Letters: Royal right to secrecy

Royal cloak of secrecy

Monday 10 January 2011 01:00 GMT
Comments

Remind me again which century we are living in. In my opinion the Royal Family are who they are and where they are only because their ancestors were more successful bandits than those of the rest of us. Now, yet again, they want to shroud themselves in a cloak of secrecy by getting this government to exempt them from the Freedom of Information Act (report, 8 January).

If the arrogant and unelected Prince Charles is behind this, then by doing so he has probably helped advance the cause of republicanism quite considerably.

On the other hand we have Mr Cameron's government (and the Liberal Democrats in particular) now back doing what our political masters do best – trying to prevent the rest of us from finding out what is really going on.

Here we are in 2011 and instead of more openness and accountability, we get a creaking, old-fashioned, wasteful bunch of social parasites trying to cover their tracks. Same old Tories!

Hopefully there will be a royal equivalent of WikiLeaks – someone still prepared to blow on the whistle. And now is the time for Mr Miliband to show us if he really is a socialist.

Garth Groombridge

Southampton

I have no problem with the Royals being granted new rights to secrecy; I just hope that it encompasses the wedding between William and Kate. Then I won't be bored to the back teeth by April.

Philip Moran

London N11

Listen to the small farmers

Paul Collier is right to describe the world's food system as dysfunctional ("A serious crisis, made worse by shortsighted governments", 6 January). But contrary to Professor Collier's assertion, the problem is not one of food production: there is already more than enough food in the world to feed the planet. Even before the current crisis, and that of 2008, our food system, based on the economic theories advocated by Professor Collier, left one sixth of humanity severely malnourished while obesity continued to rise.

A radical change is needed: the small-scale food providers who feed the majority of the world must now be placed at the centre of food policy. In our experience over 40 years' work across the world, we have witnessed that they know how to produce food ecologically and sustainably, for themselves and for the market. When protected and adequately supported they can produce much more.

Organisations such as Via Campesina, the global peasant farmers' movement, give voice to their demands. They know that another wave of technical fixes, owned and developed far from the gardens and farms of the majority of farmers, will not feed a growing population. Will they once again be excluded when the "experts" meet to discuss the latest food crisis?

Andrew Scott

Director of Policy and programmes, Practical action

Rugby, Warwickshire

Your front page article "The coming hunger" (6 January) points to the impossibility of continuing as we are. The article reports Owen Job as saying that perhaps the model of increasing supply as demand grows may be breaking down. Of course; how can this not be so?

Since the early 1980s, a quarter of land has been degraded and we are still losing 1 per cent a year. Oil production, on which agriculture depends, is at or near its peak. Grain crops are increasingly used to replace fossil fuels. The sea is overexploited, even to exhaustion in some parts. And yet in the next 40 years the population will increase by 150,000 a day, which means that we will have to increase food production by 70 per cent in the same period.

Population, the subject that we keep avoiding, is the key issue. Yet that is something we could do something about. According to UN Population Fund, 40 per cent of all pregnancies are unintentional, and by coincidence, this number is almost the same as the amount by which the population increases. If the idea "every child a wanted child" was adopted, and the world acted on it, everybody would win. No coercion is necessary: it only needs education, support and availability of family planning.

Roger Plenty

Stroud, Gloucestershire

Your article "The coming hunger: record food prices put world in danger" rightly draws attention to the challenging issues around record food prices.

Professor Paul Collier is correct to highlight the unnecessary ban on the use of genetically modified organisms. Agricultural biotechnology, which has the potential to alleviate some of the problems highlighted in your report, is clearly not the "silver bullet" that will solve all of the challenges that we face, but it has a key role to play, as shown by its rapid global adoption, to the point that 14 million farmers are now growing GM crops on an area the size of the UK, Ireland, France and Germany put together.

To tackle the food scarcity challenge head on, we need a food supply system based on a mix of technologies providing farmers and consumers with real choice, while also safeguarding vital natural resources.

Feed imports provide an important part of the food chain. However, many shipments are currently being turned away because of zero tolerance of GM in imports. As many European farmers rely on imported feed, particularly in the winter months, this in turn drives prices higher. The European Commission has proposed a solution to the problems and is looking to enable a 0.1 per cent threshold for unapproved GM crops on feed imports. The British government must lead the way in Europe and vote in favour of these positive changes.

By embracing technology as part of a solution to food security issues we can look forward to tackling the challenges of a growing population, dwindling resources and climate change with far more optimism.

Dr Julian Little

Chair, Agricultural Biotechnology Council.

London WC1

Oil accidents will happen

After all the months of mud-slinging the outcome of the US inquiry into the Mecondo oil spill fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico looks like an anticlimax, and whatever further damage is inflicted to weaken BP's sorry reputation, the probable cause of the accident is nothing more sinister or unavoidable than human error. The same cause as every previous serious offshore incident, and almost certainly the cause of the next blow-out at some time in the future.

If anyone should think this is too cynical a view, I respectfully suggest it could be due to their own lack of experience. My view is confirmed every time I take coffee at home, using the mug I was given as an "offshore safety award" around 10 years ago. On one side is a picture of a deepwater drill-ship and on the other side the inscription reads "All accidents are perventable" (sic).

For me that mug says more about safety in the offshore oil industry than anything I have read about BP and the Mecondo well. If anyone dared to say that "accidents do and always will happen", at an offshore safety meeting, during my time and probably more so now, they would certainly be disciplined and might very well be fired.

But blind adherence to inflexible rules can often aggravate a dangerous situation and leave a company at the mercy of unscrupulous politicians and carpet-baggers, who should do better themselves, by trying to foresee disasters and have contingency arrangements in place to deal with them effectively, rather than by wagging fingers and apportioning blame after the next event has happened.

A Brooke

Retired deepwater drilling technician,

Southampton

A vital voice for women silenced

Regarding the Women's National Commission (WNC), the Commons Public Administration Committee's assessment of the quango cull ("MPs say bonfire of the quangos is a damp squib", 7 January) is right on target.

For more than 40 years, the WNC brought the voices of women from across the nations to government on issues of violence against women. Through it, women's groups big and small were able to bring their expertise to engage positively with Government.

Its abolition now leaves a void, insofar as the Government has not developed any meaningful plans for achieving its stated goal of greater transparency, accountability and engagement with women.

We have heard a vague idea about using more social media. However, a few tweets will not replace the expert consultation and representation brought through the WNC. The WNC was the embodiment of the Big Society at negligible cost. We continue to wish to engage, but by dissolving the WNC the Government has made this task harder, more costly and inevitably less representative.

We agree with the chair of the committee that the whole process was rushed and not thought through properly. It is not too late for the Government to admit its mistake and reinstate the WNC.

Jacqueline Hunt

Equality Now

Davina James-Hanman

Against Violence & Abuse

Moira Dustin

LSE Gender Institute

Holly Dustin

End Violence Against Women

Naana Otoo-Oyortey

The Foundation for Women's Health, Research and Development

Dr Aisha Gill

Roehampton University

Heather Harvey

Eaves Housing for Women.

Claudia da Silva, Richard Chipping

The London Centre for Personal Safety

Annette Lawson

The National Alliance of Women's Organisations

Lynda Dearlove

Women@thewell / Sisters of Mercy

Vivienne Hayes

Women's Resource Centre

Iconic, yes, but does it work?

A colleague of mine once remarked: "I feel that I have spent my entire career following around Lords Rogers and Foster wondering how I am going to clean their wretched buildings." Far too many architects just design to produce a "iconic visual statement" (IVS) and give no thought to whether people that use their buildings and have to look after them will like them.

Jay Merrick's article "The supersize skyline: Why 2011 will be the year architecture takes a giant leap upwards" (7 January) is full of IVS language. That language reminds me of labels at the back of wine bottles that talk of all sorts of fruit flavours, except grape. His article is all about immediate visual appeal and nothing about whether people will be happy with the buildings.

Buildings, like a fairy tale princess, should be beautiful on the inside too and all too many are more like an ogre to their users.

R J Farman

London E17

Servants of the Christian church

Christopher Walker (letter, 6 January) accuses the translators of the King James Bible of demeaning the role of women in the Church by translating diakonon as "servant".

Does he take "servant" in its biblical context too narrowly?

There is a long tradition of people in religious positions being called servants (of the Lord), the popes even calling themselves servant of the servants of God (servus servorum Dei). I don't imagine the popes did much polishing and flower-arranging.

Perhaps the translators of the King James were not so much perpetrating a ruse as using a term they expected most of their readers to understand in a religious sense.

Martin A Smith

Oxford

I was interested to read the letter from Christopher Walker on the subject of servants and deaconesses. While appreciating the beauty of the language of the King James Bible, I too sometimes shudder at its mistranslations, though in this case the normal Greek translation would be "servant".

I would like to go further and suggest that diakonon be translated not as "deaconess" but as "deacon", in that it has a masculine form. The New English Bible gives us "holds office" which, of course, sounds bureaucratic but is surely nearer in meaning than either "servant" or "deaconess".

I do still love to hear the words of the King James Bible read at services of Carols and Nine Lessons at Christmas. Do I want to have my cake and eat it?

Eleanor Jellett

Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear

History favours a fairer vote

It is difficult to believe that your correspondents who oppose even a small move to a fairer voting system can remember the results of the 1983 election when Labour with 27.6 per cent of the poll won 209 seats while the Alliance with 25.4 per cent won 23 seats.

Simon Lawrence

Diss, Norfolk

The diehard opponents of AV overlook one key point. Under AV it is not mandatory to make more than one selection, so those who only wanted to cast their tribal vote would be free to do so.

The irony is that minority party voters are those most likely to rank the full slate of candidates, probably boosting the vote of the entrenched parties. I therefore suspect it may be a generation or more before AV delivers any significant change to the political landscape.

Andrew Whyte

Shrewsbury

Nearly a pint

The lobbying of the pub industry to drop the pint and introduce the schooner has nothing whatever to do with flexibility or making beer-drinking more attractive to women. The motive is to make higher profits. Introducing a "nearly a pint" measure will enable the pub industry to charge a disproportionate price for less beer.

L Johnston

Gauldry, Fife

Frosty reception

I am becoming bored by the increasingly facetious letters concerning snowmen sent by correspondents who clearly are only interested in getting their names in print. If you edit this last sentence out of my letter it should fit in the bottom, right-hand corner of your letters page.

Jeremy Axten

Addlestone, Surrey

Perspectives on the Ashes

A symbol of friendship

Now is a good time to ask the question again: should or should not the original urn remain in England even when the Ashes have been won by Australia?

For many years it has been displayed permanently in Marylebone Cricket Club's museum at Lord's. It was given to the club by the widow of Lord Darnley who, as Ivo Bligh, led an English touring team to Australia in the winter of 1882-83. The tour was dubbed by the press here as a quest to recover "the Ashes", that is English sporting honour, which was seen as having been cremated when an England team was beaten by the Australians in a match at Kennington Oval in 1882.

During the tour the urn was presented to Bligh by some Melbourne ladies as a light-hearted memento, and it was only many years later that it became identified as the physical embodiment of the cricket rivalry between England and Australia.

The urn is not a sporting trophy and has never been presented to the winning team at the end of a series. Since it belongs to the MCC, the club is entitled to do what it likes with it, no doubt respecting the wishes of Bligh's descendants. In fact thanks to the club's generosity it has been taken to Australia and put on public display there more than occasion. This little worthless piece of earthenware has become much more than an interesting piece of cricket history. It is now a cultural icon, a symbol not only of a sporting contest and an intense and sometimes bitter rivalry between England and Australia, but of the warmth and friendship between the two countries.

I believe it would be a magnificent gesture by the MCC, when Australia next win an Ashes Series, to allow the urn to be taken on loan to Australia and displayed in the National Museum of Australia in Canberra until England can win again.

Ian Burr

Ferndown, Dorset

Some concerned person should write to the Sydney Morning Herald lamenting the death of Australian cricket and saying that the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to England. Then we could burn a bail, put the ashes in a small terracotta urn and, when the Aussies arrive here next time...

Derek Brundish

Horsham, West Sussex

Single-minded success

The success of the Ashes side is the success of the project to bring every aspect of the English national game up to the highest level achievable with the resources available. The same result was achieved by British cycling in the Olympics and by England squash with a world No 1 and three other players in the top 10 .

Single-minded focus achieves results (often with Australian and South African coaching support). This cannot be achieved by the global entertainment business that is football.

Michael Brooke

Oxford

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