Letters and emails: March 13

Paying at the pumps
Lawson has done a valuable service in re-presenting the rate of fuel tax as 189% of the actual product price for petrol and 168% for diesel. However, looking further at his figures reveals the Vat on the duty amounts to nearly £0.12 — or 25% of the basic product cost.

In many parts of the country, fuel is an absolute necessity for work and food shopping. Indeed, in rural areas, those on lower incomes spend 20% or more of their net income on fuel, with the prospect that this will rise further. Osborne and David Cameron, who have probably never had to pay for their own petrol, are unlikely to be able to conceive of such a burden.

Increasing fuel taxes will be a pyrrhic victory and could result in a domino collapse of tax revenues as retail businesses close and more people become unemployed. The Treasury is dangerously addicted to fuel taxes, which raise around £35 billion a year.
Alan Bailey, Warrington, Cheshire

Sixpenny bit
A breakdown of tax on fuel omits the temporary sixpence of extra duty added in 1956 at the time of the Suez crisis because tankers had to sail the long route around Africa. Once the Suez Canal reopened, mysteriously the tax remained — and still does, I believe.
Keith Dodsworth, Skirlaugh, East Yorkshire

Energy saver
The government has the power to manage expectations to its advantage by letting the mood of ever rising petrol prices take root in the public’s mind, including the prospect of a further rise from the 1% fuel duty escalator.

However, the smart money says the coalition has never had any intention of tripping the escalator but will keep silent until the budget, when it will declare it has “saved” the motorist 3p a litre by dropping the escalator. Huge sighs of relief all round but, with the government coffers brimming with black gold, the Treasury is happy and the public thinks it is getting cheaper energy. Wrong but job done.
Christopher Chapman, Loxwood, West Sussex

West guilty of Libya hypocrisy

You are right to say “A no-fly zone over Libya is flawed” (Editorial, last week) but you also talk of “getting Colonel Gadaffi to quit” — by force? — as though this had suddenly become desirable. Why now, after more than 40 years of human rights abuses by the regime, and why Gadaffi when there are dozens of villainous leaders around the world?

The answer is sadly simple: the insurgence in Libya has made him vulnerable, and the West — which had been sweet-talking him for economic reasons — is jumping on the bandwagon created by brave Libyans. It is a classic example of the hypocrisy of western governments in their relations with despots, especially in countries possessing oil.

Should Gadaffi remain in power — a distinct possibility — one hopes they will not convert their embarrassment into military action.
Patrick Campbell, Alicante, Spain

Political make-up
William Hague and David Cameron’s holier-than-thou finger-wagging at Gadaffi over the use of violence wouldn’t ring so hollow if they hadn’t both supported the discredited Iraq adventure that led to what some claim to be 1m civilian deaths — and if they hadn’t made such a mess of rescuing our own people from Libya.

Perhaps we can find in this a formula for being a politician: two parts arrogance and one part incompetence — or is it the other way round?
Nigel Bowker, Banchory, Aberdeenshire

United nations
The London School of Economics (LSE) was right to accept money to provide education for Libyan students because cultural exchanges between countries lead to greater understanding — witness the scholarships financed by the British Council, Fulbright Commission and Rhodes Trust (“LSE peer: send back the blood money”, News, last week).

The trust was established as an educational charity at Oxford under the will of Cecil Rhodes, an alumnus and a ruthless, warmongering entrepreneur in colonial Africa. Much as the Nobel peace prize was created by Alfred Nobel, whose company produced dynamite and Bofors guns for two world wars and the Indian army in the 1980s.

The latter prize is awarded to persons who “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
Brian Wilson, Weston-on-the-Green, Oxfordshire

Reality check
Last week I was “Liddled” — not sold at a cut-price supermarket but attacked by one of your more flamboyant columnists (“Libya is bad enough, LSE, but how do you explain Ms Liberty?”, Rod Liddle, Comment). While there are few greater honours than joining the ranks of so many women who receive similar treatment, facts feature in journalism and none was checked before this piece.

My Liberty salary of £58,871 is my only paid employment. I am a former student and a council member of the LSE but was not “part of a decision to accept a large donation from Colonel Gadaffi”. I regret I was unable to attend a meeting in 2009 that approved the Saif al-Islam Gadaffi donation and therefore only subsequently raised concerns about it, given his father’s appalling regime.

However, I have no reason to believe that the decision resulted from anything other than a naive assessment made in good faith about the democratic reforming ambitions of the dictator’s son. As for training Libyans, this decision was not made by the council.

Liddle is entitled to describe me as a “patronising ... middle-class Asian lady”. He may also read this as “lightly chiding you in a compassionate manner as if you were a five-year-old who had just had a little accident”. But trips to the little journalists’ room to check facts before going out might make such accidents less likely.
Shami Chakrabarti, Director, Liberty

False economy
Liddle’s apposite column opens up the wider question of the wisdom of appointing business-oriented or media- savvy individuals to senior university posts with impressive but ultimately “trophy” CVs. Whether it be the often highly visible Liberty director and LSE council member Shami Chakrabarti, or Howard Davies, who seems to have held every post possible, neither seems to have covered themselves in glory over the Libyan donations to the LSE.

I accept that an academic institution, especially in the current climate, has to look long and hard at its finances and act accordingly. However, there’s a danger of such institutions losing sight of their educational mission in favour of appointing business or media “names” who may promise much but under serious scrutiny hardly add up to a hill of beans.
Peter Davis, London NW11

Points

Frock bottom
All this coverage about the makers of wedding dresses (“Revealed: McQueen designer to make royal wedding dress” News, last week)? Fashion is big business and therefore suitable for the business pages — but not news. And feting the fashion designers Alexander McQueen and John Galliano as geniuses? These butterflies may well be the best fashion can boast, but we are talking about being supremely good at something that is barely worth doing in the first place.
Tim Haigh, Hounslow, Middlesex

Speaking allowed
Andrew Sullivan’s incisive article (“Glad to be in the land of the odious bigot”, News Review, last week) rightly speaks of the “sheer vileness” and “deranged inhumanity” of the members of Westboro Baptist Church, and makes a compelling case for not using the law to curtail their free speech. What a contrast to the growing pressures here from the modern orthodoxies of political correctness and multiculturalism that lead to the law being increasingly brought to bear on believers from the country’s main faith group who dare to make public their views on marriage and sexuality.
David Rolles, Sale, Cheshire

Off camera
The Ultimate Film Lists (Culture, last week) made great choices overall but missed the opening of Manhattan and the endings of Cinema Paradiso and Casablanca. Unforgivable.
Paul Carroll, Wigan, Greater Manchester

Cutting room
Any top 100 selection must have limitations but surely the opening sequence of Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God should be a must for the Great Beginnings list. The splendour of scale is astounding. Even Sam Mendes’s American Beauty might deserve a place, and for an ending, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 classic Solaris was mind-blowing. Delighted you included Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky in your Great Battles selection — Sergei Prokofiev’s score was also fantastic.
Gerald Unwin, Sheffield, South Yorkshire

Bumpy ride
Your article “Two new Jags dent Cameron’s green image” (News, last week) is hardly fair when the purchase of the two reinforced Jaguars was ordered by senior police protection officers under the previous government. “For comfort,” David Leppard reports, “the interior is lined with leather”. Should it have been sandpaper?
David Gunn, Shipston-on-Stour Warwickshire

Chewing the fat
What is the big society? Just a name for obese Britain?
Walter Roberts, Edinburgh

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Corrections

In her column in News Review last week Eleanor Mills wrote about Helen Fielding’s planned new Bridget Jones book. Through a misunderstanding, she commented on and quoted from material she believed to be in the book, which was, in fact, from the author’s past newspaper columns. We apologise to Helen Fielding.

In the section on Ten Great Endings (The Ultimate Film Lists, Culture, last week) we said Major Calloway in The Third Man (1949) was played by Joseph Cotten. It was, in fact, Trevor Howard. Cotten played Holly Martins.

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