgment and desire. Now this surely is a dream - or rather nightmare - of reason.

DAVID JOHNSON

ASHTEAD, SURREY

Wilde at school

Sir: A propos Wilde being added to teenage studies "for the first time" (letter, 8 February), it was introduced even earlier. After (uncomprehendingly, for the most part) studying Macbeth for O-level in 1955, I saw The Importance of Being Earnest at Nottingham Playhouse shortly before the exam. When it proved to be one of the O-level options, I answered the questions on Importance rather than the Scottish play. And failed English. However, I had a career spanning more than 20 years in theatre and drama-college lecturing, so some good came out of it.

FREDERICK ROBINSON

BEXHILL-ON-SEA, EAST SUSSEX

Let me through . . .

Sir: While I would agree totally with Philip Hensher (13 February) on the subject of doctorates, my late mother, whose PhD on the subject of the influence of Scottish literature on Russian was completed in two years in the Fifties, found that calling herself Dr Greene ensured excellent service with tradesmen. We never forgot the occasion when we received the message "Dr Greene, your head is ready" from the best fishmonger in Edinburgh, the head in question being a halibut head for making Russian fish soup.

MARINA DONALD

EDINBURGH

Chicken feed

Sir: Tim Blake's chickens (letter, 13 February) may be content with Marmite and melon but our hen Spongebob prefers organic sausage and chocolate muffins served on the kitchen floor. She and her "husband" Damien provide us with entertainment, wonderful eggs and many useful lessons for our two sons, who could have no better pets.

ELEANOR GALLAGHER

BARDON MILL, NORTHUMBERLAND