It’s not cynicism
Sir: I was amazed to have suffered the projection of so much cynicism in return for my plea that no one should suffer hate for their identity (‘The cynicism of Steve Baker’, Toby Young, 21 January).
The simple truth is that one of my staff is out as a trans man. Another is a proud gay man with a non-binary partner. I like and admire them, and I have heard what they put up with. I am glad to be their ally. My staff still suffer abuse because of their sexual and gender identities, and I wish for them to live their lives without that abuse. This ought not to be controversial.
My team and I have genuinely been shocked that a benign tweet about supporting the LGBT+ community could spark such an aggressive backlash. Ultimately, my tweet and the reactions to it are about tolerance. As a straight, happily married man, I have never had to wrestle with issues of sexual or gender identity. As far as I know, neither has Toby. But just because we have never shared people’s experiences does not mean that we cannot listen to their concerns. Indeed, the only way that we can avoid the extremes of the social justice movements is to come together as a society and discuss our complicated problems.
Some argue that I did not do so on same-sex marriage, but I would reply that is exactly what I did. I voted against not because I want to force social conservatism on to others, but because my strong view has long been that marriage law needs serious reform. To all those who have accused me of giving up my ideology in pursuit of my own career, please take stock. A desire for minorities to live their lives free from attacks can just be that.
Toby, I know you have a long interest in losing friends and alienating people but it is not too late with me, yet!
Steve Baker MP
High Wycombe, Bucks
Lead role
Sir: Apropos bison, Paul Whitfield, director of the Wildwood Trust, is quoted in The Spectator saying: ‘It’s exactly the same as taking your dog for a walk across a farm. If you’ve got a field full of bullocks and you take a dog off the lead, you’re an idiot’ (‘The beast is back’, 28 January).
No, you are not. If you walk through a field of bullocks with your dog on a lead, neither you nor the dog can get out of the way if the bullocks come too close. Let the dog off the lead when you must (not before) and it will normally outrun the bullocks and allow you to reach safety. The increase in incidents of people trampled by cattle is largely due to this misconception. Dogs are not always best on leads in an emergency.
James Beazley
Newmarket, Suffolk
London’s slump
Sir: I agree with Rory Sutherland’s comments about London (The Wiki Man, 28 January). Living ‘in the north’, I have always been thrilled by the capital. I was however disenchanted after climbing off the peak-time LNER Newark to King’s Cross train last week. We had a dispirited trudge to the Department for Transport through streets piled with rubbish bags, past empty shops and offices. The architecture always inspires, but Rory is correct that things are now better in most northern towns and cities than in London – most certainly the pavements and parks are better maintained.
Roger Hage
Grimsby, Lincolnshire
Wind problem
Sir: ‘When the wind blows’ (Barometer, 28 January) illustrates the wide variation and non-dispatchable nature of wind-generated electricity. The UK’s aspiration to be ‘the Saudi Arabia of wind power’, with a capacity of 50 MW requiring a coverage about four times the area enclosed within the M25 (or 45 times the area of the Isle of Wight), is meaningless during inevitable Dunkelflaute periods when the wind does not blow.
Profs Peter Edwards FRS & Peter Dobson OBE, University of Oxford; Dr Gari Owen, Annwvyn Solutions, Bromley
Mincing words
Sir: The overcomplication in America of the English language and the use of euphemisms was well described by Lionel Shriver in her excellent piece on new jargon (‘You can’t say that!’, 28 January).
My late husband, John Dyson, wrote a concise handbook for teenagers called The Motorcycle Book. It was published in 1977 and there were several European editions, all equally concise. However the US edition, ‘translated’ into American, was nearly twice as long. In the original English edition, John wrote: ‘If you skid under a bus, you are dead.’ Translated into American, this brief sentence read: ‘If you have the misfortune to slide under an oncoming passenger transit vehicle, you are likely to suffer a terminally unpleasant experience.’
Kate Dyson
London SW13
Stamps of beauty
Sir: Joseph Addison’s opinion (‘Notes on … Stamps’, 28 January) that postage stamps have been aesthetically barren for a century cannot go unchallenged.
The Falklands Islands 1933 centenary set is universally acknowledged as a masterpiece of design and one of the most beautiful ever issued. In the following three decades many former Commonwealth countries produced similar long definitive sets, again in the bicoloured recess-printed format which has delighted collectors ever since. In more recent times, Czechoslovakia, France and Sweden have employed internationally famous master engravers to produce miniature masterpieces. While it is true that today too many postal administrations produce a welter of income-generating tastelessly designed stamps which see no postal use, there are still beauties to be found.
David Wright
Whitstable, Kent
Write to us letters@spectator.co.uk
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