The vote in Catalonia
Much nonsense has been said and reported about the situation in Catalonia. First there is the suggestion that the Catalans were only trying to exercise their democratic right to vote (Simon Tisdall, 6 October). That is not so. The referendum in Catalonia only gave votes to a subset of the population of Spain, and so was not democratic.
Second, there is the suggestion that the Catalans were peacefully campaigning “in line with the UN charter’s universal right to self-determination”. That too is nonsense. The charter merely talks about the “principle of … self-determination of peoples” without defining what “peoples” means. What it surely does not mean is that a subset of the people within a country can unilaterally declare independence from that country. If that were the case, London and the home counties could declare independence from the UK to form a state that remains in the EU. I am sure that even Tisdall would not defend that proposition.
Catalonia contributes more taxes to Spain than it receives. That is the economic nature of any state – richer parts subsidise the poorer parts. However, the Catalans don’t like this and in a country that professes itself to be Catholic – and therefore Christian – it is pure hypocrisy.
Alan Williams-Key
Madrid, Spain
• The English have remarkable knowhow in working with our fellow Brits – not only the Welsh, the Scots and the Manx but also the Irish. While in no way interfering in Spanish affairs, an offer of conciliatory help would be an act of statesmanship to one of our oldest European friends at this difficult time.
David Hayes
Bristol, UK
Unfair review of Clinton book
At the beginning of his review of Hillary Clinton’s new book What Happened (29 September) Peter Conrad claims that he “grieved” when she lost the presidential election. Who needs enemies with supporters like this?
Having just devoured the book, I was astounded by the viciousness and lack of exactitude in Conrad’s review. Steve Bannon’s team could not have done better. He displays all the prejudices Hillary Clinton had to contend with during her whole career: he attacks her for speaking out (too early), for the wrong reasons (for money), for wearing the wrong clothes (pantsuits from Ralph Lauren), for being guilty of triumphalism (she is preparing herself to be president) and finally for not understanding that it was all about showbiz (maybe she should have tap-danced wearing a miniskirt from Walmart). The concluding lines when he says he feels sorry for her opponent made me feel nauseated.
Read the book and make your own mind up. I would feel honoured to shake Hillary Clinton’s hand. Her professionalism, her resilience and her composure are models for us all.
Maria Moran
Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada
Living on Planet Monbiot
I wish I was living on the same planet as George Monbiot, where all we need to do to attain peace and harmony is to adopt a new social paradigm based on cooperation and altruism (22 September). Sadly, the world I inhabit is one in which there is ever-increasing pressure on all our essential needs caused by unbridled population growth and resulting in ever-increasing competition, which won’t go away just because we would like it to. Technology has supported this growth but its benefits are extremely unevenly distributed, it is ever more expensive to achieve and has finite limits.
Unless we get to grips with the underlying forces driving our behaviour, we cannot hope to change it for the better; indeed, if we fail to control them, the pressure will inevitably become even greater and our responses even more competitive rather than cooperative.
David Barker
Bunbury, Western Australia
Macron’s so-called reforms
In your 22 September cover story The eurozone strikes back, Jennifer Rankin quotes the economist James Nixon as saying that Emmanuel Macron’s labour reforms could hail a decade of expansion for the euro area. That sounds promising. But one sentence jumped out: that Macron’s reforms would “make it easier for small and medium-sized firms to fire workers, thus boosting hiring”. That sounds logical and you certainly can’t argue with steps to make things easier for smaller companies.
But what I found strange was that “small and medium-sized” firms are mentioned specifically. What of multinational corporations? Will they be exempted and suddenly start giving stable, long-term contracts to their employees? I somehow doubt that and believe that corporations will get on the bandwagon and use “fireability” to reduce their costs, thereby enabling them to eclipse smaller companies even more quickly.
Or maybe corporations are beyond this and have outsourced so much of their labour that they don’t really care. If this is the case, then governments should force corporations to raise their employment conditions, rather than have smaller companies lower theirs.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
Briefly
• Oliver Burkeman’s article on anxiety (6 October) reminds me of the words carved on the mantelpiece in my grandparents’ house: “How much pain the evils have cost us that have never happened.”
Sue Spring
Le Boulvé, France
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