Sir: “Soldier `not trained to deal with civilians’ “(10 February). Sir: In her review of Quirk (9 February) Annette Morreau has drawn our attention to the last thing a living serious composer should do; write a work of which it can be said, “The crowd loved it”. Sir: Surely the presence of Alastair Campbell on the Labour election team will convince many Labour voters to stay at home, or vote for another party. Sir: David Lister’s theatrical grouse (“Listen to the audience”, 10 February) omits the raw deal offered in the West End to OAPs – which is less a concession than a condescension. The alternative is to book for the balcony, and drag one’s rheumatism way, way, way up miles of steep stairs to cram into a midget’s legroom and enjoy an excellent view of the lighting apparatus.
The Old Vic offers no concessions to those of us who, 50 years ago, when young and supple, endured its balcony benches in the golden age of Olivier, Thorndike, Evans and Richardson, but it does beneficently offer special rates for the under-25s.One opens one’s expensive programme.
SIR ANDREW Green, the head of Migrationwatch, ought to take a look around him He might be surprised at what he sees. Sir Andrew can often be found in television studios and the pages of right-wing newspapers making dark prophesies about the dangers of immigration. His latest contribution was a loathsome (and erroneous) study of the phenomenon of “white flight” in London. He also mentioned casually in an interview with The Spectator recently that there are no immigrants among his neighbours in the Oxfordshire village of Deddington. But when The Independent went to this lovely corner of England, we discovered representatives of no fewer than 13 different nationalities there. All were employed and happily settled.
Perhaps Sir Andrew never visits his local school, or pub or hospital. Perhaps the newcomers are so well integrated that he did not realise they were immigrants.
But whatever the reason for Sir Andrew’s ignorance, the episode shows what a valuable contribution immigrants make, and will continue to make, to our communities It is just a pity Sir Andrew seems unable to see it.. NO ONE needs to take the Labour Party’s pledge cards too seriously. Even the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, doesn’t do that, to judge by his tone of hilarity on the Today programme yesterday Perhaps he’s wise. There’s something irredeemably gimmicky about the idea of the cards, particularly when they are as bland as “your family is better off” and “your child is achieving more”. If these please-all offerings are the best Labour can offer, it is little wonder there are such fierce internal arguments over the party’s manifesto. In many ways, the cards symbolise the lack of realism that exists in British politics. For example, no one really believes the Prime Minister when he says he can’t tell us the date of the election “because I don’t know it”.
He has been planning on 5 May for months now, as have the opposition parties. This is why Labour and the Tories have adopted such shrill tones on crime and immigration; we are in full election mode. Tony Blair could call the election earlier, of course; but he is unlikely to delay things into the autumn.
The chief interest of this latest piece of quackery is what the pledges tell us of the Government’s tactics in this election. The real meat, so far as Labour is concerned, is clearly going to be the economy. It was the first issue discussed by the Prime Minister on his flit around marginal seats yesterday, and it is the stick with which he clearly hopes to keep beating the Tories over the coming months And with good reason.
