Letters: Gallery rage

David Lister, in his column The Week in Arts (22 January), uses the term "gallery rage" of the recent behaviour of some visitors to the Tate Modern Gauguin exhibition.

There is a kind of Victor Meldrew rage when visiting overcrowded galleries, museums, theatres or cinemas. Galleries have for a long time recognised the huge increase in numbers by fixing quotas with timed sections of the day and extended evening opening.

Alas, the difficulty is the conduct of these "new crowds" of art-lovers. My five-point plan for more enjoyment of gallery visits is: be sensitive to others who want to see the exhibits, turn the audio tour player down, don't be boorish with loud conversation, turn the mobile phone off, and try to appreciate that art-lovers come in all shapes and sizes and that we all have a right to view the exhibits.

Gallery rage, theatre rage or cinema rage is not going to go away. The galleries, theatres and cinemas all have their part to play in trying to create a pleasant experience for the visitor, which is more important than just a cynical profit motive, bums on seats or feet on floorboards. The advertising and marketing hype has created more visitors, and institutions need to manage this desire to be at an "event" more sensibly.

Ian Herne

Hillingdon, Middlesex

Last year I was fortunate enough to see the Glasgow Boys exhibition at Kelvingrove, Glasgow, where tickets were valid for the whole day of purchase, allowing an initial viewing, a break for coffee and reflection, and a return to those paintings that most rewarded a second viewing. Interest was considerable, but the press of visitors never such as to detract from enjoyment.

Such was the quality of the exhibition that last week I travelled down from Shropshire to renew the pleasure at the Royal Academy in London, to which the exhibition had moved: big mistake.

It proved to be but a shadow of the Glasgow exhibition, shorn of almost 60 works. Nevertheless some 80 of the most important works were on display and some pleasure might have been obtained from the return visit had there been an opportunity to view them properly.

Having booked online for 10am, it was frustrating on arrival to find a no-readmittance policy in force, without advance notice. My representations were met with the response that the exhibition could be "done" in an hour and a half. For the 83 works left on display that works out at almost 65 seconds a picture – almost as much time as one might spend in choosing a packet of breakfast cereal, and just about as rewarding.

By 11am the crush was such that there was little to be gained from the experience, and when I left at 11.30 ("done" indeed in the time allotted) it was difficult to resist the temptation to tell those hopeful souls queuing for tickets not to bother.

If your interest is in a civilised viewing, go north.

John O'Sullivan

Ludlow, Shropshire

As a visitor to the Gauguin exhibition, I left after only half an hour because the galleries were so overcrowded I could neither read or see anything in a meaningful way.

What struck me however, as an infrequent visitor to London, was how busy all of the venues were – the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the Courtauld Gallery to name but three – and not only in their special exhibitions but in the permanent collections as well. This put a strain on the other facilities such as cafés, shops and toilets, rendering the whole experience not very pleasant. Out in the streets and shops, it was not much better.

With the Royal Wedding this year and the Olympics next, I wonder if the infrastructure of London is going to be able to cope. Perhaps those in charge should take a walk through central London at a weekend.

As for me I shall boycott London until the end of 2012 and be content with visiting smaller, not so popular, galleries where you can at least see one picture by an artist properly rather than many not at all.

Anne Green

Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute

Don't blame all Muslims

Alan Stedall's memory does not serve him well (letter, 22 January), or maybe he was too young to remember signs put up by some landlords that read: "No Irish, no Blacks and no dogs allowed." We left those days behind because a sizeable majority of people in this country decided that this was not just offensive but morally reprehensible.

It was to this country's credit that when the IRA attacked a hotel in Brighton during a Conservative Party conference, narrowly missing Mrs Thatcher but killing five people, the country kept a cool head instead of organising witch-hunts against Catholics or criminalising them as a whole.

I do not see why I as a Muslim should expect Christians, for example, to apologise to me for a pastor who wants to burn the Koran or seek an apology from any ordinary British or American soldier for the vile actions of a few among them. Why should Muslims be held responsible for the actions of their own nutters and criminals?

As for the charge of degradation of women, all societies have the good, the bad and a lot in between. Muslim communities around the world are no exception and they have been making good progress. Within the past 30 years there have been women prime ministers in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkey.

It is true that there are nowadays many examples of repression against women and that marks in some respects a regression. Is it a coincidence that this is occurring as aggressive military action is taking place in Muslim countries?

Satanay Dorken

London N10

Forget bonuses, look at profits

We read again that "politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have watched impotently as banks continue to pay out giant bonuses" ("Goldman defies anger", 19 January).

Banks struggle to understand why there is a fuss, since they believe they are contributing profits and tax to the economy. The Government asks shareholders to insist on restraint.

But perhaps the real issue is not bonuses but profitability. The banks borrow at relatively low interest because the markets know that governments have stepped in to guarantee payment of the debts, and presumably will do again if required. If the banks were standing alone their profits would be much lower, driving bonuses lower.

Further, much of their profits now are due to the escalation of asset prices from the trough of the depression, driven again largely through government action; so the real profitability of the banking sector is again overstated.

Rather than bash our heads on the wall about bonuses we should work to ensure that the posted profits are an accurate representation of the real contribution of the business. Management and shareholders will then be able to make appropriate decisions about how much of that profit should go to the employees and how much is a reasonable return for the shareholders.

Andy Halliwell

Milltimber, Aberdeen

David Prosser obviously needs to get out more and spend less time with City insiders if he needs help understanding the problem with the share of the cake that bankers scoff (Outlook, 19 January).

Once upon a time, banks oiled the wheels of commerce. Now they constitute a mixture of glue and grit. The engine barely produces enough power to turn itself over, let alone drive the vehicle.

A significant proportion of the income of banks now comes from zero-sum games. So when they win, we lose. They have access to better and faster information than investors, savers or borrowers, so they win more often.

In addition their fee income has risen as a proportion of funds managed and the spreads between lending and borrowing and on currency exchanges are widening for the ordinary investor. The banks are steadily leaching money out of the economy and this loss dwarfs the tax revenue they contribute.

If we in the UK feel more aggrieved than in other nations, perhaps it is because we have a greater resentment at being ripped off and placed at risk of financial jeopardy.

Peter English

Rhewl, Denbighshire

My mother-in-law, who is 85, received several letters from HSBC stating that she had a dormant account with them. She was adamant that she didn't have an account with HSBC apart from her current account. The fourth letter stated that if she didn't respond, the money would go to the Government's good causes account.

We persuaded her to ring HSBC, but they wouldn't discuss the case until she presented herself at her local branch along with her ID. She explained that she was in a wheelchair and attending the branch would involve getting a taxi. This made no difference to them, nor would they even tell her the sum that was involved.

My wife took a morning off work to accompany her down to the branch in a taxi and after checking her passport and utility bill, she was asked if she would like the balance of the account transferred to her current account. She said of course she would; that was what she had been asking them to do all along, but she still didn't know the sum involved.

The bank clerk looked at her and said that after 20 years the sum had grown, with interest, to 87p.

No wonder the banks and this country are in the state we are in, with that level of common sense.

David Jerome

Haslemere, Surrey

Clamping ban will be a disaster

The Coalition plans to ban clamping and towing away on private land. To the casual observer this sounds attractive, but to many law-abiding motorists, and those householders, tenants and landowners who own car parks, it is a recipe for disaster.

There will be a small percentage of drivers who continue to ignore reasonable requests not to park on private land or who will overstay their welcome. People who run car parks need to ensure that, for the benefit of all, such abuses are dealt with.

In particular, the proposal by Government to ban towing away on private land means that if someone parks, say, in front of a fire exit to a block of flats, an ambulance bay at A&E or even on your front drive, there is nothing you can do about it if the ban becomes law. The suggestion by the Home Office Minister responsible, that the police will have powers to tow away vehicles on private land, is naive.

The problem is that the management of parking on private land is largely unregulated. The British Parking Association has long campaigned for better regulation and has put a proposal to government which would improve the way parking on private land is managed. It would protect the motorists from the excesses of some clamping operators who have for too long fuelled a sensationalist media portrayal of this activity. We call on the Government to reconsider its intention of a total ban and instead regulate this sector properly.

These provisions will be included in The Freedom Bill, to be brought forward in February. The reality is that landowners will be denied the freedom to manage their land, with the state dictating which freedoms they can have and which they can't.

Patrick Troy

Chief Executive, British Parking Association, Haywards Heath

West Sussex

Rules of golf and football

Padraig Harrington's disqualification from the Abu Dhabi championship was a most inappropriate punishment for a minor "error", even taking into account golf's admirable record of sticking to both the letter and spirit of the law. The most bizarre element of the story was that the disqualification followed the intervention of a member of the public watching television ("Harrington caught by couch-potato police", 22 January).

It is the opposite end of the spectrum to football, where, equally bizarrely, any use of modern technology to minimise the risk of clearly incorrect decisions affecting the result of a match continues to be rigidly resisted by the authorities. Golf has gone too far the other way.

John Stokes

Southampton

Orthodoxy at the Christian B&B

Sharon Molloy complains that, as a result of the "Christian B&B" case and the law behind it, those with "orthodox" (an interesting euphemism for "bigoted") ideas of marriage and sex "now have to treat it as a matter of private belief that cannot inform the way they live their lives" (letter, 24 January).

Nonsense. Nobody is asking Mr and Mrs Bull to dissolve their marriage and live as an unmarried couple, let alone to split up and each marry someone of the same sex. The law merely requires them not to impose their beliefs on others. The way Messrs Hall and Preddy "live their lives" has no effect on how Mr and Mrs Bull live theirs.

Laurie Marks

Cambridge

Now apologise

I wonder how many of the newspapers that were so quick to publish photographs of Chris Jefferies, accompanied by acres of newsprint, and virtually try him by kangaroo court as being the murderer of Joanna Yeates, will devote the same amount of front-page space to making an apology to the ex-schoolteacher. For the way in which the media dealt with this story, almost every newspaper in the land could be described as "the gutter press".

Robert Readman

Bournemouth, Dorset

Hollywood UK

To supplement Oliver Bennett's article about Britain's Beverly Hills (21 January), Walton-on-Thames, Elmbridge's largest town, was Britain's own Hollywood in the early 20th century. Cecil Hepworth, a great pioneer of the British film industry, had his film studio in Walton from as early as 1896. Your readers may be interested to know that steps are currently in hand to create a film and visual arts centre in Walton in memory of Cecil Hepworth.

Andrew Sturgis

Walton-on-Thames

Perspectives on feeding the world

More people, less food

The report referred to in your article "2.4 billion extra people, no more land ..." (22 January) highlights the parlous situation the world now faces. We will be forced to accept genetically modified food whether we like it or not. Food distribution must be improved, which we have known for many years, but how is this to be achieved in a free-market economy?

It will be possible to feed 9.2 billion by 2050 if people in the developed world consume 25 per cent less food. Which politicians will have the courage to effect that change?

More farmland will be required – more forests removed when we need to reduce CO2 emissions? Fertiliser and pesticides, largely produced from oil, will have to be used in greater quantities, as oil becomes scarcer.

These problems have been obvious for many years, as has the fact that world population was increasing rapidly with inevitable detrimental effects on land quality and wildlife. The crisis will have to be met from all possible angles, but is it too simple to suggest that the problems could be ameliorated if governments came together and made serious (non-coercive) efforts to encourage smaller families, throughout the world?

L Warwick-Haller

Botley,Hampshire

Where is the energy to come from?

A number of correspondents take Dominic Lawson to task following his recent article in which he claimed that increasing world population is not a problem (Letters, 20 January).

Actually, I believe Mr Lawson has something of a point. Population alone is not the fundamental problem – our industrialised lifestyle is. It is likely that the planet could comfortably accommodate 9 billion people, if we were all living low-consumption, low-impact, low-carbon lifestyles. Unfortunately, we are not.

To make matters much worse, many former low-impact societies are rapidly adopting our western lifestyles. The resulting environmental damage manifests itself in many ways, not just in the increasing atmospheric CO2 to which Mr Lawson refers. For example, species-loss proceeds at an alarming rate, as does ocean-acidification and soil degradation.

Another aspect that Mr Lawson does not address is, where is the energy to come from? For example, it is reckoned that our industrialised agricultural system consumes about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to create just one calorie of food value. The major source, oil, is starting to run out.

I feel that we need far more detailed evidence from Mr Lawson and his sources before I am at all convinced that increasing population, coupled with our environmentally damaging lifestyle, is something that we can feel relaxed about.

Keith O'Neill

Shrewsbury