We must value our media
How to respond to Katherine Viner’s article on the crisis in journalism (22 July)? I agree that the health of the media is at risk. Much of what I value was encapsulated by Malcolm X when he said that what African Americans needed was not training but education, and that the former was equivalent of teaching a dog a circus trick, while the latter taught people how to think.
Thinking requires time. It is not consistent with a five-second attention span. If we have no ability to comprehend that truth ought to have priority over lies, then we are in deep trouble.
If we fail to understand the difference between learning how to think for ourselves and obeying orders, between reading a considered piece of journalism and relying on the latest Facebook offering, will we be able to discern the difference between fact and fantasy?
We do need expert and honest witnesses who speak truth to power without fear or favour. We also need thinking citizenry, not well-trained circus dogs. We need time to think. We need these things to be able to protect our democracies. We need them to be fully human.
If we value democracy and the rights of citizens to have opinions and individual rights, and if we value the difference between fact and fiction, we must support our media so that it can continue to speak truth to power on our behalf, and do its best to keep us informed.
Lavinia Moore
Aldgate, South Australia
Exploitation is the culprit
No it is not globalisation that causes “less affluent, less educated, mainly white people” to feel themselves marginalised (29 July). Poor whites feel marginalised because they are poor and marginalised, not by globalisation but by the exploitative economy that drives it at whatever human cost.
The beggar-your-neighbour system that its friends and foes call capitalism enables those with wealth to buy up whatever human and other resources they can turn to profit, and drop them when they can’t. Dead simple: buy cheap, sell dear, keep the difference and do the same again.
Capitalism may be globalised but it’s a very British disease. Fourteenth-century peasants revolted against serfdom, only to find themselves marginalised by sheep and enclosures. Luddites smashed the machines that made their manual skills redundant. Rebecca rioters in Wales attacked new toll gates rather than pay to use old rights of way.
Scapegoating of foreigners and immigrants is nothing new either; it’s sometimes prompted by those who might otherwise feel the heat themselves.
High talk of globalisation helps fuel fears of immigration. It distracts from the real case in need of treatment: a dysfunctional economic order that still evades the logic and law of social democracy.
Greg Wilkinson
Swansea, UK
Eliminating alien predators
Eleanor Ainge Roy describes New Zealand’s attempts to eradicate various species from the country as a “‘world first’ project” (29 July). Use of the term project suggests a reasonable and achievable objective. The idea that a series of landmasses the size of New Zealand can be cleared of widespread populations of highly resilient species should be consigned to the realms of fantasy and myth. We New Zealanders indeed have a penchant for hobbits, trolls, taniwha (Maori mystical beings) and other such fantasies.
However, the reality that a meaningful eradication attempt would take no less than martial law to override landowners’ rights and poison every inch of the countryside, including sensitive areas such as organic farms and school grounds, despite huge safety concerns and organised opposition, puts the Pest Free NZ initiative firmly in the realms of fairytale.
Considering the fact that the ecocidal poisons employed may kill some of the very species that they are being used to protect, we soon leave the realms of fantasy and have commenced a journey into horror.
Tobi Muir
Auckland, New Zealand
• Will the New Zealand government’s plans “to exterminate all introduced predators” include killing all the trout in its lakes and rivers? No introduced predator has adapted more successfully.
Simon Collins
Sydney, Australia
• To make New Zealand truly predator-free, surely one would have to eliminate all the humans.
Alan Williams-Key
Madrid, Spain
Statues serve a vital role
Jonathan Jones’s article on statues (22 July) is completely crass. Statues commemorating the endeavours of men and women whose contributions to the life and wellbeing of the community are by no means “kitsch, idiotic and ineffective”: rather they can be affectionate mementoes of men and women whose works, artistic, social or political, have benefited the local populace enormously, and deserve more than oblivion.
I don’t mean great granite monstrosities stuck on inscribed plinths getting covered daily in guano, such as Jones is probably referring to, but treated delicately, humanely and affectionately, they can bring fond memories to the populace, and be genuine works of art in their own right.
We could take a leaf from the Hungarian style: Imre Nagy, the leader who led the tragically failed revolt against Soviet oppression, is seen, inconspicuously in everyday dress and his typical trilby, standing on a little humped bridge in Budapest. It can’t fail to affect you emotionally. There are similar statues in many towns around Hungary.
Think of the possibilities: Dylan Thomas in Swansea, TS Eliot at Margate, George Orwell at Wigan. You could go on and on. Nothing kitsch, nothing idiotic, nothing ineffective. Just fond memories.
Davis Byars
Nagyberki, Hungary
It’s the only world we have
May I thank Suzanne Moore for her article You can’t stop the world and get off. So engage (29 July). Reading it helped me turn myself around.
I am an 85-year-old woman, mother, grandmother. I have always tried to keep a positive attitude towards life, but recently, as I told my sister, “I have fallen out of love with my world”. There is too much “negative” information. We are “all going to hell in a handcart”. I identified with “Stop the world, I want to get off”.
But on reading Moore’s article I realise the truth of her assertion that that cannot work “as an individual strategy or a policy guide, because the world just doesn’t stop turning. And we turn with it.” And of course, it is the only world we’ve ever had or will have. Therefore, I must and do embrace it again.
Elizabeth Inman
Dundas, Ontario, Canada
Briefly
• I find myself in wholehearted agreement with Simon Jenkins on the issue of scientific opinion and the reliability thereof (17 June). From coffee to saturated fats; it’s OK, no it’s not; it’s too much, it’s too little. I dream of a final definitive answer. I am quite tired of being told to make adjustments to my lifestyle based on the results of some term paper from a bunch of graduate students who just happened to kill off a dozen rats last week.
If you know anything negative about creme brulee, please keep it to yourself.
Jacques Samuel
Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada
• I cannot understand why the “systematic plunder” of British department store BHS and its pension fund (29 July) is not classed as theft and dealt with accordingly. I guess it must be seen as allowable business practise, if a trifle sharp.
I believe this calls for a legal change. What occurred at BHS is not vulture capitalism; vultures prey on the dead. This is vampire capitalism.
Penelope Sender
Auckland, New Zealand
• Turkish President Erdoğan’s claim that his defeat of the recent military coup amounts to a popular defence of his democratic regime is even more ironical in the light of the massive and very extensive crackdown currently under way in that country (22 July). With democratic leaders like that, who needs dictatorial tyrants?
Terry Hewton
Adelaide, South Australia
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