Your news item on the likely effect of Brexit on retirement pensions shows how the law of unintended consequences is coming into play, following the referendum vote (“Brexit ‘puts 75% of workers in pension shortfall’”, News).
A new, dangerous orthodoxy appears to be emerging, namely that the referendum result represents “the will of the people” and must therefore not be opposed, no matter how deficient, biased or misleading the “evidence” put forward by the respective sides. Parliamentary enactments, ministerial decisions, court judgments, even election results can all be challenged, in open debate, through the media or, in some cases, by litigation. The ultimate guarantor of our democracy is parliament.
The previous administration’s conditions for remaining in the European Union were submitted to the electorate and found wanting. Terms for withdrawal negotiated by Mrs May and her colleagues must be critically examined and put to a vote. Equitable government requires nothing less.
Mike Timms
Iver, Bucks
The good old days of US news
Nick Cohen reports on the polarisation of the American electorate as a result of the spread of broadband (“Did better broadband make Americans more partisan?”, Comment). I think the process started much earlier. When I was growing up in the US in the 60s, our family, like so many, all sat down to watch the NBC news, the evening news with Walter Cronkite or the ABC news. They all aired the news at the same time and seemed to have assumed a responsibility to offer a balanced report on US and world events.
With the advent of cable TV, there was an alternative to watching the news and the dumbing down of the American population began. Why confront unpleasant facts when you could watch cartoons?
Then, with the expansion of broadcasters, came the freedom to exploit the market by offering a partisan slant. Now with the internet, one need never even consider the existence of another point of view.
Catherine Otley
Dover
Colombia is a complex picture
While sharing the hopes expressed in your editorial on the Colombian peace agreement, I must disagree with a number of points in its analysis (“Colombia’s deal offers model of peace for world”, Comment).
Your versions of Colombian history, both in the short and in the long term, are simplistic to the point of distortion. Its history since independence cannot be characterised as one long series of “multiple uprisings between peasants and a landed elite”. “Successive Colombian governments” have not “resorted to ruthless extirpation and repression” against Farc. Starting with President Turbay, 1978-1982, followed by Presidents Betancur, Barco, Gaviria, Samper, Pastrana and including Uribe, all have in their different ways and degrees attempted peace accords with guerrillas, and sometimes with success, though not hitherto with Farc, which for long regarded peace talks as merely a tactic in their famous “combination of all forms of struggle”.
Not one of these presidents can be characterised as a hard-line right winger countenancing paramilitary death squads. Many army officers who did countenance them have been jailed. These governments have also had to fight Farc and the ELN, whose popular support has always been limited. That for a long time they did so ineffectually, with inadequate means, in part explains the rise of paramilitarism.
Since the Pastrana government, 1998-2002, the US has provided effective military aid, which, to my mind, Colombia has every right to expect, and has supported the Havana peace talks consistently and discretely. As for Cuba, it is not in the Che Guevara berets that the feathers should be stuck – the compliments should go to the more sober analysts Fidel and Raúl Castro, who long ago ended their support for the Colombian guerrillas.
You are too kind to Farc in other matters. Their ideologists have not been dreamers of democracy in any usual sense of that term and it is pussyfooting to refer to “allegations of narco-trafficking and the use of minors in combat”. Let us hope Farc leaders have changed.
Malcolm Deas
Bogotá
Oh do stop stargazing
Megan Conner’s idea of an “authentic Cornish pub” (“Poldark country: the glories of Penzance”, Magazine)is one with a Michelin-starred chef. Meanwhile, the Admiral Benbow in Penzance is chastised for its rather less gentrified “tacky maritime treasures”. Come on, Observer.
David Bewley
Hale
Cheshire
Not only waiting for Godot…
Three weeks ago, Robert McCrum’s choice as Best Nonfiction Book of All Time, No 29 was Waiting for Godot. After momentarily wondering whether I’d missed the point of Beckett’s absurdist drama and that in fact the work was a documentary study of 1950s vagrant lifestyles, I looked forward to a correction or a letter commenting on the inclusion of Godot in a nonfiction list.
But nothing happened. Twice.
Mike Hine
Kingston upon Thames
