True the subject of the far-away Serbian province with its 90 per cent Albanian population probably never topped
True, the subject of the far-away Serbian province, with its 90 per cent Albanian population, probably never topped the agenda of MPs’ constituency surgeries. Only after three years of war and civilian massacres did Nato finally agree on the airstrikes that finally brought the Serb bullies to their senses and made possible a kind of peace agreement for Bosnia, however flawed.
Kosovo was a war that did not need to happen. The British government used to shrug off devastating eyewitness reports from Bosnia as “emotional reporting”, which should not be allowed to influence the sober considerations of political leaders. THERE HAS been a horrific sense of deja vu when viewing events in Kosovo this week. Yet again, as in Bosnia a few years ago, the Serbs have massacred civilians.
Yet again, correspondents stumble on the bodies of slaughtered men, women and children in the undergrowth. Equally familiar is the continued Western dithering, where tough words lead to little action. We urge the Council of the National Trust, at Thursday’s meeting, to take the opportunity to work with the people of Exmoor and the Quantocks to achieve our joint aim of a healthy and visible herd.TOM YANDLEChairman, Devon and Somerset StaghoundsNIGEL MUERS RABYChairman, Quantock StaghoundsBOB VENNERChairman, Tiverton StaghoundsTaunton, Somerset. The new evidence must cause any reasonable person to review how this aim can best be achieved. Sir: Over the past eighteen months the National Trust has maintained a ban on staghunting on its land, based on the evidence of the Bateson report.
The release of the main findings of the Joint Universities Study on Deer Hunting gives the trust clear and unequivocal reasons to believe the Bateson report is no longer a sound basis for policy. This view is further supported by the unanimous joint statement issued following the Cambridge meeting of 13 September, chaired by Professor Bateson, at which he and other scientists reviewed the JUS findings.
The Cambridge statement identified a role “for combining hunting with hounds and stalking in the management and conservation of deer where staghunting is currently practised”.Both the Trust and the hunts have consistently stated throughout the debate on this issue that the welfare of the West Country’s unique deer herds is their main concern. Al-Shafi’i, the only doctor of Islamic law who taught that it was obligatory to circumcise girls, explicitly based his doctrine on this analogy.P J STEWARTSt Anne’s College, Oxford. The Jewish variety was for many centuries just the symbolic cutting of the tip; removal of the whole foreskin was introduced only when too many Jews started passing themselves off as uncircumcised in the Greek world.Female “circumcision” presumably originated by analogy with the male variety, since it does not occur without it.
It is easy to see how the operation came to be invested with meaning, given its emotionally charged object. Sir: The Rev Neil Dawson asks where circumcision came from and why (letter, 29 September). The answer is that it probably came from the desert, where it was a useful precaution against sand getting trapped between foreskin and glans – a painful condition with possible abrasion and infection. Westminster seems very keen to play matters down, probably to avoid the risk of alarming constituents and fuelling anti-nuclear sentiment in England. Maybe some of them should start thinking about a specific answer to the question of just where the submarines and missiles are to be located, if not in an independent, nuclear-weapon-free Scotland.
DAVID EAGLEEdinburgh. The location of nuclear weaponry is the most important issue in the whole devolution/ independence debate and, at the same time, is the one probably receiving the least attention. Sir: Among your references to new jobs, homes, teachers and other items on the programme of the Scottish National Party (leading article, 25 September), the most interesting was a “non-nuclear defence policy”.
