times letters
BBC, Campbell and Iraq dossier
From Mr Milton Crofts
Sir, It is of monumental concern that the Government may have entered the war with Iraq under false pretences in claiming that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and threatened the world. There is a lot of bluster about how the Iraqi people are pleased to get rid of him, or that the war is over so we should move on; but this should not divert attention from the fact that the Government still cannot justify the war.
Alastair Campbell is doing his job with breathtaking skill (report and letters, June 27). He has managed to divert attention so far from the central issue of the Government’s deceit over the war that it has become almost a footnote. The thing has been reduced to, at best, a question over procedures in Campbell’s department or, at worst, a squabble between Downing Street and the BBC.
Yours faithfully,
MILTON CROFTS,
12 Warrington Road,
Lymm, Cheshire WA13 9BG.
June 27.
From Professor Emeritus Joe Lamb
Sir, Alastair Campbell admitted before the foreign affairs committee that “terrorists” had been substituted for “opposition” in the cribbed PhD thesis, which he maintained had been “sexed down” rather than “up” (reports, July 26).
Surely it is up to him to prove that a similar job was not done on the other documents, rather than up to the BBC to prove it was. Your headline might then have been: “Campbell admits to sexing up dodgy document”.
Yours faithfully,
JOE LAMB,
Kenbrae,
23 Millbank, Cupar, Fife KY15 5DP.
jfl@st-andrews.ac.uk
June 27.
From Mr David Brice
Sir, I can only agree with Lord Donoughue (letter, June 27). He states:
It would be very sad for our nation if the reputation of this great institution suffered further damage due to the regrettable development within it of the standards of tabloid-agenda journalism.
Is he referring to the Government or the BBC?
Yours sincerely,
DAVID BRICE,
Boxwood, Station Hill,
Bursledon, Southampton SO31 8AA.
djbrice@dircon.co.uk
June 27.
From Mr Gerard van Dam
Sir, I believe I have the same level of authority over Alastair Campbell as he does over the BBC.
Could he please write to The Times by 6pm on Saturday explaining why the “horlicks” of mis-communications emanating from No 10 does not require his resignation?
Yours faithfully,
GERARD van DAM,
9 First Turn,
Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 8AQ.
gerard.vandam@ntlworld.com
June 27.
June 27, 2003
EU and the regions
From Mr Clive Fletcher-Wood
Sir, Mr Lyndon Elias (letter, June 19) says that “if local government is devolved to the regions and national government passed to Brussels, then we can get rid of the lot at Westminster”.
But that is exactly one of the key aims of the European Union. The surprise is that John Prescott seems so willing to assist Brussels in achieving that objective.
However bad the lot at Westminster might be, at least they are our lot; if enough of us want to get rid of them at the next general election we can.
I do not care about the fate of regional assemblies, although I shall regret the loss of historic counties that will be an inevitable consequence. I do care deeply about the fact that whatever we think of the “government” in Brussels we shall not be able to vote it out of office.
I remain, Sir, yours faithfully,
CLIVE FLETCHER-WOOD,
37 Northumberland Road,
Redland, Bristol BS6 7BA.
June 19.
June 25, 2003
EU and free trade
From Mr Richard Laming
Sir, If Mr Tim Hammond objects to common European rules on the sale of apples (letter, June 19), how else is he to ensure that they can be bought and sold freely across national borders? “Too big”,“too small”, “too spotty”: we can hear the objections from customs officers now.
The free movement of goods requires rules for the equal treatment of those goods regardless of their national origin. Wanting free trade without law is like expecting to eat in a restaurant without paying.
Yours faithfully,
RICHARD LAMING
(Director),
Federal Union,
PO Box 44404, London SE1 7TZ.
June 19.
Need for reform of the state pension
From Mr Geoffrey Wilson
Sir, Britain had a private, funded, pension market which was the envy of the world. We had a cost-controlled state pension system which made our national finances far stronger than our European partners’. This has all gone in only six years of new Labour government. You say (leading article, June 12) that trust in the pension system is “fragile”. You are too charitable — trust has slumped.
I have been a consulting actuary for over 30 years. Before 1997, stockmarket slumps and ill-judged government interference (nothing new!) did not destroy our pension system. The real income of those retiring increased enormously. Employers and insurance companies then had the confidence to weather the financial storms, and pay the deficiency contributions in bad years. They do not now — why?
Employers see the Government raiding their long-established pension funds, and means-testing pensioners so the pensions they pay out give no real benefit to their former employees. Insurers have lost their financial viability in today’s compensation culture — billions of pounds lost in interminable “reviews” led by bureaucratic regulators. We need major and long-term changes, starting with Gordon Brown putting back the money he has taken, and setting a decent, non-means-tested, basic state pension.
Yours faithfully,
GEOFFREY WILSON,
Baldhorns Park,
Rusper, West Sussex RH12 4QU.
geoffreywilson@dial.pipex.com
June 23.
From Mr George Garside
Sir, Robert Hicks (letter, June 17) states that most modern companies prefer to empower their staff to manage their own pension funds. Empowerment, in this case, is simply a euphemism for dumping responsibility for pension provision.
The alternative system of individual pension funds has two major flaws, which taken together probably account for the lack of wide take-up of such schemes, including the much-vaunted stakeholder plan.
First, individual schemes are wide open to the charges and vagaries of the financial services industry, whose track record leaves a great deal to be desired.
Secondly and most importantly, a huge proportion of the working pop-ulation do not receive sufficient re-muneration to enable them to build up a worthwhile personal fund, and are, if the present ethos continues, likely to suffer the indignity of living on meagre means-tested benefits in retirement.
The only viable solution is a complete revamping of the state pension to a fixed level, say 40 per cent, of average earnings. Most people would be happy to contribute towards this on a pay-as-you-go taxation basis, secure in the knowledge that they would be neither means-tested in retirement, nor fleeced by financial advisers driven by sales-related remuneration.
Yours sincerely,
GEORGE GARSIDE,
87 Gardner Road,
Formby, Merseyside L37 8DE.
June 18.
'Justification' of war on Iraq
From Professor Muir Hunter, QC
Sir, You point out (leading article, June 14) that many people believe that, whether the British Government told us the truth, or falsehoods, when giving its reasons for declaring war on Iraq, in any event the war was wholly justified, retrospectively, by the discovery of the horrors perpetrated by the Saddam regime.
This attitude, surely one of very doubtful morality, is also potentially most harmful to the relationship between our Government and the electorate. A solemn trust felt by the electors in the truthfulness of the Government’s statements is one of the foundations of our democratic society. MPs who lie to the House of Commons, as Profumo did, must resign. Lawyers say of an untruthful witness: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus; he told a lie about one matter, should he be believed about anything else?
If the Government were to be disbelieved about such a grave issue as the casus belli, on what issues can it expect to be believed in the future?
Yours faithfully,
MUIR HUNTER,
Hunterston, Donhead St Andrew,
Shaftesbury, Dorset SP7 9EB.
June 18.
From Sir Brian Barder
Sir, The current concentration on whether we were led into the war against Iraq on a false prospectus entails two risks. First, it seems to imply that if nuclear, biological or chemical weapons or materials for them were now to be found in Iraq, that would make the war legal. Secondly, if George W. Bush and Tony Blair were exaggerating or misrepresenting (or even fabricating) the evidence for Saddam possessing these weapons, that would imply that all the members of the Security Council for the past decade, including France and Russia and the Clinton Administration and John Major’s Government, and the first teams of UN weapons inspectors until they had to suspend their work in 1998, were similarly conspiring to mislead the rest of the world, or else were themselves similarly deluded. Neither proposition could possibly be true.
Whether or not Iraq still possessed such weapons at the time of the US-UK invasion, it certainly had possessed them, or the material for developing them, earlier, and the world was entitled to ask what had happened to them if Iraq didn’t still have them.
But the war against Iraq was illegal because it didn’t have the authority of the UN Security Council as explicitly required by the UN Charter, not because by that time Iraq may not have had weapons of mass destruction after all. The war was illegal whether those weapons existed or not, whether they are found in the future or not, and whether our leaders misled us (intentionally or otherwise) about them or not.
Of course we need to find out whether we really were misled, and if so how this happened and who was responsible. But the legality or otherwise of the war doesn’t hinge on the answers to those questions. The war was illegal, weapons or no weapons, and for that reason it has set a fearsome precedent that others will undoubtedly exploit to their own advantage one day.
Yours faithfully,
BRIAN BARDER
(HM Diplomatic Service, 1965-94),
10 Melrose Road,
Southfields, SW18 1NE.
June 17.
From Mr A. P. Schlesinger
Sir, Only in this country could you have a debate on “what went wrong?” after a swift conflict to rid the world of a dreadful dictator. Surely sometimes the end justifies the means.
Based upon what the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee heard yesterday (report, June 18), presumably the usually admirable Clare Short will be a key witness in any civil action brought here by Saddam Hussein for unfair dismissal.
Yours faithfully,
TONY SCHLESINGER,
9 Central Business Centre,
Great Central Way, NW10 0UR.
June 18.
Rights and marriage
From Mrs M. Lavery Callaghan
Sir, Mr Keith Hackett (letter, June 12) is wrong: marriage in a British register office is a civil contract made according to British law; it has nothing to do with God. So if a heterosexual couple refuse to enter into that contract, I see no problem in refusing them any benefits it brings.
Yours faithfully,
M. LAVERY CALLAGHAN,
2 St Andrew’s Way,
Impington, Cambridge CB4 9NQ.
June 12.
Sir, There is only one question to be answered. Is the Anglican Communion a club or a church? If a club, the members make up their own rules. If a church, God’s rules, found in the Scriptures, are to be followed.
Yours sincerely,
GEORGE RABEY,
61 Tattershall, Swindon SN5 8BX.
June 13.
