Letters: Africa's problems

Africa's problems must be solved by Africans, not westerners

Sir: The latest news from Darfur is deeply disturbing. Since 2005, Sudan government attacks have been rare, but recently Sudan government aircraft, sometimes disguised as aid planes, have bombed villages, co-ordinating with ground attacks in which homes have been looted and razed, with mass murder and torture and gang rapes of even 10-year-old girls.

On 15 September 2007, Gordon Brown said: "I give the people of Darfur a commitment: the world will not abandon you"; but did he mean what he said? The UN-African Union peacekeeping force took over more than two months ago, but lacks helicopters, proper provisions and equipment, and numbers only 9,000 out of a planned deployment of 26,000.

African governments fear, distrust and have contempt for the UN, as an instrument of US power and aggression. The Christian west has exploited Africa, and Africans, especially Muslims, have not forgotten it. The director of the Europe-Sudan Political Action Committee said that western actions were increasing the threat of al-Qa'ida involvement in Darfur, after Bin Laden's call last autumn for a jihad against all foreign forces there. And the Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs in Darfur has attacked the efforts of western aid agencies there.

Africa's problems must be solved by Africans, not by interventionist westerners. The peacekeeping force should be entirely composed of 26,000 African Union troops, with adequate equipment and logistics so they can protect the civilian population and promote peace between the Sudan government and the rebels. We in the west need to respect Africa and Africans as our equals and recognise their need for justice against former western imperialism.

Jeremy Cusden

Gillingham, Dorset

Faith schools are path to segregation

Sir: No one should be surprised that faith schools are cherry-picking pupils (front page, 4 April). Faith schools are part of what is fast-becoming an education marketplace in which segregation is inevitable. This government is ecouraging a fragmented education system in which particular schools cater specifically for particular segments of the population. Of course such schools seek to select pupils who will add most "value" or fit in with their particular ethos. They would be crazy not to.

The answer to the problem is not the better regulation announced by the government; people will always find ways of working between or beyond the rules. The only way to ensure schools stop cherry-picking is to make state-funded schools truly comprehensive. This would mean no state funding for any school that selects on the basis of faith, gender or ability to pay. Education should be geared towards integration, not segregation.

Schools might then have an interest in paying more than lip service to the notion that they have a responsibility towards the wider society of which they are part. Such an education system could form part of a wider set of institutions committed to providing vital services to everyone without fear or favour. We could call it "the public sector".

Dr Graham Gardner

Aberystwyth, Ceredigion

Sir: Faith schools got on fine educating the children of their own groups, until street-wise secular parents spotted a bargain, a calm education on the cheap, away from those nasty, badly behaved estate children.

Faith schools hold two aces, neither of which costs money in itself. The first is the ethos of the school itself, offering an alternative vision to the selfish and greedy culture we live in otherwise. Most children will join in a group where calm and kindness, and the chance to learn are found.

For the few who can't, the second ace is the power to exclude a child for the good of everyone else. This can be very harsh on such a child. If you care about children, you should be campaigning for well-resourced, really expensive remedial nurseries and primary places for children who are beyond the reach of normal human feeling. Dim people who regard such help as a reward for the child's bad behaviour should be told to get a life.

One ghastly kid can make the life of a whole class impossible. My unfavourite memory is of the boy who, when asked to join in instead of barracking, came up with: "Why should I? You're paid to keep us in order!" There were worse incidents, but that is the bastardised philosphical statement that sticks in the mind. I would take a large bet that this is what is driving the militancy of the NUT. Low pay is shorthand for having everything you value trampled on every day.

Jenny Tillyard

SEAFORD, East Sussex

Sir: So our faith schools are turning away the most disadvantaged members of our communities in favour of more affluent and well-bred children; how very Christian of them. It is a disgrace that our children are taught that it is acceptable to be segregated on the basis of any form of religious belief. Is it any wonder we have ongoing problems in our country between religious groups of every flavour?

I live in Glasgow which, despite the protestations of others, still has a large problem with sectarianism. I would like someone to explain in very simple terms how sectioning off one part of our community in Catholic faith schools can possibly be for the good of our future and enable us to solve our differences.

Stephen Gardiner

Glasgow

Facts behind BBC interviews

Sir: Johann Hari's idea of impartiality at the BBC is hilarious (Comment, 3 April). When BBC interviewers use left-wing research and reports to inform their questions – as they have since broadcasting began – they are fearless, independent seekers of truth. But when I use supposedly right-wing sources in questions, I'm peddling biased drivel. Well, that tells you a lot about where Mr Hari is coming from.

Neither case he cites involved right-wing sources. My question on US welfare reform (not abolition, Mr Hari) in the 1990s to Labour minister Caroline Flint, asking her to comment on the fall in child poverty which followed reform, was based on a report by the soggy-centre-to-liberal Brookings Institute, whose study of US census data found child poverty had indeed fallen in the wake of welfare reform and that "even after four years of increases [in child poverty, during the early Bush years, for reasons unrelated to welfare reform], the child poverty rate in 2004 was still 20 per cent lower than in 1993".

Contrary to Mr Hari's claim, I did not consult the Heritage Foundation, which he describes as "barking-right", though if I had my question would have been the same because, using the same census data, I understand it came to broadly similar conclusions to those of Brookings.

In my climate change interview with Sir David King, former chief scientist, Mr Hari claims my questions were based on work by the centre-right American Enterprise Institute (AEI). In fact, they were based on an article in the New Statesman which reported, using statistics from the British Met Office, that average temperatures in 2007 were the same as 1998. But then perhaps Mr Hari regards even the estimable Staggers as "barking-right" too.

Andrew Neil

BBC TV, 4 Millbank, London SW1

Immigration used to force down wages

Sir: Gordon Brown says: "British business has benefited very substantially from immigration over the past decade", and, "Most people in the City know they have benefited very substantially" (report, 2 April). The losers are people in those areas with an influx of foreign workers and who can't live on the minimum wage. In the main, foreign workers are temporary and don't have to obtain a house and raise a family. They can live on the minimum wage, and send money home, because they often share accommodation.

If minimum-wage immigration continues, most workers will suffer as pay is forced down. This is why the government and the employers are in favour of it. And I do not disagree with immigration.

Brian abbot

cork, ireland

Building better in Buenos Aires

Sir: In giving a ringing endorsement of Lord Rogers' criticisms of social housing in Britain your leading article (29 March) gave credence to his facile jibe about "rootless estates ... that could just as well [be] in Beijing, Buenos Aires or Belfast".

I can't vouch for Beijing or Belfast, but as for Buenos Aires, where I trained as an architect, I can assure Lord Rogers that social housing is far from creating the kind of globalised slum he has in mind. What's more, standards of design and construction there are much higher than in the UK.

Claudio Tedesco

London N1

Rights and wrongs of food importing

Sir: Adam Smith's arguments on the merit of importing foodstuffs are easier to understand than the Dominic Lawson version (Comment, 1 April). He wanted to reduce the profiteering of British landowners. There was no suggestion then that bakers or shopkeepers were profiteering; like the farm labourer, they did not benefit from the high price of the basic commodities. How different the situation is now that 80 per cent of the retail food trade in this country is controlled by the equivalent of the almighty landowners of Smith's day.

What does Mr Lawson want the importation of cheap food from East Africa to achieve? Is the purpose to bring down the income of British farmers? In spite of Mr Lawson's implied altruism, it cannot improve the life of East African labourers. Smith's market mechanism was not, and cannot, be used to increase their pay to a decent living wage on the British model and, in fact, over the past 20 years of global trading, the living standards in Africa have declined

Is it to reduce the use of tractors, and therefore fossil fuel, by encouraging farmers here to use only manual labour as in East Africa? Is it to preserve the right of East Africans earning 50p per day to provide cheap food (a third of which will be thrown away) for the average Briton on many times that income? Is it to encourage competition between local hauliers paying taxes on fuel and airfreight companies using tax-free fuel? Is it to encourage the use of pesticides in UK farming by reducing what he perceives as profiteering by local organic farmers?

Smith sought to benefit the consumer at the expense of the landowners' profits, not by screwing foreign labourers into the ground.

Maurice Vassie

York

Sir: I agree with many of Dominic Lawson's sentiments about food miles. The Soil Association's proposal to require airfreighted organic products to have "fair" or "ethical trade" certification will mean imposing new costs on African exporters.

It will discriminate against some of the world's poorest people, because the requirement will not apply to energy-intensive farm production in the UK. And UK farmers (including organic) get an energy subsidy because tractor diesel is mostly exempt from duty.

Research from the International Trade Centre shows that organic agriculture helps farmers adapt to climate change. This opportunity should not be denied to people in rural Africa, who have few, if any, means to withstand its effects.

Alexander Kasterine

Senior Market Development Adviser, International Trade Centre, Geneva, Switzerland

Mugabe's mistake

Sir: Robert Mugabe must be regretting not adopting a first-past-the-post electoral system which can deliver a large parliamentary majority to a party that garners the votes of barely one-fifth of the electorate. If only he'd taken a lesson in democracy from Britain.

Charles Hopkins

Norwich

Class act

Sir: Ann Penketh reports that Brown and Sarkozy plan to get 16 million African children into school by 2010 (28March). It can only mean the 16 million includes those already in school, otherwise they will need to find between 250,000 and 400,000 new teachers and get them in post within 20 months. So we could see what sounds like a majestic increase, or no increase at all. What is the truth of it?

Kenneth J Moss

Norwich

Sounds good

Sir: I'm sure all of John Hall's chosen albums are very worthy ("The 10 best film soundtracks", Extra, 2 April) but surely it can't be possible to compile any list without including the great Signore Morricone's Once Upon a Time in America or The Mission?

Jon Webber

Chislehurst

Poor pay the price

Sir: From next week, pay packets will reflect the abolition of the 10p rate of tax and the introduction of the 20p rate, and a breathtakingly cackhanded move it is, too. No wonder there were ructions in at the Parliamentary Labour Party when MPs protested that the tax change will lose them votes. Not only is it morally questionable to allow those at the bottom to pay the price of sorting out a part of the tax system, but it is hugely politically inept.

Patrick Powell

St Breward, Cornwall

It's a belter

Sir: Is it not remarkable that the coroner at the Diana inquest made no mention of a key piece of evidence against a conspiracy? Neither Princess Diana nor Dodi Fayed were wearing seat-belts. Had they been, they may have survived, and it would have been virtually impossible for the Duke of Edinburgh, MI6, or any other agency to stop them taking such an elementary precaution.

Frank Donald

Edinburgh

Wales of anguish

Sir: There appear to be two surprising omissions in the new coinage. First, the numbers indicating value seem to have disappeared. Second, the national symbols for only England, Scotland and Ireland appear. Perhaps the Royal Mint might consider producing some coins with the lettering only in Welsh?

Chris Higley

Penarth, Glamorgan

Odd view

Sir: The behaviour of TV Licensing is bizzare (letters, 28 March). Unlike most businesses, it costs extra to pay in instalments by direct debit because, they say, some payments will be in arrears. So who watches all of their television in one go at the beginning of the year?

Dr Clive Mowforth

Dursley, Gloucestershire