Political change for all ages
Owen Jones makes a number of valid points in his feature on the rise of youth movements worldwide (12 February). The one point that he overlooks is why, both in America and in the UK, the current leftwing revival is led by an ageing white middle-class male.
Government policies that result in excessive student debt, economic expansion through the creation of insecure McJobs, and the deliberate – or consequential – growing income disparity have certainly created a groundswell of disaffected younger people, for whom, as always, self-interest is the prime motivator, but is this on its own sufficient to bring about necessary change?
My own experience indicates that as one gets older, particularly if one enjoys a relatively comfortable lifestyle, there is a natural tendency to support the status quo, in other words to vote conservatively. But age and retirement also offer the opportunity for mature reflection and discussion on how we could manage things much better for everyone, as well as for the planet.
A rapprochement of thinking people of all ages, from all social backgrounds and with diverse economic means, is needed if we are to pull back from the yawning economic, social and environmental precipice. This is more likely to emerge from paper-age forums such as the Guardian Weekly than it is through so-called social media, with its emphasis on transitory relationships and 30-second soundbites.
Keep it in the ground was a valuable beginning. Keep it on the table might be a worthy successor.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
No fresh start for Myanmar
Your report on post-election Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party leads Myanmar into a new era (5 February), is overly optimistic. As the last sentence makes clear, the military have retained power by keeping control of the police, the justice system and security services.
This means that the newly elected MPs of the National League for Democracy (NLD) will be unable to check the repression of some 1,600 political activists who are in prison or awaiting trial. Nor will they be able to stop the rape, torture, executions and forced labour inflicted by the army on ethnic minorities, primarily the Rohingya Muslims.
These actions have been condemned by local human rights groups as ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The British government has so far refused to support the setting up of a UN commission of inquiry into human rights violations in Rakhine State, where most Rohingya people live.
It appears that President Thein Sein’s so-called reforms were designed to give the impression to the outside world that the country was adopting democratic processes without actually bringing about any significant change. A future NLD president would still have to operate within the current constitution, and the military have a veto over any changes proposed.
Graham Davey
Bristol, UK
Fire disaster in Tasmania
The report on the Tasmanian forest fires only obliquely recognises the contribution of Tasmanian officialdom to the disaster (5 February). At the height of the state’s woodchip export and managed investment frenzy earlier this century, it had the OECD’s highest proportional rate of native forest destruction, and replaced most cleared areas of trees, including ancient rainforest, with dense, oily, eucalyptus plantations or reseeding. More recently the government sought to have the state’s World Heritage listing revoked in favour of its chronically prodigal and money-losing forestry industry. Most of its logging involves removing almost all vegetation from areas of forest, with most of the enormous residue volumes, particularly of rainforest species, burned as waste on site.
Tasmania’s forestry policies make no discernible economic or environmental sense, appearing motivated by little more than the knee-jerk animosity that our conservative politicians display toward both conservationists and conservation.
John Hayward
Weegena, Tasmania, Australia
Dire crimes in Yemen
Kareem Shaheen describes the bombings in Yemen and points out that they have been found to be in breach of humanitarian law (5 February). From my point of view, that indicates that they are crimes against humanity, and being so, ought to be liable for prosecution by the international criminal court.
But of course we all know that not all war crimes are pursued, are they? And the choice about which to pursue and which to ignore depends on who the would-be alleged war criminals are. And whether they are “our” friends or “our” enemies.
So that will mean that innocent noncombatants, including the aged, women and children, are being slaughtered, all in the name of global politics. And I expect that the world’s governments, to their shame, will once again turn a blind eye to the fate of the Yemenis.
Lavinia Moore
Aldgate, South Australia
Spare us the midlife crisis
I took Phil Daoust’s very personal back-page piece (22 January) on the myths and realities of midlife crisis to be earnest, but ill-timed amid coverage such as Patrick Kingsley’s 5 February piece on a Dunkirk refugee camp. Daoust’s gripe about midlife crisis (with divergent pictures drawn perhaps inexplicably from Canadian, British and Australian social research) has him wondering if peer reviewed academic research is of any value. That’s insightful to a point, but hold on.
It never fails to trouble me when professional media voices such as Daoust’s shimmy their assumptions in lines about the diverse identity and feelings of the readership. Without wanting to be a killjoy, this “midlife crisis” is just not the topic to be handled without much qualification, especially while we read about Rawand Aziz and his son Oscar in their tent. Problems that displace populations or those emerging from unresolved colonial despair (in Australia, for instance) make Daoust’s article smack of political ambivalence and glibness about what it means to be 40.
He is talking about the experiences of a particularly interested and localised middle class readership and not mentioning it. We just have to guess he is. At any rate, he needs to be more media-wise.
Stephen Houston
London, UK
Briefly
• In the notes to his fine history The Ottoman Endgame (22 January), Sean McMeekin twice strongly recommends a novel, a suggestion unique in my experience. Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières is a magical fusion of imagination and the retelling of events in a terrible time. To read these two books in succession was a privilege.
Elizabeth Quance
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• What a shame that Oliver Burkeman’s comments about singing overlooked a cardinal aspect of the art: namely, the energising effect produced by the vocal cord vibrations as they flow through our bodies (22 January). This is an effect physically and emotionally uplifting, thereby strengthening the immune system, our chief protector against disease.
F Schenk
Osborne Park, Western Australia
• I can see Marie Kondo’s point (5 February), and she’s got a booming business in Japan. But what bothers me is that she doesn’t include an extra hour’s training (for 60-odd dollars) on appropriately sorting the waste generated by this Kondomania and carrying it to the right places for recycling.
Lea Yauner
Pessac, France
• It’s a sad reflection of the New Zealand media industry that I haven’t seen the story on great white sharks and Stewart Island (5 February) in our national news. But then our national newspapers and television stations seem to be mostly vehicles for promoting celebrities, nobodies, rampant consumerism, and the prime minister and his cronies. Thanks for the sanity and reality check.
Vivienne Wood
Wellington, New Zealand
• In his back-page essay on the range of smells common to big city life (5 February), Ben O’Mara mentions several times the appealing aroma of frying food. This brought to mind a line from novelist John Cheever’s journal where he writes, “all I know is the importance of love, the smell of fried food, and the music of the rain”.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com
.png?w=600)
