Letters: Violent crime abroad

Skewed economy of 'paradise islands' breeds violent crime

The tragic events over the weekend in Antigua, resulting in the death of Catherine Mullaney and critical condition of her husband, have brought back memories of a similar attack involving my wife and me nearly eight years ago. The incident took place on another Caribbean island which also likes to label itself as a "paradise in the sun". We were fortunate to survive, with one bullet grazing the side of my wife's head and another shattering my cheekbone.

Looking back now at our own experience and hearing about the much worse outcome for the Mullaneys, I find myself thinking that tourists need to be more realistic about what they should be expecting when visiting these so-called tropical idylls. The truth is that while the locals are undoubtedly friendly and such incidents quite rare, countries like Antigua and other Caribbean islands rely far too much on tourist revenue. This has several consequences including: lack of sustainable employment opportunities outside tourism for the locals; exposure to luxurious lifestyles, which is bound to breed feelings of envy; and a desperate clinging on by the authorities to the PR hype about the "tropical island dream" – assisted in my experience by British diplomats who are keen not to rock the boat.

In making this point, I have no wish to undermine what is a vital source of revenue for these poor countries. The fact is however that these countries have significant social problems, including growth in violence and drugs-related crime. That these problems spill over and affect innocent tourists now and again seems inevitable. If anything is to be learned from these sad events it is surely that nothing will be solved by turning a blind eye. Instead, more attention should be paid to finding ways of using the money earned from tourism to create a more balanced economic future for the Caribbean.

Les Abbie

Earls Colne, Essex

Mental patients in general hospitals

Your leading article on mental health (23 July) made no mention of the impact on ordinary NHS hospitals of the Government's failure to fund psychiatric hospitals adequately. With the definition of "psychiatric" being drawn ever tighter, general hospitals are admitting more and more patients with mental problems, including some prone to violence, but who are not classified as such.

I experienced this briefly during a recent stay in a hospital in the Midlands. A new arrival in my six-bed bay sat for several hours one morning by his bed, with his head bowed, oblivious to everything around him. At lunchtime a nurse tried but failed to coax him into eating something. Suddenly, he erupted, grabbed her arm and started to hit her. She kept her calm and backed off as far as possible. He released her when several other nurses came to her aid, but then lashed out at the heads of two others, leaving one in need of treatment in A&E.

For the next 15 minutes or so he prowled round the ward like a feral beast, shadowed by two nurses, before being shepherded back to his bed. There he was sedated so that by the time the psychiatric team came to assess his mental state he was quite serene and able to tell them his name and date of birth. This was apparently sufficient to confirm his status as a medical and not a psychiatric patient, but not to protect the staff and other patients from further acts of violence. This was achieved by moving him into a single private room and hiring registered mental nurses to watch over him there day and night.

After talking to several doctors and nurses, I discovered that this was no longer an unusual occurrence in general medical wards. Indeed, elsewhere in my own ward there was a little harmless-looking elderly lady with a secret phobia against people who read newspapers in bed. This drove her to attack unwary patients with her walking stick, which she wielded with great strength.

Tom Arkell

Penzance, Cornwall

SANE welcomes the prominence you give to conditions on acute mental-health wards.

We have long campaigned for more recognition to be given to in-patient care, believing it to be an essential backstop to successful care in the community. We know from those with whom we are in contact, and the repeated official reports, that overcrowding, lack of therapeutic support and levels of violence are unacceptably high, including – most shockingly – on wards where patients are detained. Since 1990, 24,000 beds have been lost, and wards and units continue to close.

We endorse the call by the Healthcare Commission for an increased strategic priority to be given to acute care, and more beds commissioned in areas under pressure. The most seriously ill and vulnerable patients in the mental-health system deserve to be treated effectively and with dignity in conditions that are safe for everyone. If the resources are not made available, to quote your own words, there will remain a "scandalous failure to care for those most in need".

Margaret Edwards

Head of Strategy, SANE London E1

How to keep warm as energy costs rise

When the managing director of Centrica says we should wear two jumpers to beat the rise in gas prices (report, 19 July), we had better listen. Humankind evolved with little fur when it lived naked in Africa. If we choose to inhabit colder climes, we need clothes.

I am 70. In our house, we usually have the heating on for two short bursts each day in winter. We have cavity wall insulation and 270mm of insulation in the loft. I keep perfectly warm by wearing two pullovers, and often, over my clothes, a dressing gown with half-finger gloves.

We know that gas and oil are running out, but then we complain about their prices going up. I am preparing myself, and my family, for the year 2100, when there will be no gas or oil.

John D Anderson

Shipley, West Yorkshire

Rising energy bills are indeed partially dependent on international factors but they are also a result of policy inaction and bad strategic planning over many years by the Labour Government ("Energy bills set to increase despite oil price fall" 25 July).

The scale of the Government's failure should be laid bare in the light of spiralling energy prices and the likelihood of six million households facing fuel poverty by Christmas. Since 1997 there have been seven Labour energy ministers who between them have produced three contradictory Energy White Papers which have categorically failed to prepare and encourage new and varied baseload power supplies for the future.

Since 1997 the UK has seen the construction of over 12 GW of new gas-fired power stations. There have been no new nuclear or clean-coal stations built over this period. The gas price is connected to the high oil price; this in turn affects the cost of the electricity these gas-fired stations produce. The majority of the gas used by them will be imported.

The new Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet, Wind Chill: Why wind energy will not fill the energy gap further illustrates how overdependence on renewables such as wind will further drive up prices and in no way help satisfy our growing energy needs.

Tony Lodge

Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Studies, London, SW1

Despite strong competition, I don't think there can be a more depressing story in the news than the jockeying for position of five leading nations for oil and gas exploration rights in the Arctic (report, 25 July).

The irony of this venture is impossible to overstate. Our dependence on carbon-based fuels is causing climate change which threatens our very existence, one of the results of which is the melting of Arctic ice. Instead of being terrified by this and focusing their efforts on preventing it, five of the world's most advanced nations think its a good idea to exploit this environmental destruction to go after the very substance which caused it in the first place.

This encapsulates the inability of human beings to think collectively instead of individually, in the long term instead of the short term and beyond anything that might enrich themselves. It is this psyche that will lead to our defeat in the fight against climate change. Never has there been a more dishearteningly vivid example of the Native American saying: "Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money".

Fraser Devlin

London SE19

MP's advice to power company

See apology, 17 October 2008

I write in response to "Pandora" of 23 July. My work with Fluor consists of giving advice on the following: economic, social, political and environmental issues; anti-corruption and business ethics practices; regulatory matters; outside relations, e.g. trade unions.

You wrote that my role "in assisting Fluor has never been totally clear". This is not true. I have been absolutely transparent about my role with Fluor from the start and I ensured that all information was put in the public domain at the earliest possible opportunity.

You also quoted me stating that the remuneration "was not going to me personally". This is true. None of the fee goes to me personally but instead gives me the opportunity to employ someone from my Makerfield constituency who would not have otherwise been given the opportunity to work in the House of Commons.

Ian McCartney MP

House of Commons

Groovy old man of the soil

As a bit of a silver swinger myself (61 going on 62, albeit 60 per cent groovy, 40 per cent grumpy), I enjoyed ticking the boxes in John Walsh's article on "groovy old men"(28 July) - Paul Smith shirts, Donald Russell meat, you name it. But I shuddered to a halt when I read: "He would never, ever, be seen dead on an allotment."

Mr Walsh clearly has no plot of his own; if he had, like me, he would discover that your average allotment holder nowadays is a young mother, anxious to give her kids a healthy, home-grown diet. On a wet day it is like Waitrose with wellies; when it's warmer, like Heligan with hot pants.

Throw in exercise, fresh air, birdsong at dawn and the occasional illicit barbecue at dusk and you have a perfect stage for the stereotypical sexagenarian shaker.

John Russell

Harrogate, North Yorkshire

'Herbal' medicines do really work

I was surprised to see on your front page of 24 July, "The herbal medicine con", a line which bears no relation to the article within, about the misdemeanours of various complementary therapists, not one of them a herbalist.

I wholeheartedly agree with the thrust of the article, which is that there are some quacks about, and that complementary therapists should be licensed by the Department of Health; indeed some already are.

However it is worth noting that until the 20th century the majority of medicine prescribed by doctors was herbal; the majority of "modern" drugs are derived from plants and fungi (aspirin, penicillin, quinine, digoxin, morphine, senna are a few examples); and the health benefits of many plants have been demonstrated by rigorous scientific research. Perhaps the real con is your headline.

Dr Merlin L Willcox MRCGP

General Practitioner and Herbalist, Oxford

Mysterious and despised Cagots

Sean Thomas in "The last untouchable in Europe" (28 July) suggests that Cagots were originally Muslims but omits to mention that they were also called "New Christians". They were emancipated by Napoleon after a sustained Cagot campaign. Not only did they inhabit the Pyrenees, they were to be found in coastal areas from Bayonne to Normandy.

It is thought that the Cagots were forced from northern Spain by Charlemagne. In the 19th and 20th centuries it was believed that the Cagots may have had Jewish origins. As a historian researching the history of south-western France, I have examined early lists of Cagot surnames from this area, and many of them are Sephardic.

K Lacey

Wanborough, Wiltshire

Briefly...

Safe bet

The reason that the safest seat on an aeroplane is at the back is obvious ("How to fly without fear", 29 July). When was the last time you heard of a plane reversing into a mountain?

Stan Broadwell

Bristol

Rate for the job

Philippe Boucheron wrote (letter, 28 July) of the East End restaurant where the waiters got no pay at all. I had an uncle who worked as a waiter during the 1930s in some of London's grandest hotel restaurants. He actually paid to be employed, whether directly to the hotel or to an agent I do not know. Learning about this a decade later, even as a young child I was shocked, but, presumably, it made economic sense at the time.

Doreen S Laven

Canterbury

Training for politics

If it is so important that MPs should "have knowledge about the inner workings of business" by spending time in a "business environment" (Sally Muggeridge, letter, 29 July), isn't it equally important that they should learn about the NHS, the retail trade or agriculture by working as hospital porters, supermarket checkout staff or farm labourers?

The Rev Bob Bamberg

Teignmouth, Devon

Elite thinking

Simon Carr (28 July) clearly has no reservations in his defence of the intellectual superiority of Oxbridge.When I was applying for university entrance (many years ago), Oxbridge alone insisted on O-level Latin for all entrants. I took the view that any institution with such a luminously loopy prerequisite for a science course simply didn't deserve to be entrusted with my education. I don't suppose I was alone.

Professor Gavin P Vinson

School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London

Questions of value

Your article on David Cameron's policies (28 July) shows huge inflation in politicians' claims. A key issue was described as "the $64m question". When I was a lad in the 1960s, understanding what a political party stood for was a mere $64,000 question.

Martin Jones

Nottingham