Thank you for the article by paediatric consultant Richard Hain (“Teddy’s short life tells us so much about what it is to be human”, Comment). Many things he said about what it means to be human bring to mind the philosophy of John Macmurray, who devoted his life to this question.
Richard Hain had to decide if it was ethical to take kidneys from an individual who could not possibly give consent. He decided that with the parents’ consent it was, because: “Being a person is not simply an ability to give informed consent… The value of a person is expressed by everything they mean to everyone, not just what they mean to themselves.”
The individual grows out of the community, rather than the community consisting of individuals glued together. So many issues will be resolved more fruitfully if we understand from the beginning that we are all affected by each other and dependent on each other.
Jeanne Warren
Oxford
Lord Janner must not face trial
I am not a member of the “Establishment”. Still less do I belong to a “conspiracy to protect Lord Janner from prosecution”. But I do support the decision of the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, quite simply because of the manifest obscenity of prosecuting an 86-year-old Alzheimer sufferer for crimes allegedly committed nearly 50 years ago.
I am saddened that the desire of alleged victims for revenge is now allowed to trump decency and reason. You cannot call it justice if the accused is too feeble-minded to defend himself.
Michael Catty
Stevenage, Hertfordshire
Arms supply creates refugees
Alexander Betts makes a strong humanitarian case for shared global responsibility for refugees (“Forget the ‘war on smuggling’, we need to be helping refugees in need”, Comment). Yet you also report how the sharply rising demand for arms in the Middle East is welcomed by US and European suppliers (“Sale of US arms fuel wars of Arab states”, New York Times International Weekly). When we flood a region with weapons, why be surprised by the tide of refugees?
Beverley Naidoo
Bournemouth
Quell capitalism’s gangsters
The economic and social dysfunctions that Will Hutton identifies and the failure of our political parties to address them realistically have been around for at least a generation in the Anglo-Saxon economies (“Tesco’s fall tells a wider story about our failing capitalism”, Comment).
Companies have been handed too much power and since the 1980s there have been cogent warnings that this inevitably leads to inequality and dysfunction. The Corporation (Joel Bakan, 2004), for instance, showed how the corporation “lies, steals and kills without hesitation when it serves the interests of its shareholders to do so”, while The Spirit Level (Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, 2009) showed that lowered life expectancy, reduced mutual trust, increased crime, violence, mental illness, obesity and other social ills are all connected to income inequality.
If the most efficient means of creating wealth also denies an increasing number of people the right to live with dignity, then it’s in everyone’s interest that governments disarm the gangsters within our business culture.
Eurof Thomas
Cardiff
Hey, let’s try something new
Andrew Rawnsley writes that the first-past-the-post electoral system is designed to guarantee stable government (“The main parties are all staring into a pitch-black night of the soul”, Comment). The 2015 election seems ready to confirm the 2010 result: traditional politics are dead and gone. Cameron and Miliband are scaring each other with the prospect of a parliament dominated by four or five minor parties.
It doesn’t have to be this way! The centre of the Conservative party and the centre of the Labour party have much in common and combined would provide stable parliamentary government, represent the broad majority of the population throughout the nation, reassure the international financial community that this country relies upon and provide a sound political reason for the international business community to reinvest in a resurgent Great Britain. Europe also would be more inclined to join in a project to rebalance trading relations across the EU.
Martin London
Henllan, Denbighshire
North Wales
For once it’s good to split herrs
Good, in principle, to get an outside perspective on our general election by a German journalist, but picking one from Die Welt – part of the rightwing Springer press (equivalent to Murdoch titles here) – led to a predictable right-wing analysis of the situation. Most progressive Germans would have little problem with a Labour-led government that had the guts to question the relevance of Trident. A journalist from Der Tagesspiegel might have made for a more stimulating read.
Richard Woolley
Pickering
North Yorks
