Letters: Isis has no monopoly on barbarism

These letters appear in the October 6 edition of The Independent

The problem with David Cameron’s pledge to hunt down the “ruthless, senseless and barbaric” killers of Alan Henning and the other Western hostages is that one of the main reasons for the situation we find ourselves in with the Islamic State is that this is exactly how they see us – ruthless, senseless and barbaric killers who rain down destruction from the skies without a qualm.

What, really, is the difference between the public execution of a hostage and the indiscriminate annihilation of nameless, faceless targets at the centre of a grainy computer screen, blown to smithereens without trial from the safety of a drone operator’s den?

Though we do not see the effect of such attacks on the ground, the consequences are just as painful, especially when the busload of terrorists turn out to be guests on the way to a wedding party. We are told that the targets are “terrorists”, but that is no consolation for the families of the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No war can ever be clean, but there is something peculiarly distasteful, even racist, about the disjunct between the way “strikes” on targets in Syria and Iraq are shown almost as if they were video games, and the outrage that erupts when one of our “own” is shown being killed.

None of this detracts one jot from the horror of the actions that are being taken by IS, but if we are ever to find a solution to this “generational struggle” we have to stop radicalising more young kids with acts that may be invisible to us, but seem equally barbaric to them.

Simon Prentis

Cheltenham

If “apocalypse Islam” founds itself on a gut-reaction against westernisation, then it is a cruelly self-deluding notion. Financed by an oil industry based on western inventiveness, it uses the latest western technology to fight its wars, explode its bombs and disseminate its cause on the world media. The exceptions are beheading and the slave trading of women – no western technology is needed for those.

Stewart Wills

Altrincham,

Greater Manchester

A lesson from Finland

The letter about education from Sue Cowley and others (4 October) reminded me of my experiences on a recent day spent in Helsinki.

I was struck by how many children aged between three and 10 years we saw out on excursions with their teachers. Wearing hi-vis jackets, they were wandering down streets, playing in parks and riding on trams.

Two little girls on a tram, aged about seven or eight, were leaning over the back of their seats, talking to a Finnish lady. When she got off, they started talking to us. When I said: “We are English and don’t speak your language,” they had a short fit of the giggles, then started to talk to us in English. It was impressive enough that they were able to talk in a second language, but their confidence and their social skills, developed at such a young age, were truly amazing.

The Finns provide nursery and pre-school education as a right, give teachers substantial autonomy in how they teach, provide effective individual tutoring to help children who are falling behind, keep classes to no more than 20, refrain from teaching reading until the child is seven, and believe that the most important skill a child can develop is understanding how to learn. The Finns regularly come at or near the top of international educational achievement tables.

Is it too much to ask that our educational masters show at least a minimum ability to learn from others and, in the process, give childhood back to our children?

Susan Cooper

Headley Thatcham, Berkshire

Why I should pay more to cut the deficit

I entirely agree with Andreas Whittam Smith’s views (2 October). I very much hope the Tories win the next election, or at least are the largest party. I think they have the best economic policies, but why do they continue to make the worst-off in our society shoulder most of the further reductions in the budget deficit?

I am a self-made retired businessman paying higher rate tax (HRT) and I suggest people in my fortunate financial position should share in reducing the deficit for a short period for everyone’s longer-term benefit. For the next two years, why not temporarily reintroduce 50 per cent and 60 per cent tax bands and suspend the winter fuel allowance for HRT payers?

I think politicians have a moral right to ask us to do so, and the political advantage gained should be an election winner.

Andrew Pearson

Leeds

The cost of reducing population growth

Two letters on population today (1 October), full of half-truths. No one is “preaching to the poor” or “telling” poor families what to do: nor is anyone advocating “control”.

But look at these facts. Two hundred and twenty million women have no access to modern contraception (UN). Over 40 per cent of all pregnancies are unintentional: the consequence is that there are 42 million abortions annually, of which 20 million are unsafe: 68,000 die as a result. Two hundred thousand women a year die as the result of a pregnancy they did not want. Is that a satisfactory situation?

As for some people opting for big families as insurance or labour, you cannot say someone has chosen a big family if they have no facilities to make an alternative choice.

The reduction of fertility is certainly possible, and has been achieved in a number of countries using entirely non-coercive methods: however, other countries are too poor to put such schemes in place, and their populations are growing quicker than they can provide services for them.

And yet the amount of international funding for family planning is pitifully small – equivalent to about a tenth of Goldman Sachs’s bonus budget.

Roger Plenty

Stroud, Gloucestershire

The great tax disc website crash

So farewell then tax disc, hello website crash.

UK government agency computer failures are an enduring traditional feature of British life, as predictable as the rain: the Passport Office, the UKBA, the UKRC, the NHS – and now the DVLA. The Brits do not, it appears, do information technology very well.

The conversion from the paper disc to the online system would have been expensive and its maintenance will also be expensive. We could save this expense quite easily. Why not scrap vehicle taxation altogether and increase the tax on fuel?

The vehicle tax is regressive – a driver who drives one mile a year pays the same as the driver who drives 100,000 miles a year. Isn’t it more sensible that those who cause the most pollution and damage to the roads should pay the most? There is a very efficient fuel tax collection mechanism already in place – when the Chancellor raises the rate in his Budget, the tax is applied almost before he sits down.

The French do it this way. But then they are better at logical thinking than the British, who prefer the sort of ramshackle lash-up we saw last week.

Chris Payne

Lipa City, Philippines

Time running out in ebola fight

The Independent is to be commended for reporting daily on the Ebola epidemic, when there have been other international crises competing for space. Charlie Cooper’s analysis (“Should we be worried?”, 3 October) is confirmed by this charity’s partners in Sierra Leone.

In our namesake township of Waterloo, with a population of about 40,000, the number of deaths mushroomed from two to 130 in just four weeks, a much higher rate of increase than that reported by WHO. Today we have provided water and basic food supplies for the 400 quarantined people in the town, but our small community charity cannot sustain this activity indefinitely.

The international response must include targeted food aid, and an ongoing health education campaign to reduce disease transmission, as well as the radical strengthening of the health services in this Commonwealth country, already one of the poorest in the world. Time is rapidly running out.

Dr Fred Nye

Chair, The Waterloo Partnership UK

Merseyside

Elementary facts about Holmes

I was interested in Tim Walker’s piece on the recently found film of William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes (3 October), but he credits Gillette with too much. The use of a syringe and of a magnifying glass, and the violin-playing, all come from Doyle himself; the deerstalker was introduced by Sidney Paget in his illustrations for “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” (October 1891); and even the word “elementary” occurs in “The Crooked Man” (Strand magazine July 1893):

“‘Excellent!’ I cried.

“‘Elementary,’ said he.”

John Dakin

Toddington, Bedfordshire