Iraq elections, medical reforms and others

Gunmen have stopped my family voting in Iraqi election

Gunmen have stopped my family voting in Iraqi election

Sir: I am a 49-year-old Iraqi woman. I reluctantly fled my homeland 10 years ago, and I have settled in England. My family still live in Hay Al Jamia, which is a middle-class suburb in west Baghdad and has a mixed Shi'ite and Sunni population. In spite of the risks involved, my family were planning on voting in the Iraqi elections that are due to be held at the end of this month.

Yesterday, they were visited by one of their local shopkeepers. He asked them to hand over their ration books to him for "temporary safe-keeping". It is by means of these ration books that voters will be identified when they cast their ballots on 30 January. He informed them that he had been visited by masked men carrying guns, who told him that they would be back. The gunmen had ordered him to collect the ration books from his neighbourhood, and said that if he failed to do so, he and his family would be killed.

It was when the shopkeeper came back to call on my family a second time, sobbing and begging them not to condemn his children to a certain death, that they reluctantly handed over their ration books. They will now, like many others I am sure, be unable to cast their votes at the end of this month.

NADIA SELIM
Northolt, Middlesex

Sir: A R Boddy (letter, 15 January) quotes the words of Franklin D Roosevelt for President Bush to ponder: "Freedom from inhuman treatment is a natural right. It is not a grace to be given or withheld at will by those ... in a position to assert force over a defenceless people." Would Mr Boddy care to explain this to Osama bin Laden and the "insurgents" in Iraq?

STEPHEN PARKIN
Rotherham, South Yorkshire

Medical profession backs reforms

Sir: Jeremy Laurance's perceptive article (10 January) was brought to the attention of the Joint Consultants Committee at its meeting this week (11 January).

Members of this committee include the presidents of all Medical Royal Colleges and senior representatives of the British Medical Association. Attending the meeting were Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, and Professor Sir Graeme Catto, the president of the General Medical Council. There was a detailed discussion of Dame Janet Smith's fifth report of the Shipman enquiry.

The meeting recognised the seriousness of Dame Janet's recommendations and the widespread public concern that standards of medical practice should be subject to systematic, objective and transparent scrutiny. They strongly endorsed the need for a system of revalidation and offered support to the Chief Medical Officer in his review of the GMC's proposals.

It is important that the evidence collected about the clinical practice of a doctor is robust and can therefore offer reassurance to the public. One mechanism for securing this would be the use of information held by Health Service Trusts about the clinical outcomes of patients that the doctor has treated. The meeting emphasised the urgent need for trusts to secure reliable information for this purpose.

Your readers should be in no doubt that the medical profession continues to be strongly behind moves to ensure that the public has confidence in their doctors' standards of practice.

Professor WILLIAM DUNLOP
Chairman
Joint Consultants Committee
London WC1

Sir: I have a great deal of sympathy for your anonymous correspondent regarding the tragedy of her rubella-affected baby (letter, 13 January). However as a GP of 14 years' experience I am all too frequently reminded of the sad fact that public and politicians think that increased regulation of doctors will somehow prevent a) any chance of genuine mistakes being made by clinicians, and b) the occurrence of tragic episodes of severe illness.

In the case mentioned by your correspondent it may well have taken several days for the true severity of her child's illness to become apparent. The GPs who saw her baby initially may have had no chance of detecting a serious problem.

Regulation would have made no difference to this, nor is it going to prevent a psychopathic murderer such as Harold Shipman from murdering. It will however take doctors away from their patients at a time when there is a huge shortage of doctors and when the UK has one of the smallest ratios of doctors to patients in Europe.

In my own practice the one major factor that makes me afraid of making a mistake is the volume of patients I have to see in a limited amount of time. The proposed regulation will only make this pressure worse as I will have to take a significant amount of time out of my working week to be regulated. I will make mistakes if this happens.

It is no surprise that I know of no colleagues who intend to work past 50 or 55 - the risks of stress, litigation and burn-out are too great.

GREG CARTER
Stockport, Cheshire

Gas-guzzlers

Sir: Thank you for your report on the school run protest in Hampstead ( "On the front line of the 4x4 war", 12 January ). While Arifa Akbar has covered several of the safety arguments against these overweight vehicles, we must remember that this protest and others throughout the UK take place in the context of a severe environmental emergency. Tony Blair has placed global climate change as the number one issue for the planet, and has made it top of his G8 agenda this summer.

There are few excuses to either manufacture or purchase these huge and obscenely heavy vehicles that consume even more fuel, and commit more CO ₂ emissions to an already suffering atmosphere, when we should be focusing on producing and purchasing more efficient and lighter vehicles. That's why we are working hard to ban public advertising of all 4x4s; just as governments are progressively banning smoking advertising across Europe - because the public has the sense to realise both are bad for our health.

It seems that many 4x4 drivers are still wildly in denial that climate change affects them and their children.

BLAKE LUDWIG
Alliance Against Urban 4x4s
London, NW5

Sir The recent protests against 4x4s are rather blinkered. I own a 1993 Land Rover Discovery Tdi which I have had since new. While I can accept that my vehicle is not as green as most of the newer, small cars on the market, I object to those who consider that all 4x4s are monsters. It is debatable as to which is more eco-friendly. I expect my Land Rover will still be on the road after 25 years, whereas most other vehicles will be long on the scrap heap by then.

As for clogging the roads, my Land Rover has an overall length of 452cm, comparable to many mid-sized saloon cars. I achieve an average fuel consumption of 30mpg, certainly comparable to many of the larger saloon cars. As for the argument that they are never driven off-road, how many of the performance cars are driven on the race track? My Land Rover is a great workhorse and load carrier.

DAVID GOODRICK
Ashtead, Surrey

Useful Humanists

Sir: D J Taylor is proud to flourish his ignorance of the "British Humanist Association, whatever that is" ("Why I'm happy to see Christians finally on the march", 10 January) and to accuse us - and A C Grayling, one of the more thoughtful commentators on ethical issues - of superficial reactions to calls for greater sensitivity towards cherished religious beliefs.

Had he bothered to check, he would have found that the BHA, representing the UK's growing population of ethically concerned but non-religious people, has devoted much energy to this and related topics. We have, for example, joined with the Muslim Council of Britain, Justice and the Commission for Racial Equality to sponsor a meeting in Parliament to explain why we agree the need for a law on incitement of religious hatred, but have proposed amendments to ensure that it distinguishes between protecting people from incitement to hatred (which should be unlawful) and protecting religious doctrines from criticism (which should not).

Fortunately, the Government, unlike Mr Taylor, seems to think that we have useful things to say - which is why I am serving on the steering group preparing for the planned Commission on Equality and Human Rights and why our education officer was involved in developing the new national framework for religious education. We are grateful to Mr Taylor for mentioning our often unnoticed efforts, but suggest that he make some attempt to find out about organisations he mentions before he writes them off as irrelevant.

HANNE STINSON
Executive Director, British Humanist Association, London WC1

Tories for Europe

Sir: As a Europhile Conservative, may I be so bold as to criticise Robert Jackson's defection to the Labour Party?

It is at this time that the Conservatives are at their darkest hour - and the Europhile wing of the Conservative Party have a responsibility to keep the excesses of the Europhobic right in check. Mr Jackson should have stayed with the Conservatives, and fought from the inside. I do understand that he intends to stand down at the next election, so his defection does not cause too much damage.

Like Mr Jackson, I am very concerned about the Tories' policies over Europe - but I shall campaign in favour of the EU constitution, for I agree that it will strengthen our relationship with Europe, rather than "hand more powers over to Brussels". I am also in favour of the euro, as it will overcome yet another barrier that prevents greater free trade between Britain and her European neighbours.

At this time, every true patriotic Conservative should be pro-European, and should speak out against our party's currently ludicrous attitudes towards European Union. I hope that this letter will encourage other pro-European Conservatives to take a stand against the forces of ignorant prejudice that have dominated our party for too long.

FRANCIS BRADFORD WEBSTER
Redcar, Yorkshire

Harry: the last word

Sir: I've never heard a republican argue that elected leaders are any less fallible than members of the Royal Family. The simple point, which seems to elude the Rev Geoffrey Thompson (letter, 17 January) is that we can remove elected leaders when they screw up.

The most respectable argument I have heard for retaining the monarchy is that it is irrelevant. But remaining irrelevant in the modern world involves being determinedly bland, inoffensive and outwardly devoid of meaningful opinions.

The Queen is a natural in this regard, but Charles has already blown it. His elder son shows great promise as a blank canvas. But poor Harry clearly doesn't fit the bill. We should spare him further humiliation and vote him out of the Big Mother household.

GUS PARK
London W12

Sir: With reference to the storm recently raised by Prince Harry's ill-considered decision to attend a fancy dress party dressed as a Nazi, I and can't help wondering whether this is a consequence of his parents' choice of school. I teach history in a Windsor comprehensive, only a couple of miles from the seat of his education, and can say that our students would not have acted with such insensitivity.

All of our students are taught about the Holocaust and over the past few years many have visited Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Terezin, Lidice the site of the Wannsee Conference, among other places associated with the horrors of Nazi Germany. They have consequently been led to appreciate the lessons that society ought to have learned from it.

STEVE HAINES
Reading, Berkshire

Sailing to immortality

Sir: I am avidly following the courageous attempt by Ellen MacArthur to break the round-the-world record. She is going well despite enduring enormous hardships. I would be delighted to see a statue of Ellen placed on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square to commemorate her bravery. Nelson would have been proud of her.

PAUL UNDERWOOD
Bellac, France

Night of the yobs

Sir: The department of culture claims that flexible licensing hours will reduce the disturbing impact of closing all the pubs in a town or city at the same time (report, 15 January). This assumes of course that drinkers go straight home from the pub. I think it more likely that we will see large numbers of drunken yobs spilling out on the streets in the middle of the night in search of a venue that stays open even later than the one they have just left.

NIGEL WILKINS
London SW7

Nuclear options

Sir: Maybe nuclear power is unavoidable in the short-term but people who argue this (such as James Gordon, letter 13 January) should also be stressing that it cannot be a permanent solution. I'm worried that the message the public might get is that it's all OK after all: we can just build nukes ad infinitum to enable us to plough on with ever-increasing energy usage. We can't. James Lovelock said (in the Channel 4 documentary War on Terra) that nuclear power "is a band-aid not a cure". He should have said it much louder.

MARTIN PARKINSON
London NW5

Chemicals on tap

Sir: You report (17 January) that it is "fear of modern life" which drives sales of bottled water. It could also be fear of modern tap water. If one lives in this idyllic corner of West Somerset an offensive smell of chemicals hits you as soon as you turn on the tap. I drink tea and coffee "black". Both are quite unpalatable without the use of a filter jug. Little wonder water drinkers are ready to pay high prices for what was a free raw material.

The Rev RALPH TAYLOR
Woodcombe, Somerset