PLEASE send your letters (as short as you like) to info@conservativewoman.co.uk and mark them ‘Letter to the Editor’. We need your name and a county address, e.g. Yorkshire or London. Letters may be shortened. There is no guarantee of publication.
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Letter of the week: The BBC – A new slogan
Dear Editor
Never mind BBC Verify.
How about BBC Vilify?
Nigel Hall
North Yorkshire
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The BBC – ’Twas ever thus
Dear Editor
Regarding the recent publicity about the blatant bias of the BBC, I should like to point out that this has been going on for years and was rife during the 1980s. In a TV interview, Kenneth Baker referred to the BBC as the Blair Broadcasting Corporation. In one of his Times columns, Roger Scruton lambasted them for their left-wing bias. They were also heavily endorsing the Neo-Marxist narrative about ‘anti-racism’ and ‘multiculturalism’ in which all non-whites were portrayed as victims and white people as bigoted oppressors.
I had direct experience of that bias myself. Shortly after a book I edited, Anti-Racism – an Assault on Education and Value, was published in 1986, I was invited to give an interview for a then forthcoming BBC programme about ‘Race’. The interviewer was an Indian who asked me to state my objections to the pushing of the anti-racist/multiculturalist messages in schools (which I also wrote about for the Times Educational Supplement). The interviewer (who turned out to be the presenter of the programme) seemed mild enough, but I became suspicious when he stopped the tape and asked me to sound ‘more angry’. I refused to do that as I suspected he wanted to portray me as a raving bigot. When the programme came out, my interview was not included, nor were the arguments I presented. Instead the whole premise of the programme was that all whites are racist, the only question being whether this was acquired from upbringing and other societal and ‘structural’ factors, or whether it was genetic.
Dr Frank Palmer
SW London
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This terrible waste of taxpayers’ money
Dear Editor
Almost 50 years ago I received my first pay packet together with a slip of paper telling me how much tax and national insurance I’d paid. I felt proud that I was at last making a contribution towards those who protected us from:
⁃ Disease and ill health
⁃ Rapists, murderers and thieves
⁃ Foreign invaders
⁃ Extreme poverty
I was also proud to contribute to those who ensured we had:
⁃ Reliable, secure and inexpensive energy to power our homes, industry and transport
⁃ Supplies of healthy British food
⁃ Public transport and infrastructure to get us to work, shops and leisure; and water companies to give us ample clean water for drinking, irrigation and hygiene
⁃ Waste bins and road sweeps and friendly collectors of our bins
⁃ A fair and non-conflicted legal system
⁃ Leading incorruptible scientists and engineers to solve problems; design and construct safe and effective buildings, roads, power stations, ships, reservoirs etc; and to ensure safety of medicines and vaccines.
I recognise that I was quite naive and trusting then, but I still consider that these things are what our taxes should be used for. Therefore nowadays when I see the tax I pay I am furious at the waste and failures to deliver even basic services. Not only do we have a prime minister and members of his cabinet who are grifters, we have similar corruption in parts of the public sector. Few politicians or senior officials seem aware of the problems, let alone interested in solving them. They prefer instead to create bureaucracy and use taxpayers’ money to fund companies who get most of their turnover and profits from running ineffective and inefficient services. Some of these companies, including those running children’s and OAPs’ homes and also services for addicts, ex-offenders, the homeless and those struggling with disability and mental health issues, are engaged in criminal behaviour.
Like most people, I can think of hundreds of ways we can solve our problems, improve our services and ensure they deliver. Why are none of the governing elites interested?
Carol Atkinson
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William should cool off on Net Zero
Dear Editor,
What on earth is Prince William doing in Brazil cheerleading for Net Zero?
This is a very politically contentious issue in the UK, with the party which has been leading in the polls for nine months, Reform, pledged to scrap Net Zero, and the Tories pledged to delay it.
The Royal Family should not get involved in politics like this if they are wise. They have enough trouble with the ongoing Andrew/Epstein saga without bringing more controversy on their heads unnecessarily.
Brian Silvester
Crewe
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Head for the hills
Dear Editor
Zohran Mamdani’s grip on New York City after being elected Mayor last week just reminds me as a Londoner that it’s time to abandon these large cities and head for the hills where one can live without surveillance, protests, activism, rules and highly politicised air to breathe.
The day of the metropolis is over. Things just get ugly there.
Bill Kenwright
London
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Casual blasphemy
Dear Editor
I don’t know if anyone has raised this but it seems to me – as many of the supposed ‘small things’ are – to be an issue of fundamental importance.
It’s something few people appear to pay attention to, and if it niggles a nerve they may brush it off and think ‘it’s a small thing, everyone does it’.
I am talking about taking God’s name in vain. The second line of the Lord’s Prayer is ‘hallowed be thy name’. The Third Commandment is ‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.’
The indiscriminate blasphemy around us is staggering if you consider these injunctions. For any meaningful change to take place, people could carefully consider the ramifications for themselves, and for society, if they continue using phrases such as ‘Oh My . . .’
Lindsay Jardine
