Until now the issue of victims has been raised only to attack the other
Until now, the issue of victims has been raised only to attack the other side. The Government has gone some way to rectifying this by appointing a Minister for Victims and setting aside a pounds 5m fund, even if it was as a quid pro quo to make the release of prisoners more politically acceptable.But, if answering the needs of individual victims is a start, the experiences of other nations suggests that is not enough A public recognition of their private grief is needed A truth commission may not be an appropriate answer. But some institution to collect, catalogue and commemorate the experiences of the bereaved and injured would seem to be an important part of building peace and giving a voice to the hurt of the voiceless.. Ten Things We Don’t See Around Much Any More,
If At All
Ley linesProgrammes about bridgeon TVCigarette-holdersSquashed plastic tomatoeson the front of carsBlancmangeCanastaChicken MarylandThe cha cha chaPeople’s names printed inlarge letters on car wind-screens such as KEVINand TRACEYMild aleNine Things With NamesDerived From Their Native CountryPolonaiseChinoiserieTurquoiseSuedeJapanningSpanielSchottischeArabesqueAllemandeNine People Who Seem To Have No Surnames, OnlyFirst NamesSusan GeorgeClive JamesJack BennyLenny HenryBarry NormanDick FrancisSid JamesGeorge GrahamCharlie GeorgeEight Places NamedAfter HatsFezHomburgDerbyPanamaBalaclavaBalmoralAstrakhanGlengarrySeven Medical TermsAnd Words They ShouldNever Be Confused WithFistula / the VistulaUrethra / ArethaENT / ENOMalaise / MalaysObese / OBEUsLumbago / PlumbagoPlacenta / Play CentreSeven English PhrasesIn Which, Most Unusually,The Adjective Comes AFTER The NounPark RoyalPrince CharmingBody BeautifulGod AlmightyPenny BlackPenny DreadfulMount PleasantSix Dishes Which MightFeature On Our MenusIf Everything Had To BeWritten In EnglishBeef in crustSailors’ musselsPaste of fat liverGood woman soleCrunch-misterLovely Helen’s pearsSix People Who Did Not,Unlike Calvin Klein, MakeUnderpantsKevin KlineKelvin McKenzieKevin KeeganCalvin CoolidgeChester KalmanKenneth ClarkeFive People Who SeemTo Have Only Surnames,And No First NamesBamber GascoigneMenzies CampbellStirling MossTimberlake WertenbakerLewis WolpertFour Professions UsedIndiscriminately ByTaxi Drivers To AddressTheir FaresGovernorSquireBossVicarThree Awards WithFirst Names ButNo SurnamesOscarEmmyTonyTwo Pairs Of Words We Wish Had Never Been JoinedHarperCollinsTravelodgeThe Bill Clinton PrizeFor Not Being Any BetterThan He Ought To BeWill Carling. Sir: Your headline “Blair targets bad teachers and doctors” (29 September) shows that yet another government is missing the point about raising educational standards The real drain on educational resources is bad parents. Bad parents fail to instil discipline into their children and the resulting disruption to classrooms wastes up to three-quarters of teaching time in some lessons.
Targeting “bad” teachers sends a further message to bad parents that responsibility for their children’s behaviour is not theirs. I suggest that a campaign for parent awareness will be money far better spent.
Incidentally, amid the Labour fanfare of “Bla bla, more money for education election pledge, bla bla”, the school where my wife teaches changed from grant-maintained to a new arrangement whose shiny, catchy New Labour tag slips my mind; of course the administrators couldn’t resist the temptation to use this to slash pounds 250,000 from the school’s annual budget.I notice with distress that I sound like a Daily Mail reader I apologise.ANDREW FORBESHorsham, West Sussex. Electoral thresholds serve a filtering role in a range of countries: Germany requires parties to get 5 per cent of the vote to gain representation, while Turkey used to require 10 per cent, and Greece 15 per cent. Nor is it true that a more proportional electoral system would necessarily spell the end of the treasured link between MPs and constituencies.It would be a shame if the crucial debate on electoral reform were to be prejudiced by misleading characterisations of the choices we face.Dr STEWART WOODMagdalen College, Oxford.
For example, increasing the proportionality of electoral outcomes does not automatically mean opening the parliamentary door to extremists. After Sunday’s election under a highly proportional system, Germany is getting its seventh Chancellor since 1949. In the same period, counting Harold Wilson twice, Britain has had 11 prime ministers. It is deeply misleading to suggest that stability and proportionality cannot coexist.
Second, we are told that first-past-the-post, in contrast to PR, has the great virtue of being easily understandable.
The truth is that many forms of PR are really not that difficult to understand, while our present system is riddled with unjust oddities. In 1997 the average seat won by Labour had nearly 6,500 fewer voters than those won by the Conservatives. With a uniform swing from 1992 the Tories would have needed a 6.7 per cent lead in vote shares to match Labour’s seat tally. Are the idiosyncratic factors that produce patently unfair outcomes such as these really that comprehensible to the British public?Third, many critics of PR fail to distinguish between the different sorts of electoral rules that make up each national case. We are told, for example, that PR generates “unstable government”.
