Death penalty is the problem
Regarding the leader on Indonesia’s execution of members of the “Bali Nine” (Cruel and unnecessary, 8 May), I agree absolutely that the issue is the abolition of the death penalty worldwide. Not only are the victims punished (in this case, after eight years in jail, they have been punished twice for the same offence), but their distraught families as well.
Unfortunately people who go to a country and commit a crime for which the penalty is death are, in a manner of speaking, playing Russian roulette. Equally unfortunately, people brought up in countries with a more enlightened attitude towards the punishment and rehabilitation of criminals tend to commit crimes in the expectation that their governments will extricate them from the trouble they get themselves into. Not so.
Kitty Monk
Auckland, New Zealand
Reading Britain’s election
Reading Martin Kettle’s article regarding the British general election (Electoral outcome: vote reform, 1 May) I was surprised how accurate he was in his scenarios as opposed to other articles I have read.
Being a British expat, I followed the election daily. Each poll suggested a hung parliament. My friends in the UK were also unsure which way it would go.
Here in Sweden, people have got used to the government often changing and the call for quick elections. Here is hoping that the UK will be stable for another five years.
Wendy O’Brien
Alvhem, Sweden
• I live in New Zealand, which is – to the best of my knowledge – one of the few Commonwealth nations which uses proportional representation to elect its national parliament.
What really strikes me about the UK election is not the Tory majority per se but the fact that the UK continues to cleave to electoral arrangements that allow this sort of thing to occur.
For the next five years executive power will be exercised by a party which nearly two-thirds of voters did not support. Bizarre. The future of the UK in Europe (if any) and Scottish nationalism will pose significant challenges in the years ahead, but surely the biggest threat to the union is the legitimacy of a system that manufactures power for a party supported by a minority of voting citizens.
Richard Shaw
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Nepal’s other great tragedy
Thank you Simon Jenkins (8 May) for reminding us of Nepal’s other great tragedy arising from the recent earthquake. As well as the appalling human disaster, the country’s heritage appears largely wrecked. It is the world’s loss of heritage as well as a large part of Nepal’s cultural identity. As anyone who has visited this lovely country knows, Nepal is a country with few resources apart from tourism. There will be little money to restore the temples and statues of Bhaktapur and Kathmandu.
Is it possible to have a separate heritage appeal as well as the urgent relief fund for food and shelter? This may be the only way to prevent the ravaged sites from being bulldozed and turned into further Asian concrete jungles.
Margaret Wilkes
Cottesloe, Western Australia
Co-operative dreams
Just as was the case in Argentina, workers’ co-operatives in Europe have, since the crash, been able to take over some failed companies and bring them back to life (8 May). It is a positive, heart-warming story.
But with the signing of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and other free-trade deals on the horizon, what chance do co-operatives and similar constructs have? The TTIP will open the floodgates and will allow transnational corporations to move in and gobble up markets. Governments will be forbidden to provide assistance, while corporations, turbo-charged by offshore accounting tricks and by ultra-low-cost sourcing, will steamroller competition.
I can’t see anything other than a licence for big business to play Monopoly. How tragic!
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
The power of more than one
Lest readers rise synchronously to laud synchrony (Oliver Burkeman,1 May), a few amplifications should be made. To believe that synchrony serves to uplift the individual as well as communities is fraught. How then, for example, are we to construe concepts such as excellence? And, will any participatory activity then not have one winner, always the pacesetter?
Synchrony may be “good for us” (to quote Burkeman) in some situations. But in many other situations the “instinctive” bent to be diverted from our otherness can be considered regressive and escapist.
Those who embrace that propensity with abandon in reality are shirking the wearing burden of self-affirmation. Nirvana may require nothing more of us than to desist, succumb and fall in step with the parade. The bliss resulting not from the achievement of synchrony but from the very giving up on the effort of applying our individual, innate rhythms.
Jack Aslanian
Oakland, California, US
Painting Bacon’s limitations
Kudos to Jonathan Jones for his insightful review of Francis Bacon (8 May). I too was a Bacon fan, until the retrospective of his work at London’s Tate Modern in 2008. Not only did Bacon try too hard to be different, as Jones points out, but his development as an artist was limited to a succession of overworked pieces that relied on shock value accompanied by a style that remained much the same over his entire career. If you’ve seen three of four Bacons, you’ve seen them all.
The irritating flatness of his images, and his recycling of the contorted human body coupled with the occasional splash of colour, became part of a formulaic process that, for some reason, generated a style that was acceptable and even praised by both the artistic community and the general public at large. It’s clear, however, from his paintings that Bacon was weighed down and shackled by his limited talent leading to an inability to rise above a dull and repetitive style.
Who can blame Bacon for continuing in the same way since his work received widespread acclaim? But a master he is not. Jones vividly describes this in comparing Bacon and such greats as Bernini, Picasso, Rodin, Titian and Matisse.
Keith Bell
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Briefly
• The arriviste Eurasian beavers that are taking over Perthshire and Angus (UK News in brief, 15 May) will present a challenge: highly destructive rodents, beavers strip all the (delicious) deciduous trees in their neighbourhoods of their bark, thereby killing them. And their houses and dams will interfere with flood-plain engineering. Here in the western US (in towns) we wire fence all the trees along river banks to about 1.2m high, an expensive fix.
R M Fransson
Wheat Ridge, Colorado, US
• We rush to support the Beatles’ contribution to revolutionising music (15 May). Yes indeed, Pete Murray on Juke Box Jury did grant that they owed to the Everly Brothers the vocal harmonics on their early hits, but then came George Martin’s application of musicianship and original orchestration to the raw songs. Hearing one by one the chronology of Beatles LPs is a lesson in music evolution that can never occur again. Can’t say the same for hip-hop.
E Slack
L’Isle Jourdain, France
• Poppy Smart (In praise of, 8 May) took action after weeks of whistles and catcalls on her way to work. In Toronto a young woman television reporter who interviews sports fans, after more than a year of derogatory personal remarks, also took action. She filmed the offenders for the world to see – and hear. The premier of Ontario tweeted her support. Those identified will be forbidden entrance to sports sites. One has been fired from his job. Another will not lose his job but needs guidance after yelling explicit sexual insults at the reporter. He is nine years old.
Elizabeth Quance
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• I agreed entirely with your leader on map reading (8 May). I sometimes wonder what planet I’m on when people rely on a sat nav to drive a simple route across our small town to my house.
Martin Jewitt
Folkestone, Kent, UK
• Having read the Manchester Guardian, the Guardian, and latterly the Guardian Weekly, since 1943, Tom Woulfe died earlier this month, aged 99, as the week’s paper dropped into his hall. The paper followed him onto the altar, as a symbol of his life. In iothlann Déi go g-castar sinn (May we meet in the presence of God).
Muiris de Bhulbh
Kildare, Ireland
Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com including a full postal address and a reference to the article. Submissions may be edited for publication
