Letters: ID cards

Sir: In the letter from Joan Ryan MP regarding ID cards (24 May) she states that "the Government's proposals are designed to safeguard, not erode, civil liberties ..." On the Government's record, I fear this will not be so.

I will be almost forced to get an ID card when they are available, because if I don't, I run the risk of someone else doing so in my name.

Apart from the thus enforced cost to me (estimates from £40 to more than £100), which I consider to be an infringement of my civil rights, I will need to carry this card at all times. This is another infringement, because when they exist I am sure to be asked for it by all and sundry. In effect, I will need official documentation to walk down the street in my own home country.

Joan Ryan writes that the national identity scheme "will link biometric data to a secure database ... " and later states that "there is absolutely no question of an ID card holding sensitive personal information ... " I regard biometric data about me as sensitive personal information. And the words "secure database" and "Government" in the same sentence sounds like an oxymoron to me.

She says the card will protect me from fraud by enabling me to prove my identity more easily. I have no trouble now in proving my identity, with my passport and my driving licence. As for fraud, the minute the cards are issued they will be forged by crooks. To say otherwise is to live in cloud cuckoo land.

We are told we will all have "subject access rights under the Data Protection Act" to information in our entry. This statement, from a Home Office minister in the government that has just voted itself above the Freedom of Information Act, I find insulting.

PATRICK WISE

CIRENCESTER, GLOUCESTERSHIRE

Emotive tactics are not 'sensible'

Sir: Contrary to your headline ("The man who wants to lead a sensible debate on abortion", 1 June), Cardinal Keith O'Brien has not opened a sensible debate on abortion.

Sensible debate does not involve highly emotive tactics of comparison of abortion to the Dunblane massacre, or intervention in the democratic process by threatening MPs.

It is plain from the Cardinal's words and the actions of anti-abortion campaigners in other countries that they are interested not in debate, but in creating a climate of fear and repression leading to the eventual outlawing of abortion, at the cost of women's right to control their own bodies and, ultimately, the cost of women's lives.

It does The Independent no credit to pander to the illusion that these people are interested in talking, or that the majority of the public in the UK, and even the USA, do not support a woman's right to choose.

CATHERINE MCKIERNAN

OXFORD

Sir: If Cardinal O'Brien is so exercised about the social evil of abortion, which he equates to two Dunblane massacres a day, perhaps he may at least have the courage to advocate effective family planning measures, namely condoms.

Such measures might otherwise have prevented 2.3 million children around the world from being infected with HIV; 500,000 children who became infected with HIV in 2006; the deaths each hour of 40 children from Aids, and the significant number of abortions attributable to unplanned pregnancies.

If, as he says, he was ordained "to teach and to preach, 'Thou shalt not kill'," he should get off his high cross and get on with it, instead of issuing medieval threats to Catholic politicians.

ALISTAIR CRAIG

LONDON SE21

Sir: I agree with Cardinal Keith O'Brien. During the Second World War, many pregnant women in concentration camps had their babies forcibly aborted. The fiends who did this were convicted at Nuremberg of crimes against humanity.

Some 20 years later the Abortion Act was passed and the deliberate killing of unborn human life suddenly became a "choice" and "a woman's right". This has to be one of the worst examples of double standards, when abortion is deemed wrong if it doesn't suit us, yet "all right" when it does.

We need to make up our minds about abortion. It is either a human wrong or a human right, but it cannot be both.

PATRICK MCKAY

AMPTHILL, BEDFORDSHIRE

Sir: Why is it that women who have been persuaded not to use practical family planning methods and then find themselves pregnant should feel obliged to continue with an unwanted pregnancy because of the dictates of priests, men who made a decision early in their lives never to participate in any activity which could lead to pregnancy.

I would have thought that someone who had taken on a vow of celibacy was the very last person to have the moral high ground in dictating who should or should not be allowed to produce a child.

CONNIE SPENCE

APPLEBY, CUMBRIA

The rich history of Catalan

Sir: In an article on the situation of Spanish in Catalonia (30 May), the writer seems to wish to defend "the language of Cervantes" against the alleged attacks on it by those who apparently impose "regional tongues".

Catalan is a romance language, with a thousand years of literary history and double the number of speakers of, say, Norwegian. Would the writer define Henrik Ibsen's language as a "regional tongue"? So, what is it, in his view, that makes the language of Gaudi, Casals, Dali, Miro or, for that matter, Cesc Fàbregas, inherently inferior? Cervantes himself is unlikely to have agreed with him since in El Quijote he refers to Joanot Martorell's Tirant lo Blanc, one of the pinnacles of our literary history, as "the best book in the world".

Our language and literature is studied in more than 30 countries. Catalan studies were introduced in Britain in the 1940s, and the Anglo-Catalan Society, founded in 1954, is thriving. Twenty British universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, offer Catalan courses.

Catalan was persecuted by Spain for almost 300 years; only since 1980 has the autonomous Government of Catalonia been able to devise policies which enable Catalan children to be taught in their own language.

The Catalan Government, like any other serious institution, implements the Spanish Constitution, the Catalan Charter of Autonomy and the laws passed by the democratically elected Catalan Parliament.

All teenagers must be fully proficient in both Spanish and Catalan by the time they leave compulsory education. This is because we feel that a bilingual society can only be positive.

In Catalonia, the situation of Catalan is still one of inferiority in relation to Spanish. Most TV and radio stations, newspapers, films and commercial labels on products are in Spanish, and few judges can speak the language.

This means many Catalans still cannot use their mother tongue when they go to the cinema, buy their food or decide to file a lawsuit.

We are proud that Catalan is not a political weapon, but a language and a literature which enrich the Spanish and European heritage.

ROGER SUAREZ

CATALANS UK, LONDON SW1

Acceptable face of torture

Sir: John McCarthy states that "the biggest lie that has gained currency through television is that torture is an acceptable weapon for the 'good guys' if the stakes are high enough" (Opinion, 24 May).

But surely this lie sits at the heart of a fundamental American belief, that the use of violence of any kind is justified if it is in support of a "good cause". Since the end of the Second World War, the Americans have been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of some six million people, some of whom were combatants but many of whom were innocent civilians.

All these deaths have been justified by the notions of "freedom" or "the common good" and by and large, we in the West have accepted this to the point where even a leading article of this paper could describe America as a "force for good".

All that has happened with the "war on terror" is that the US has allowed itself to be a little more bold in its public pronouncements of what has always existed, and in turn this has been picked up by television programmes such as 24.

To nail the lie, we must all stop believing in the concept of "good violence" versus "bad violence", and in turn the television networks will derive no return from peddling such concepts as entertainment.

COLIN MITCHELL

LISBURN, NORTHERN IRELAND

The true costs of nuclear power

Sir: Two letters on 28 May repeated common misconceptions about the financial cost of nuclear power.

Stuart Russell wonders how France seemed to have nuclear-generated so much electricity efficiently and non-controversially. Easy to answer because EDF has done neither. Just like the CEGB in the UK, it racked up massive debts and was repeatedly bailed out by its government. As in the UK most of the bailing-out was hidden from public inspection. And electricity was supplied at heavily discounted rates to consumers living near nuclear power stations.

Martin Hickey thinks that green opposition prevented new nuclear power generation being started in the past 15 years. The key opposition came from the City, which chose not to invest in the most cost-ineffective form of power generation there is. Why would they, unless they can secure another open-ended commitment to massive subsidies?

CHRIS JOHNSON

CHIPPING NORTON, OXFORDSHIRE

UCU vote was on a boycott debate

Sir: I was the mover of the motion at the UCU congress on the debate about a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Your report and your editorial comment (31 May 31st), were in error.

We did not vote to boycott Israeli academic institutions. We voted for a national debate in local associations about whether a boycott would be an appropriate response to the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and the claimed complicity in it of Israeli academic institutions. That debate will enable all members to hear speakers for and against, and ideally both Israeli and Palestinian colleagues.

Only after such an extended debate is concluded will our union consider a boycott at a future congress.

Our discussion on this debate was calm and open. There was no exuberance or triumphalism among those advocating this debate. The mood was one of regret in concluding this debate to be necessary. The mood was also one of determination not to be intimidated by threats of legal action, or by offensive accusations of anti-Semitism.

Delegates believed that we could not simply avert our eyes from the barbaric and illegal practices of the occupation. To have done so would have been to have made ourselves complicity by default.

Formal relationships with Israeli institutions have to be balanced against the absence of any academic freedom to study or to research afforded to Palestinian colleagues and students in the circumstances imposed on them by the occupation.

TOM HICKEY

UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON

Clever Connie

Sir: Chris Mills's wise letter about Connie Booth's career change (31 May) endorses the old adage that "any fool can get into the theatre; it takes genius to get out".

STEWART TROTTER

LONDON, W9

Fast work

Sir: Johnny Vaughan states that "Ghost Town" by The Specials reminds him of the low point of Thatcher's 1980s ("The Week In Radio", 30 May). Thatch had been in power only a year by the time of this song's release. I seem to remember that she needed at least a couple of years to right most of the ills inherited from the outgoing Labour government.

ROGER MCCARTNEY

SUDBURY, SUFFOLK

Over a barrel

Sir: Stephen Mendes makes an interesting point about taxing the creation of wine from water (letter, 31 May). It says much about our country that as far as government is concerned, Jesus may render unto God that which is God's at his own discretion, but should he fail to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, he would be lucky if it were only the bailiffs that were sent in, and even a nil return made late would attract a substantial penalty.

PHILIP CRESSWELL

OXFORD

Sir: I have been following recent correspondence as to whether VAT or excise duty would have been applied to wine produced by Jesus at the Marriage of Cana. All very interesting, but I am much more concerned that Jesus ensured the number of units of alcohol was shown clearly on each barrel to make sure guests were drinking safely.

JOHN MACKEONIS

LONDON W6

Canaries are chirping

Sir: In your 30 May plea from Inuit leader Aqqaluk Lynge there was a line reading, "The Inuit people ... are the canary in the global coal mine". Susan Harder, in the New Jersey Pine Barren Newsletter, has described astronomers as the canaries in the coal mine, warning about light pollution. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have long been canaries. The problem is that no one is listening. All these canaries are singing their death songs. By the time world politicians wake up, will it be Just Too Late?

GRAHAM CLIFF

ALTRINCHAM, CHESHIRE

Grammar regrets

Sir: Unlike James Vickers (letter, 30 May), this is one old boy who regrets he went to a grammar school, became a headteacher and believes his children had a far superior education in terms of depth and width of curriculum and quality of teaching at their local comprehensive school.

DAFYDD THOMAS

BUDE, CORNWALL

Don't read this yet

Sir: A few years ago, on the dual carriageway outside Wisley, a large digital display sign had recently been erected. On its support pole at the side of the road was a sign that read, "This sign is not yet in use". The paradox has kept me amused for years.

RICHARD BIRD

BLEWBURY, OXFORDSHIRE