Governance and migration
I read with interest your article on migration from Africa to Europe by Natalie Nougayrède (22 May). It identifies one of the most pressing issues the developed world faces. However, it struck me as heavy on regret but very light on what to do.
At a recent summit in Zimbabwe there was a discussion among the heads of state of Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa on xenophobia in South Africa, whose president, Jacob Zuma, suggested that the complaining countries had a responsibility to improve their economies so that migrants did not feel compelled to emigrate.
People migrate to countries that function economically, lawfully and righteously, away from those that have no industry, minimal respect for the law and human rights. And what exacerbates these situations is that those with the courage and initiative to migrate are precisely those who should remain behind to build their countries’ institutions.
Europe (and until recently, Australia) cries pitifully about the migrant influxes, but the elephant in the room is good governance in the emigrant countries. They may or may not be democratic, but the fact that they supply vast numbers of emigres is the ultimate confession of the failure of these governments.
The solution is vigorous engagement to promote competent, honest, responsible government and a free press. If the developed world does not address the root cause of its immigration problem, choosing to merely manage the symptoms, it will be swamped in the flood.
Jim Laing
Perth, Western Australia
The decline of tradition
I enjoyed Amelia Gentleman’s article, Guess who’s not coming to dinner, about gentlemen’s clubs in London (22 May). I have no doubt that these bastions of tradition give a comforting feeling of stability and continuity to the pillars of the establishment.
Regardless of this, tradition is in decline the world over. I can only see this as a good thing because we, like most of the world, come from a patriarchal, authoritarian tradition that separates us from one another and the natural world and thus enables exploitation.
Traditional, authoritarian child-raising traumatises all who pass through it. I see it as something from which to recover, personally and societally, rather than seek to perpetuate. The old boys are just that: old boys who never grew up, their banter straight out of the schoolyard. It is not for nothing that they are called dinosaurs.
Tradition’s decline is slower than the hands of a clock, but is inexorable.
Edward Butterworth
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• Amelia Gentleman’s expose of all-male London clubs reveals them as an anachronism from a previous century. The question is, which century, and why do insecure misogynistic men continue to join them?
Brian Wren
Orleans, Massachusetts, US
Call time on Burkeman
The illustrations accompanying Oliver Burkeman’s column are always enlightening. I wish the same could be said of the text, which is worse nonsense than usual this week (22 May). Most of us have been raised with the school bell dividing our day; education, like praying, is a continuous process that is never finished. But in the adult world, tasks need to be completed and the vast bulk of our time is not our own to apportion as we wish. Can I assume that next time Burkeman visits the dentist, he would be happy to be left with his mouth open and his socket oozing while the dentist picks up another task? Or for his taxi driver to pull in to the kerb halfway to his destinations because it’s time for his meditation?
We seem to be dredging the bottom of the well for this column – isn’t it time for a new voice?
Trish Nicholson
Awanui, New Zealand
Dictators and Vietnam
Martin Woollacott (15 May) tries to summarise fairly the events of the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, he refers to the adversaries as “the communists” or North Vietnamese versus Saigon or the South Vietnamese. The Vietcong were largely South Vietnamese, fighting unpopular, foreign-imposed dictators in Saigon.
The seeds of the conflict were sown by the defeat of French colonial army and the 1954 Geneva Accords, which called for temporary division into North and South, and free elections in 1956.
That election was blocked by the US and its allies. The series of dictators started with an extremely unpopular Catholic, Ngo Dinh Diem, in a Buddhist country.
The US arranged his removal and replacement by a general, Nguyen Van Thieu, who also had to be replaced.
Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 after saying he would end the war quickly and honourably. But Nixon and his party continued the war for seven more years.
Daniel Maas
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Artificial boundaries
At least one root of the tragic turmoil in the Middle East (which would be better designated western Asia – for us in Australia the Middle East is the Pacific islands) is the century old delineation known as Sykes-Picot (22 May). That was made for immediate political convenience from a minimum of local knowledge. In particular it ignored such natural boundaries as ethnic, geographic, linguistic and religious.
A redrawing of the regional map based on all the information now available would produce a markedly different result. Is anyone – particularly in western Asia itself – thinking along those lines? Tremendously difficult to implement it would no doubt be, but to have a dream come true you must first have the dream.
Keith Sayers
Charnwood, ACT, Australia
Greece and the marbles
For a group of London lawyers to presume to advise the government of Greece about its rights to the Parthenon marbles borders on naivety or even impertinence (22 May). The Greek cultural minister was quite right to reject this advice out of hand – he was elected to handle these matters and he will decide who will advise him.
This controversy is political and not susceptible to resolution – as if it were a dispute concerning short-weighted tinned sardines to be resolved in the courts. If experts want to advocate on behalf of Greece, then they should stand for election to the Greek parliament or become members of the Greek foreign ministry; then and only then will they have the appropriate credentials to represent Greece.
Harry Melkonian
Vaucluse, NSW, Australia
Bacon was a great artist
Those who think that Francis Bacon is not a great artist should look at the four works by him currently on display in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. They depict the angst and horror of the world we live in where images of destruction daily bombard viewers of television (8 May).
Bacon’s art came out of a war in which 40 million people died. What he depicts is the world we will live in as long as there is a human race, unless there is radical surgery such as banning guns and weapons of mass destruction. The major religions, which all preach love of neighbour, have failed humanity and there is little research into what is driving humans to self-destruct.
When I saw Bacon’s retrospective at the Met in New York in 2009, there was a hushed silence by all present during several visits. Your critic got it wrong.
Paul Knobel
Auckland, New Zealand
Briefly
• Insularity and xenophobia will certainly get Britain somewhere (15 May). After Brexit the EU will sigh and carry on; Scotland will vote for independence and join either the EU or Canada, another bagpipe nation; the Untied Kingdom, at a loose end, will become America’s Airstrip One, as Orwell predicted.
Douglas Porteous
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• So nationals of other EU member states (except Ireland) resident in the UK won’t get to vote in the upcoming EU referendum; nor will most UK nationals resident in other EU member states. It’s a bit like organising a referendum on a badger cull … and only allowing cows to vote.
Simon Coates
Brussels, Belgium
• What’s wrong with Prince Charles writing letters to government ministers (22 May)? Charles is surely entitled to have views on things as much as I am. I am allowed to write to my MP to tell him my views.
Prince Charles does not have a vote or an MP, so who is he supposed to write to? I am quite sure that government ministers are as capable of ignoring Prince Charles’s views, if they don’t agree with them, as my MP is capable of ignoring mine.
Martin Down
Witney, UK
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