Norman Tebbit a 'grandee'? No, still a nasty Thatcherite

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/oct/28/letters-nasty-norman-tebbit

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What a weirdly devalued world we live in if Lord "On yer bike" Tebbit is a Tory "grandee" ("Tory grandee in assault on 'this dog of a government'," News)? As an out-and-out, tiny-minded Thatcherite, who eagerly helped lay the foundations of today's nasty world, he has nothing of value to offer, no views that will help create a better world. Just more nastiness and a tolerance of privilege, just as long as their perpetrators' incompetence doesn't get found out until years later.

He doesn't even realise that his diagnosis is completely in line with David Cameron's government's thinking, and plain wrong! It was not the "Blair-Brown spending spree" that got us into this mess, it was stupid bankers unleashed by Thatcher's freeing of the financial world that caused today's global problems. And surely even he can recognise that George Osborne's stance echoes that of Thatcher's "the lady's not for turning"? Resolute stupidity while the UK economy collapses, just as it did under the government Tebbit was part of, where we watched unemployment soar with his advice still echoing in our ears: "Get on yer bike."

<strong>David Reed</strong>

London NW3

<strong>Dale Farm families are to blame</strong>

I write in response to the article ("Mental illness now blights many Dale Farm families", News), which claims travellers living illegally near the former Dale Farm site are "being forced to live in squalor".

There is no need for people to be living on the roadside and they should speak to us about their personal needs. Unfortunately, this has not happened and despite the council making 37 offers of temporary accommodation, none has been accepted.

The travellers living on the Oak Lane roadside are doing so illegally. The council has a duty to uphold the law.

If the all-party parliamentary group is really concerned with their welfare, it should be encouraging them to make homelessness applications so that those who genuinely have nowhere else to go can be offered temporary accommodation.

<strong>Tony Ball</strong>

Leader, Basildon Council

Basildon

Essex

<strong>So there's this Irish woman…</strong>

The first funny woman to joke about her life to an audience was probably Irish memoirist Laetitia Pilkington ("How funny women fought hard for their place in the spotlight" News). She was thrown out of her house at 2am one October night in 1737 when her husband found her in the bedroom with a handsome surgeon. Having few other resources besides her wit, she developed a comic routine based on that and other adventures with which she entertained groups of gentlemen who came to her rooms opposite White's club in St James's. They paid to hear her trash her posturing curate husband and the sexual double standard and roared with laughter at her insistence that she wasn't in bed with a lover but reading a book he had lent her, which he was politely waiting for her to finish. Later, she wrote it up in her memoirs (1748). It might be hard to find a history of women comedians, but there has never been a shortage of funny women.

<strong>Professor Norma Clarke</strong>

London N15

<strong>Stop ministerial musical chairs</strong>

Your article about the lack of vision on government energy policy ("We need a vision for energy, not this fiasco", Leader) rightly highlights the danger of short-term thinking and inexperienced ministers holding sway on key policy. Isn't it time to stop the musical chairs of ministerial appointments and allow incumbents to build up knowledge and experience of their departments? Many of the issues of the day, such as the economy, energy, health and the environment, are too big for single-party tinkering (even a coalition such as we have) and need a more combined approach steered by long-term vision that extends beyond the next general election.

Business needs a stable political background to invest in the future. It has not been well served by party-centred political opportunism, nor has the public who are increasingly disenfranchised by all the political toing and froing. Let's have more vision, less revision.

<strong>Roger Lennard</strong>

Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire

<strong>Theresa May's no heroine</strong>

The home secretary's decision to save Gary McKinnon from extradition to the US is a fine example of hypocritical, political opportunism. Theresa May has seldom recognised the rights of other British citizens facing extradition. Yet you reward her with a flattering profile (Comment) as though she were a principled defender of the Human Rights Act.

<strong>Professor Patrick Callaghan</strong>

London SE10

<strong>The Browning version</strong>

I'm afraid Copland Smith (Letters) got there 140 years too late. Robert Browning, when challenged to find rhymes for supposedly un-rhymable words tackled "orange" and "month" in the same poem, thus:

"From the Ganges to the Blorenge comes the Rajah once a month. Sometimes chewing on an orange. Sometimes reading from his Grunth." An unlikely scenario, admittedly, but credit where credit's due!

<strong>Liz Ratcliffe</strong>

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