Le Pen’s French chances
Timothy Garton Ash travelled to Paris to sound out the views of his friends regarding the forthcoming presidential elections (16 December). He returned after listening to conventional wisdom as to the likely outcome, but nevertheless expresses his doubts that François Fillon will prevail over Marine Le Pen.
As one who lives in small town France and participates actively in its life, I regret to say that everyday conversations with ordinary people lead me to share his doubts. Le Pen certainly expresses the views of many ordinary white voters in my community, which has a sizeable Maghrebin population, and she will also capture a large female vote. My election on to the council of a small rural commune here some years ago was largely due to this latter phenomenon.
Disillusion with the status quo is widespread and unless a viable candidate appears from another party, the unthinkable is far from being the impossible.
However, I disagree with the prediction that a Frexit is unlikely should Le Pen be elected. Her views on Europe are echoed by many ordinary people, who see only petty regulations and a lack of immigration control coming out of Brussels, rather than any greater good. Should a referendum be called here, it is to be hoped that Garton Ash is correct and that the French “attitude” towards Europe will override the criticisms of its functioning. I have my doubts.
Elaine Bevan
Condom, France
More than a basic income
Where did Gaby Hinsliff (2 December) get the idea that universal basic income (UBI) is about “paying people to stay at home” (implication: and be useless)? Nothing could be further from the truth.
One of the first trials of UBI, conducted in Canada in the 1970s, found that only new mothers and teenage boys were less likely to be in paid employment as a result of receiving a regular basic income. As well as being a personal good thing for mothers and babies, and for boys able to stay in school instead of having to take low-paid work, society as a whole benefits from better parenting, and more young people working at their studies.
This clearly indicates why the UBI does not mean that less useful work gets done. On the contrary, it means that more useful (but currently unpaid) work is done. If there are then fewer people available to take paid work that is not as socially useful or personally fulfilling – well, hooray!
UBI trials have also shown that it is a good stepping stone to genuine, sustainable self-employment, rather than the precarious employment of the gig economy. The systems of social security established by wealthy states in the mid-20th century, predicated on long-term employment for well-paid male breadwinners, are breaking down. The social and political consequences are horrible, and will get worse unless we find new ways of ensuring that everyone can live with dignity while making a worthwhile contribution to society. If not UBI, then what?
Christine Dann
Diamond Harbour, New Zealand
• Gaby Hinsliff denigrates the idea of basic income but writes, “[Lucy] Kellaway is lucky that she can afford to take a pay cut” to pursue a second career. It seems to have escaped her attention that if a basic income policy were in effect, we would all be that lucky. She also makes the modern assumption that being needed depends on having a paid job. Not long ago, being a gentleman of leisure with a private income was a highly desirable situation.
Furthermore, why is being paid to do something the only criterion for being needed? All sorts of unpaid work are needed – caring for others, political, social and environmental activism, to name a few. Having the leisure to read, garden, make music or participate in amateur theatricals may enrich our lives and as such are sorely needed. Not everyone with a guaranteed basic income would turn into a couch potato
Brian Shackleton
Renfrew, Ontario, Canada
Hygge has many names
Concerning Charlotte Higgins’s piece about hygge (9 December): we have a different word in Swedish (mysigt: difficult to pronounce in English, as well), and though Danes may protest, it has the same ingredients mentioned in the article.
There is another book about hygge that has to be written: The Boredom of Hygge. When I am exposed to hygge, I personally need quite a big whisky after coming home, just to feel alive again. Maybe this reflects a subtle difference within the Scandinavian camp.
Claes Hallgren
Stockholm, Sweden
• Sitting by the warmth of a wood stove in a cosy wooden house that you built yourselves, looking out of the window at the ice on the river and the snow on the ground, eating a delicious soup of vegetables that you grew yourselves, that is Canadian hygge. (Well, almost: the knowledge that you are about to depart to spend the rest of the winter on a palm-fringed Brazilian beach completes the feeling).
Anna Babinska
Ottawa, Canada
• Your feature The hygge conspiracy is hardly a conspiracy or a sudden desire for shared cosiness invented by the Danish. In fact it matches such traditionally snugly and reposeful phrases as “in bed with an apple and a good book”, or Noel Coward’s 1931 remark, “I’m not very keen on Hollywood ... I’d rather have a nice cup of cocoa, really.”
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• Having lived in the Netherlands for years I was often upbraided by the Dutch (and my Dutch wife) for ever assuming I truly understood the meaning of gezellig. All us non-native speakers thought it meant warm and cosy (like hygge). It seems all small western European countries want to retain some mystery about themselves and their language.
Tim Rudkins
Toronto, Canada
Being alive is just a start
Yes, it is a tremendous joy and privilege to be alive, as Ian Martin notes, but not to witness the hate and tragedy of 2016 (16 December). It is a bit dodgy to conflate the two experiences. It could be construed as a bit of one-upmanship by those who didn’t get the Christmas gifts of joy and privilege.
If you must yield to the seasonal affliction of writing a valediction on the year, at least have the decency to wait until it is over. In 2003 the Bam earthquake occurred on Boxing Day, and on the same day in 2004 it was the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Many of the processes Martin discusses have hardly started (Trump and Brexit, for example), while others are not going to finish any time soon, as they know well in Syria. To look at it more brightly, there was still time between the publication of the article and the end of the year for something inspiring to happen on the world stage.
I too have had cancer. Yes, major illness does change your perspective on life, and people, and society, and the internet. I agree with most of what Martin writes, but surely being alive is not so much the privilege: the privilege is being able to make a small but significant difference for the good of others.
David Alexander
London, UK
• The year 2016 – as Ian Martin might have put it – was one hell of a year. His personal odyssey captures something of our universal folly: that of cognitive dissonance. Many, if not most of us, are keenly aware of the need for a drastic change of direction, both personal and global. At the same time, we cling to the delusion that as individuals there is little we can do, which leads to the belief in such charismatic but ultimately vacuous leaders as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage.
I remain an “optipessimist”: be mentally prepared for the worst, but expend all of your energies to achieve the best, which includes the Guardian Weekly. Thanks for a comprehensive if challenging issue.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
Vancouverites hit the lottery
Resident owners of homes in Vancouver, British Columbia, have gained a unique financial status (25 November). Not only has the value of their homes increased 20-fold in the last 30 years – a capital gain that attracts no tax here – they are able to purchase weekend cottages in neighbouring ski and seaside communities without attracting a 1% tax on “empty homes”.
Meanwhile, residents of those places will have to pay a punitive “1% of market value” tax on a yearly basis if they wish to do the reverse and own a weekend apartment in the city. Vancouver residents really have won the lottery.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Briefly
• Now that the Clintons have free time, they should once again devote themselves to Haiti: this time, its reconstruction (9 December). Perhaps old chum Tony Blair can lend a hand, so they can do that voodoo that they do. And hopefully for something more than another cluster of maquiladoras.
RM Fransson
Wheat Ridge, Colorado US
• Ah, yes, the coconut crabs with their bone crushing pincers (9 December). I remember catching them on remote Pacific atolls by reaching up to my armpit into their burrows and pulling them out. There is a safe technique, believe it or not – all my fingers are intact. But in today’s world, if I ever saw one, I would leave it be.
David Trubridge
Havelock North, New Zealand
Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com
