Poetry, terror and others

The poetry is good, but the promotion could be better

The poetry is good, but the promotion could be better

Sir: As a grey-haired published poet, I am keen to see the work of newer poets promoted, but I agree with Jane Savage (letter, 20 March) that shortlisting poets is not the answer. This betrays both poets and readers by offering too narrow a range. Instead of distributing poems by 20 writers in an anthology for libraries, why not include 100 poems, each by a different poet? A reader would then have a far greater chance of finding a poem to feed imagination and memory.

Most people, in my experience, do not buy poetry collections or attend readings. But they do have uses for poems, to be read at funerals or collected in weblogs. They come across poems by accident: on the radio, on posters, on the internet or in anthologies. One valuable project would be an internet subject index of published poems. This would give editors a chance to find fresh new work for anthologies, the only poetry books most readers see. We need imaginative promotion of poems, not poets!

Finally, I am sorry that Jane Savage's experience of new poetry has been so bad. If she wants to try again, I would suggest she looks at Carol Ann Duffy's Mean Time, or Helena Nelson's Starlight on Water, for poems which are clear, moving and musical.

ALISON BRACKENBURY
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

How to cut ground from under fanatics

Sir: I am sick and tired of the ignorant canard (repeated by Roy Carter; Letters, 19 March) that 11 September happened because the world had until then been "soft" on non-state terrorism. Bin Laden is a sad medieval-minded man, but his core "demands" in autumn 2001, if you bother to read his speeches, were actually not unreasonable: there must be a Palestinian state, sanctions against Iraq must end, and the US must withdraw from Saudi Arabia and other key Middle Eastern countries.

September 11 happened because there is a large constituency for this reasonable message among the disillusioned and oppressed peoples of the Middle East. If we in the West forced Israel to obey international law, if we stopped killing hundreds of thousands through sanctions when we feel like it (Iraq) and then using terror-tactics to strike pre-emptively (and illegally - Iraq again), if we stopped trying to dominate the world militarily (watch now as US troops are "invited" by the puppet government to stay endlessly in Iraq; there are now US bases in over half the world's nations), then al-Qa'ida's constituency would shrink to a level that would leave it incapable of a sustained campaign of mass killing. It would be left with only a few fanatics to support it, rather than having the quite wide level of sympathy it currently does in much of the Muslim world.

Just as Robin Cook says ("The invasion of Iraq was Britain's worst foreign policy blunder since Suez", 19 March), "the only way to diminish the threat from terrorism is to isolate the terrorists... The invasion of Iraq has handed to the terrorists a whole new weapon to deploy on the Arab street". Until the likes of Mr Carter understand this, they are fated to fuel the fires of the very menace they claim to be trying to extinguish.

PHIL HUTCHINSON
Norwich

Sir: Opponents to the war should justify their stance in light of the hypothetical situation that we had not invaded Iraq. We would then have to continue to assume that Saddam still had chemical weapons and that terrorists had made, or might be making, efforts to obtain them. To me, and to anyone I would ever vote for, this is not an acceptable status quo.

It is logical to tackle terrorists by asking what is the worst that they can do, and as a matter of priority stopping them from doing it. We all thought the worst they could do was to obtain WMD from Iraq, and had we not gone to war, we would still .

If we still had to consider that chemical, biological or radioactive attack was a strong possibility, what enormous resources would be wasted when we should be worrying about bombs, hijacking, assassinations and anti-aircraft missile attacks?

Deposing Saddam and putting the question of chemical weapons beyond doubt was the correct thing to do - whether or not they actually existed - because it allows resources today to be concentrated on real threats without worrying about red herrings. That must make us all safer.

CHRIS LEE
Loughborough, Leicestershire

Sir: The greatest problem we face is moral certitude. At its most extreme we have al-Qa'ida ("We're right, you're wrong, agree or we kill you"), but Tony Blair suffers from the same blindness. He genuinely believes that he makes decisions in the best interests of the country and that his decisions are inevitably morally right.

As he feels that the UK's interests are best served by being America's sidekick, then once George Bush had decided to attack Iraq (for reasons of family, oil and armaments) he was prepared to use any methods to ensure that we joined in; hence the deceit and spin. As a result the world is a much more unstable and unsafe place, with a generation of young Muslims seeing the West only as the enemy.

Ironically Blair was perhaps the only person who could have stopped this, given his status in the US. Globally we need a recognition that things are hardly ever black and white and that people who disagree with you may have a point.

IAIN THOW
Hope, Derbyshire

Sir: The argument that the Spanish election result is a victory for terrorists is extremely disconcerting (letters 16 March). If, heaven forbid, a similar bombing outrage was committed in the UK in the run-up to the general election, would voters be morally blackmailed with the stark choice that anything other than a pro-Government vote would be a victory for the terrorists?

KURT CALDER
Newbury, Berkshire

Gay blood donors

Sir: Philip Hensher (19 March) gives an incomplete account of the problems concerning supply of blood for UK hospitals.

There is no blood test for vCJD, so although this horrible disorder is - thankfully - rare, we have no way of detecting apparently healthy carriers. Between 1980 and 1996 all residents of the UK were potentially exposed to BSE; but because of the successful food bans UK residents may well now be more at risk of contracting BSE/vCJD through receiving a blood transfusion from a carrier than from eating beef. Until we have a test, the only additional precautionary measure we can take is to exclude previous blood recipients as blood donors.

The issue with viruses such as HIV and hepatitis is much clearer because we can test for them and the incidences of infections in the UK are known. Nevertheless, although Hensher rightly describes our screening checks as "excellent", technological and biological factors prevent them from being absolutely foolproof. UK Blood Services are under a professional and legal obligation to protect blood recipients from blood-borne diseases, so "lifestyle" checks on donors are obligatory.

Gay men are excluded from giving blood because epidemiology tells us that they are at higher risks of acquiring such infections. Each year about 1,500 men in the UK get newly infected with HIV through gay sex. Slightly more heterosexual men and women in the UK also acquire HIV each year and although numbers are rising few infected heterosexuals present as blood donors. In contrast, many gay men are keen to donate. Even though the annual incidence of HIV in gay men is stable this shows that younger gay men are less well informed about their HIV risks than Hensher suggests.

Each year about 40 donations among the nearly 3 million collected in the UK and Ireland are confirmed positive for HIV; approximately half come from men who subsequently tell us they are gay. This is disproportionately very high given the estimated number of gay men in the UK. Analyses of the incidence of hepatitis in the UK and in our donors give a similar picture.

UK Blood Services will soon release more information on why we exclude gay men from donating blood. Although gay men may object, the rights of blood recipients hold sway as do the legal obligations on Blood Services.

FRANK BOULTON
Chair, UK Standing Advisory Committee on the Care and Selection of Blood Donors, Southampton

No terror link claim

Sir: With regards to Robert Verkaik's article (22 March) in relation to Guantanamo Bay detainee Tarek Dergoul, my role in this matter was totally misrepresented by this article. I had no contact with the journalist concerned.

What is important for me to clarify is his assertion that I claimed Tarek Dergoul's story would include links to Osama Bin Laden. I never made this claim and have absolutely no reason for believing it to be true. My involvement was simply to give unpaid advice and guidance to the family of Tarek at the request of his brother Halid.

As this led to myself, and more importantly my family and staff, receiving death threats I feel it necessary to refute the totally untrue claims attributed to me.

MAX CLIFFORD
London W1

Fatal flights

Sir, Has the biter been bit? Guy Keleny frequently (and justly) puts the boot in, not least to your own sub-editors for clichés and silly headlines. In last Saturday's Errors & Omissions, however, he discusses the estimates produced by the British Trust for Ornithology of the number of birds crashing into windows and the proportion of those which die as a result: "I've never seen one do it," he says sceptically. "Have you? Why does nobody ever see it happen?"

We see or hear birds crashing into our dining-room windows perhaps three to six times a year, and some years one or two of those will break their necks. That of course only represents the crashes we are aware of because we happen to be in or near that room, so the actual number of crashes is likely to be many times that.

There may be an explanation for the contrast between our experience and Mr Keleny's. Our dining room has windows on three sides, so a bird approaching the building at the right height and from the right angle would see straight through and might therefore assume that it can also fly through.

FRANK CARD
Braintree, Essex

World TB capital

Sir: Jeremy Laurance is right to highlight the spread of TB and the problems that some countries have in supplying the medicines to counter it ("Mass air travel brings TB threat to Britain", 16 March).

But in fact, the developed world's TB capital is Britain: the West's highest incidence of this killer disease occurs in Newham, London.

The problem in Britain, though, is not the unavailability of medicines. Inexpensive antibiotics are readily available. But it needs good diagnosis and good dispensing to make them effective, and sadly our public health authorities are not meeting these two challenges.

It's time to raise our game. The costs of trying to defeat a future TB epidemic in Britain would be far higher than the costs of getting the NHS mobilised so as to defuse the time-bomb today.

Dr EAMONN BUTLER
Director, Adam Smith Institute
London SW1

Rural courtesy

Sir: In reply to Patrick Powell (letter, 20 March). No, it's not that the Cornish are especially well mannered. I live in a Cotswold village and the phenomenon he describes is alive and well and living in Blockley. In my view it illustrates the difference between country people and urban dwellers.

Locals here pull over in our narrow country lanes just as locals do in Cornwall and give due acknowledgement when the same deference is accorded to them. However, without exception, visitors and recent incomers sail by, ignoring our courtesy and even avoiding all eye-contact.

To add insult to injury, they often commandeer the passing places to consult maps, stretch their legs or even to have an impromptu picnic.

J S CURTIS
Blockley, Gloucestershire

Kosovo hypocrisy

Sir: A few years back, Nato took it upon itself to visit apocalyptic violence on Yugoslavia - purportedly in response to ethnic cleansing. Now they help to evacuate Serb civilians while their homes are set on fire ("Nato urges Kosovo leaders to end violence", 20 March). Amid the fallout from Iraq, isn't it time to revisit the lies and hypocrisy behind our leaders' last humanitarian bombing?

PETER McKENNA
Liverpool

Steam at 100mph

Sir: Flying Scotsman was not the first locomotive to reach 100mph ("Is the cursed Flying Scotsman set to take another buyer for a ride?", 19 March): that was achieved in 1901 by a German electric railcar. Nor was it the first steam locomotive to reach 100mph: that was achieved on 9 May 1904 by the Great Western Railway locomotive No 3440 City of Truro, which is also preserved.

CHARLES PHILLIPS
Ingatestone, Essex

Sympathy for Kennedy

Sir: Poor Charles Kennedy - so many snide comments in the media about his recent illness. As a fellow sufferer who has spent most of the weekend between bed and bathroom after eating something during a night out on Friday that did not agree with me (no alcohol taken incidentally) I can only commiserate. I know how he felt.

S J SLATER
Midgley, West Yorkshire

Burden of absurdity

Sir: Mr Flower, who complains of being barred from his local "recycling centre" by a notice that says "Children must be kept in your car" (letter, 22 March) should be grateful that he does not have to travel around central London. We are instructed on the Underground that "Dogs must be carried on the escalators", but none are provided.

TONY WATSON
Twyford, Berkshire