Letters: Foot-and-mouth

Vaccinate cattle against foot-and-mouth and save real farming

Sir: Your correspondents commenting on the foot-and-mouth outbreak appear, in their criticism of the National Farmers' Union, to be unaware of the difference between agriculture and agri-business.

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Agriculture is family farms firmly based in and contributing to the rural economy. Agri-business means intensive production aimed at producing cheap food for sale by rapacious supermarkets whose overwhelming concern is to maximise profits no matter what the cost to anyone or anything else.

Culling infected animals is intended solely to protect our beef export industry, whilst supermarkets happily continue importing beef from countries such as Brazil, where foot-and-mouth disease is endemic. Can anyone explain the sense in this? And what about the contribution towards climate change of needlessly shipping vast quantities of meat around the globe?

As a farmer of rare breed Red Poll cattle I am fully in favour of vaccination, both to create a firebreak and to prevent our rare breeds from becoming extinct breeds. I have been forced to work around the supermarkets and agri-business and have no wish to sacrifice my livestock and my livelihood to suit them or anyone else.

HUW ROWLANDS

MICKLE TRAFFORD, CHESHIRE

Sir: Whatever the cause of the latest outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, the Government must ensure it has learned the lessons of 2001 and doesn't repeat the culling of healthy livestock instead of vaccination to protect British export markets.

The policy caused misery to millions, and brought the British countryside to its knees. As many as 11 million animals were slaughtered, most of them quite needlessly: the total cost to the British economy has been estimated at between £8bn and £20bn - all to (unsuccessfully) protect an export market worth just £630m.

Despite Labour's attempts to block and hamper it at every turn, the European Parliament established a committee of inquiry into the Government's handling of the 2001 crisis. As its vice-president, I was able to see at first hand some of the devastation caused to Britain's farming and tourist industries by the Government's bizarre obsession with protecting the free flow of international trade whatever the cost. It must not do the same this time, but must adopt a policy of ring-vaccination rather than any preventative slaughter of healthy animals.

DR CAROLINE LUCAS MEP

(GREEN, SOUTH EAST ENGLAND) EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, BRUSSELS

Do we need a new London airport?

Sir: Adam Raphael's article "Why Heathrow should be scrapped" (7 August) was thought-provoking - as was the advertisement in the same issue of The Independent for the Airbus A380.

Building a new airport along the Thames estuary would have protesters out in their tens of thousands complaining about environmental destruction. Four- and six-runway airports are only of use when moving a large number of people from one centre to another centre, the kind of travel for which the A380 was designed. I doubt if this is what travellers really want. Travel is so much less stressful if one can easily access an airport near one's home and go to another near one's destination. I travel to Christchurch, New Zealand and, by flying direct from Manchester, cut my journey time by many hours. With the long-range twin engined aircraft coming into service the pattern of travel will change and people will find it more convenient and practical to use a local airport.

The upgrading of some larger local airports, where necessary, and the completion of Terminal 5 should enable Heathrow to cope for many years to come. There is no need to scrap it.

JOHN LAIRD

DARLEY, NORTH YORKSHIRE

Sir: Of course Adam Raphael is right: Heathrow should be scrapped. It was OK perhaps in 1946, and again in 1966, when a major inquiry looked into the whole question of airports for London. Several little places north of London, such as Nuthampstead, were considered, and rejected. The best candidate then, and even more so now, for London's major airport was Foulness Island in Essex.

It was said to be too expensive, and there were too many birds there (not many people, you notice, just a lot of birds) but this country must be ten times richer than it was in the 1960s, and while I love to see birds around the place, surely the suffering of millions of people is more important? Been to Kew gardens lately? You can hardly hear yourself think for the planes, and this is before Terminal 5.

WILL WATSON

LONDON N10

Sir: Adam Raphael acknowledges that a new airport sited along the Thames estuary would cause disturbance to wildlife but says that there is "at least the consolation that sea birds find new nest sites more easily than humans". As an environmentalist I find this statement so simplistic that it verges on the offensive. Not only is it incorrect (how can you compare the very specific nesting requirements of seabirds with the ubiquity of the human species?) but it shows that Mr Raphael has no idea of the environmental sensitivities of the Thames Estuary.

It is designated under European law not for seabirds but populations of waders and wildfowl that number into the 10,000s. The impact on these populations would be huge and would put us in direct with conflict with Europe. There is also of course the safety implications of building an airport directly in the path of so many birds and the associated risk of birdstrike. Government has already conceded that an airport in the Thames estuary is environmentally unfeasible.

DOMINIC COATH

BIGGLESWADE, BEDFORDSHIRE

National culture that sneers at learning

Sir: I have not seen Chanelle and Brian on Big Brother but, to a certain extent, I agree with Johann Hari's analysis (Comment, 2 August) that "blames" the education system and our modern culture.

But I am a little more pessimistic. I have experience of schools which are "comprehensive". The idea that the presence of students who value learning would influence the ones who do not is not the reality.

Students spend 950 hours a year at school, about 16 per cent of their waking lives. As a result, home, peers and the prevailing culture play a significant role in the values a young person lives by.

The anti-learning culture is rife in our society and knowledge is no longer valued. The education system is changing to suit the fact that knowing things is no longer important. The Government's new curriculum is keen on competencies; this signals to teachers and students that they have given up on teaching worthwhile knowledge and understanding.

Is there not a responsibility on the individual to improve by leading themselves out of ignorance?

ROB PRITCHARD

LEEDS

Sir: On the whole, I agree with Johann Hari's thoughtful piece on the failure of the state school system to educate bright children. Mr Hari points to a culture in "warehouse" schools that encourages a sneering disregard for learning and intelligence.

This is an attitude and culture endemic within British society, and on a grand scale. It is sewn into the fabric of our society from both ends, from the small-minded workers' mantra, "Don't get above your station" as suffered by my mother, a working-class girl in the 1950s who managed to go to grammar school and suffered envy and abuse from peers and their parents, to the public school student who - gasp - wants to make a success of themselves by proclaiming their ambition and working hard to achieve it.

I am the product of a public school education, yet I felt compelled at school to hide that I worked hard to achieve good grades. In addition, as a woman, I have often been sneered at for daringly "allowing" my intelligence and learning to break through the facade of cheery silliness to which all women, managing directors or Victoria Beckham wannabes, have to conform these days. It wasn't until I went to university at Glasgow that I found respect for learning and intelligence was the norm.

The reason many state schools in primarily middle-class areas tend to do well is because the parents are actively involved in the education of their children. They will not tolerate bad teaching and lacklustre results because they themselves are well educated.

And yes, it's unfair that children from poorer backgrounds do not have this advantage; it's not fair that their parents are in some cases actively fearful of any sort of educational ability that might mark their child out as "different". But this is a problem that stretches back to the very start of the educational system, rooted in an antiquated class system.

CAT WALLIS

LONDON SW4

What marriage has to offer women

Sir: It has always been "too late" for Mary Creagh's heartbroken women (letter, 1 August) to discover that common-law marriage does not exist: it was abolished in England in 1753.And even when common-law marriage did exist, it was a legal marriage completed by a form of ceremony recognised by the common law, as opposed to statute. It did not just consist of cohabitation.

Until the late 20th century, women in the UK recognised that marriage gave them rights they did not have otherwise. It is an interesting sociological question why so many have forgotten in so short a time where their biological interests (and indeed their emotional and financial interests) lie: that is, in securing a long-term father for their children.

HELEN STYLE

RICHMOND, SURREY

West must give Gaza a chance

Sir: Martin Kirk's piece on the youth of the Gaza Strip (6 August) should be compulsory reading in every foreign ministry of the Quartet, since it eloquently demonstrates the profound and self-defeating stupidity of Israel and its western friends in refusing to deal with Hamas.

Now that Israel says it has withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, the international community should guarantee the freedom of Gaza's air and sea space and its land border with Egypt, provide aid to jump-start its economy, assume responsibility for disciplining the government of Gaza with regard to any hostile acts against Israel and, of course, forbid direct Israeli interference. As for Hamas, we may like or dislike it, but its election is the Palestinians' business and theirs alone.

Let's liberate this part of Palestine and give it a chance. It would be a lovely and appropriate gift for Britain to take the lead on this matter as we approach the 90th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, with the predictable catastrophe this British policy brought to the Palestinian people.

DAVID McDOWALL

RICHMOND, SURREY

Sir: Jim Roland (letter, 4 August) really cannot be allowed to get away with the same old discredited Israeli propaganda.

It was nearly 50 years ago, in 1959, that Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi debunked the myth that the Palestinian refugees were the product of exhortations by Arab leaders to leave in order that they could invade. Independently, in 1961, Erskine Childers, in The Spectator of 12 May, published an article after having examined the transcripts of Arab radio stations, monitored by the BBC and CIA, which showed that far from ordering the refugees to leave, they instructed them to stay! This particular myth was created in the early 1950s by Israeli leaders as a means of deflecting the demand that Israel accept the right of return of the refugees.

The explanation for the expulsion of the Palestinian refugees is quite simple. Even in the area that the United Nations allocated to a Jewish state, a majority of the population were Arabs. If a Jewish state were to be created then it was inevitable that the Arabs had to be expelled. As Joseph Weitz, the key official responsible for Jewish colonisation wrote in his diary in 1940: "Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country ... And there is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from her to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe should be left..."

TONY GREENSTEIN

BRIGHTON

Fire water

Sir: There is a remarkable booze shop in Soho, central London, the windows of which feature an amazing range of vodkas, rums and tequilas (letter, 3 August). A couple of years ago I noticed there two samples of poteen which not only claimed an alcoholic strength of 90 per cent by volume but were packaged in litre bottles. A serious fire hazard.

SEBASTIAN ROBINSON

GLASGOW

Innocent man shot

Sir: Ken Campbell (letter, 7 August) points out that if the supposed intelligence surrounding the death of Jean Charles de Menezes had been correct and a bombing had been prevented, the police officers concerned would be decorated as heroes. The whole point of this tragedy is that the police were wrong, and as a consequence a perfectly innocent man is dead, and no one has been blamed. Should we thank the police officers concerned?

DAVID WILLIAMS

LONDON SW11

Beyond compare

Sir: Your Shakespeare poster (6 August) says, "His contributions to the world of theatre and to language cannot be underestimated". This will come as a surprise to the majority of people who think the exact opposite: that he can't be overestimated.

VALERIE PASSMORE

LONDON N16

The last Sultan

Sir: Michael Savage ("One man and his mosque", 2 August) referred to the "Ottoman emperor". I've always understood the ruler of the Ottoman/Turkish Empire to be the Sultan of Turkey. And the last ruler was not Abdul Hamid II: he was deposed in 1909 by the Young Turks (mainly army officers, including Mustafa Kemal) and replaced by his brother Mohammed V. When he died in 1918, he was succeeded by Mohammed VI, who was deposed in November 1922 by Kemal. Although Kemal maintained the caliphate till 1924 at least, he proclaimed the secular Turkish Republic in 1923.

THE REV JULIAN G SHURGOLD

SUTTON, SURREY

The sounds of Latin

Sir: Dr Julie Gould (letter, 6 August) reminds us that abbreviating Latin (eg nem con) can help to avoid pronunciation howlers. But surely difficile in Latin gives us a soft "c" as in French, Italian and Spanish - all remnants of Latin. (Candida, carpe, continuus as against circulus, civis and cetera.)

DERRIG FERGUSON

SUTTON COLDFIELD, WEST MIDLANDS