Letters: The BNP

Sir: In the past few days there has been anguished speculation about how well the BNP may perform in the forthcoming local elections. Most of this seems to have missed the point. The white working classes have been under siege for forty years, both from the right and from the liberal left. Twenty-five years of right-wing economic policy have steadily impoverished them, while the wealthy and university-educated have benefited from globalisation and deregulation.

The left is also culpable; the working classes tend to be socially conservative, placing a high premium on marriage, family, and respect for authority. Ever since the Sixties they have had to put up with these values being mocked by an increasingly smug and arrogant liberal elite.

Add to this the emotive issue of immigration. Again, middle-class liberals have patronisingly lectured the working class as to the benefits of immigration. For them, immigration means a range of trendy ethnic restaurants on the high street and access to cheap childminders. It is the working class who have had to endure diminished access to public housing as local councils highhandedly deem the needs of immigrant newcomers to outweigh the needs of the indigenous council tax payers, who may have been on the waiting list for years; it is they who have to see their children's education suffer as their local school fills up with immigrant children who don't speak English as a first language. And when they dare to complain, they are contemptuously dismissed as racists and bigots by those who are well insulated from the negative effects of immigration. Is it any wonder that out of sheer desperation, some working-class men and women may heed the siren call of the BNP?

If the BNP does do well (there is no guarantee that this will happen), please let none of us resort to that old routine of shaking our heads in sorrow and complaining that the working class has been taken in by the scaremongering of the right-wing press. Have the decency to credit them with more intelligence. We need to make an effort to re-engage with the working classes, to listen to them, and neither patronise them nor tell them that their concerns are not valid. As a start, we can have an honest debate about the costs, as well as the benefits, of immigration.

DAOUD FAKHRI

LONDON E17

Wind power cannot stop climate change

Sir: This week's energy and climate change report by the Environmental Audit Committee highlights the UK's poor performance in expanding wind energy, relative to its European neighbours. But nowhere does the Committee examine the record of wind turbines in actually reducing emissions across Europe. If the Committee had looked deeper they might have found that wind turbines can't produce enough power, certainly not reliably, and are incapable of making a worthwhile reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions.

Wind power stations are being built not because they are the best source of renewable energy but because they are the most readily available. Even if the Government achieves its 2010 target for renewable electricity, the result would be to save much less than a thousandth part of global CO2 emissions. There would be no measurable difference to atmospheric concentrations, and no detectable impact on climate change. But the massive investment in this technology threatens countryside that is a precious resource to which millions turn for recreation and inspiration.

The Government's support for the subsidy of wind energy will total £5bn by 2010. A moratorium should be called. Wind power developments in the UK should be halted, till a convincing study can show they could reduce CO2 emissions significantly, and do so more effectively than other renewable energy sources, including those largely neglected schemes that are still at the research and development stage. The Renewables Obligation subsidy, which the Public Accounts Committee has said is "four times more expensive than the other means of reducing carbon dioxide currently used in the UK" should be withdrawn.

The forthcoming Energy Review and the Budget announcement of a new initiative on environmental matters gives government a real opportunity to change priorities and ensure that the country has a credible supply of renewable energy.

DR DAVID BELLAMY; PROFESSOR PER BULLOUGH; PROFESSOR EMERITUS PETER COBBOLD, LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY; DR MICHAEL DOWER, VISITING PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE; PROFESSOR JOHN FFOWCS WILLIAMS, EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE;

DR CLIVE POTTER, VISITING PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER; PROFESSOR ANTHONY TREWAVAS, FRS, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH; PROFESSOR JOHN TRINICK, LEEDS UNIVERSITY

US invasion of ancient Babylon

Sir: The tardy offer of an apology for the desecration of Babylon offered by Colonel John Coleman, a former chief of staff in America's Iraq invasion force (report, 15 April), misses the point by a very long stretch. "If it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one", says the colonel in response to the suggestion that America might say sorry and repent of its destructive presence in one of the greatest sites of antiquity.

Rupert Cornwell, in the article, tells us about the last, Chaldean or Neo-Babylonian period of the city's history, the period of Nebuchadnezzar II and the hanging gardens described by Herodotus. But a millennium and a half before Neo-Babylon it was the seat of Hammurabi the first lawmaker. And before Alexander the Great's occupation, before the Persian destruction, it conquered Palestine and took the Jews into the Captivity, offering the learned scribes of Israel the use of its libraries so that they could construct in large part the five books of Moses, or the Old Testament.

I suggest that Colonel Coleman, not to mention his President, owes an apology not to Iraq but to the world.

H V F WINSTONE

BIDEFORD, DEVON

Sir: Whatever his views on Donald Rumsfeld, Bruce Anderson (17 April) apparently follows the line of too many of those who supported the Iraq invasion, of blaming the subsequent débâcle simply on mistakes made in the occupation.

A western attack on Iraq and a 1945-style occupation in which the country was to be recast in the occupiers' ideological image was always going to be as extreme a red rag to a bull as could possibly be imagined, in this fiercely nationalist and Islamic country, and to all Arab and Islamic sentiment everywhere.

Those who pushed hardest for the invasion wanted it all the more for that reason. This was going to put those uppity Arabs and Islamics in their place, and the terrorists, the demonstrating crowds, and even the domestic opponents of such ventures, would learn to accept the realities of power in the post-Cold War world. Once they saw a proper demonstration of American and Allied resolve they would knuckle under, and all this loud-mouthed hostility would dissolve.

It would be nice if they now showed some appreciation of where such attitudes really lead you. But too many just blame what's happened on " mistakes" during the occupation, which is not promising for the future.

ROGER SCHAFIR

LONDON N21

Sir: Is it any wonder that the prosecution of Flight-Lieutenant Kendall-Smith was successful when the alternative would have allowed any member of our armed forces to refuse to serve in Iraq?

RICHARD MARR

LONDON W3

Japan's tactics in whaling vote

Sir: Between 1979 and 1982 (the year of the vote to have a moratorium on whaling) the anti-whaling vote in the International Whaling Commission went from 13 to 27 while the pro-whalers remained at 10. Anti-whalers included such paragons of morality with ancient whaling traditions as Egypt and Belize, both of whom left within seven years. Japan, in seeking to overturn the ban, is only doing something that has been done before ("The great betrayal", 17 April).

I would suggest that sustainable whaling would encourage the conservation of whale stocks as it woud be commercially worthwhile to have a healthy stock. Norway seems to be doing this. If sustainable whaling of some species is not scientifically viable yet, then the IWC should lay down realistic parameters at which sustainable whaling would be allowed. If it does not, maybe it should change its name to Greenpeace?

DOUG YOUNG

HTIACHINAKA-SHI, JAPAN

Followers of Scientology

Sir: It cheers me to see the facts about Scientology being written about in the media ("The Secrets of Scientology", 18 April). However, your article states that Scientology has "at least eight million followers." That number is radically false and absurd.

There are about 53,000 Scientologists in the United States and about another 18,000 in the rest of the world. Those figures come from Scientology Inc's own documents, and have been varified by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in their 2001 survey of American Religious Identification.

There have never been anywhere near eight million Scientology customers. At its most popular (around the year 1979), Scientology had about 300,000 customers, 8,000 salespeople, and about 5,000 management staff world-wide.

DAVID RICE

WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA, USA

Myth of spoon-fed sixth-form student

Sir: As a sixth-form student, I was most offended by Philip Hensher's overwhelmingly generalised assertion that young people are spoon-fed examination materials that lead them to believe that universities are " exactly like sixth-form colleges, but with better beer" (19 April).

The reality is that most post-16 centres foster policies of independent learning; as a sixth-former, I am expected to attend lessons with fully prepared research and further reading, otherwise I will be directed to the local careers adviser to discuss "alternative" options to continuing my studies.

Please, Mr Hensher, desist from patronising hard-working students like myself with your outdated Oxbridge attitude that deems us all to be beer-swilling, irresponsible layabouts. We know what is expected of us, and we strive to achieve that; by fostering such a negative and misinformed stereotype many will merely conform to it. Sadly, not all of us are in such a privileged position to be actively encouraged in our higher education studies. Your narrow-minded attitude does not help.

KATHRYN GRESSWELL

TUXFORD, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

Sir: Philip Hensher agrees with the Essex professor who said that "the notion that people of 17 or 18 are sufficiently well motivated . . . to study by themselves is the purest fantasy".

Far from being a fantasy, it is the core task of a university teacher to motivate students to work independently and think for themselves, and to provide structures that make this happen. It is insulting both to good teachers and to their students to claim that "the concept of a university has altered irrevocably", and to imply that spoonfeeding and regurgitation are now the norm. Hensher has been listening to the wrong students.

GEORGE MACDONALD ROSS

SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

How much life lost sitting on the loo?

Sir: In the article "Time is of the essence..." (17 April), it is stated that we spend one third of our lives sleeping and a remarkable " three years on the toilet". Accordingly, a person who lives for 75 years will only be awake for 50 of them. And three of these meagre 50 years (sleepwalking poo-ers aside) must be given over to occupying our various thrones of white enamel. That's 6 per cent of our time: an astonishing one hour 26 minutes every day.

Surely this can't be correct - even for the most dysenteric. But if it is indeed true, then reducing this figure would make an excellent new government target.

NICK ALLEN

CHADWELL HEATH, ESSEX

Butterflies of Britain

Sir: In your "Butterfly tour of Britain" (13 April) the silver-washed fritilliary is stated to be now confined to "southern and south-western England". I have seen this butterfly in Welsh woodland last year and for the previous ten years.

MICHAEL EDMONDS

MONTGOMERY, POWYS

Honouring Attlee

Sir: On Easter Monday three old age pensioners made their way to 638 Commercial Road, London E14 in order to lay flowers at the feet of the statue of Clement Attlee. We were all shocked to see the present state of the statue. Most of the inscription is illegible. As a small step towards cleansing the stench of corruption of the present-day Labour Party, could someone please clean up the statue of the second from last man off the beach at Gallipoli?

SHAMUS O D WADE

LONDON W3

Self defence

Sir: I would like to cavil at Peter Janikoun's poor quality nit-picking (letter, 18 April). Will Self (PsychoGeography, 15 April) does not say a "five-mastered" tea clipper, he says a five-master, which is surely OK; but, much worse than this, Mr Janikoun has failed to notice the reference to a "bijoux" hamlet, when bijoux is the plural. Why do we pounce with such glee on the occasional slips in Will Self's gloriously exuberant language? Sheer envy, I fear.

JULIE HARRISON

HERTFORD

Scriptural scrutiny

Sir: Robert Readman is entitled to his view that The Da Vinci Code is less fanciful than the Bible (Letters, 17 April), but his case would be stronger if his facts were correct. Please could he tell us where the latter refers to 5,000 people being fed with five loaves and three fishes?

EDWARD ROBERTS

FILEY, NORTH YORKSHIRE

Sir: If you are going to quote the Bible, please try to get it right (Leading article on whaling, 17 April). It was Jesus, not St Paul, who said "Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matthew 10, 16).

NOEL WILKINSON

LICHFIELD, STAFFORDSHIRE

Word search

Sir: Volume 9 of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary carries a definition of mallemaroking (letter, 18 April), as does Chambers English Dictionary published in 1988. The word is traditionally used by English undergraduates in essays on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which opens on an ice-bound ship.

JO POWER

TWICKENHAM, MIDDLESEX