Museums, tsunami and others

Visitors crowd our free museums, but who will pay the bills?

Sir: Congratulations on highlighting "But at what cost?" when reporting (29 December) the announcement by the Minister for the Arts that visitor numbers to museums and galleries which used to charge admission fees have risen by 75 per cent. I am tempted to add, "And so what?"

Visitor numbers in themselves are only a fraction of the picture. It is, of course, marvellous that more people than ever are visiting and enjoying these museums and galleries and I am sure that such "good news" will be made much of by the Blair government - ever anxious to grab another headline, without bothering to consider what it really means.

Do the soaring numbers include visitors to the special exhibitions at these museums and galleries for which there is, and always has been, a separate admission charge?

Do the numbers also include those who visit over and over again in the space of, say, a two-week holiday? Research has shown that an hour and a half to two hours is the maximum that most visitors can take without a break. If so, surely this could be double or treble counting?

None of this takes into account the heavier burden on the Exchequer, and the taxpayer, that free admission inevitably brings. So when government spending cuts focus on the arts budget there is a prospect of our magnificent national and local repositories of art and artefacts being crammed with visitors but having insufficient funds to pay the salaries of respected curators; unable to afford unique items required to enhance their collections and with no money available to mend leaking roofs or provide adequate security for the treasures they are expected to display.

If individual institutions want to charge for admission they should be allowed to do so and then be responsible for balancing their own books. Nearly every other country in the world operates such a system and the people who live there, and visitors, expect to pay. Here, in truth, free admission together with the publication of increased visitor numbers amounts to little more than thinly disguised New Labour vote-catching.

ROGER PAINE
(Commander, RN, ret'd)
Hellingly, East Sussex
(The writer was Secretary to the Trustees, National Maritime Museum, 1985-88)

Sir: Why not charge for entry to museums from April to September only and have free entry for the rest of the year? The UK would get the foreign currency while the British people would have the opportunity of free entry during the winter.

CAROLINE THORNTON
London N10

Blair holiday goes on despite catastrophe

Sir: Where is our Prime Minister? Has he no comprehension of the terror that this tide of death has unleashed upon the communities of Asia?

Does he not know that hundreds of thousands of British citizens have their roots in Bangladesh, Burma, Indonesia, India, Maldives, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand? Does he not know that thousands of British families are spending sleepless nights waiting for news of their loved ones?

The Prime Minister should be here in this country. He should be addressing the nation. He should be talking to leaders of the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Muslim faiths who give support to those dealing with fear, anxiety, grief and sorrow.

Our country has a long history of close association with this region. The Prime Minister should be speaking to the business community, the rich and powerful to get them to donate large sums of money and goods.

He should be speaking to the nation to encourage all of us to dig deep into our pockets. He should be speaking to the charities, the relief agencies and the army of workers doing their best in Asia for these wonderful people who live so close to the earth and close to the ocean and have paid such a heavy price.

Where is our Prime Minister?

CHRISTOPHER TITMUSS
Totnes, Devon

Sir: The heads-I-win-tails-you-lose brigade have shamelessly used the dreadful tsunami disaster to have another go at Tony Blair. Had he come home from holiday, he would, no doubt, have been accused of grandstanding.

No one is indispensable and leaders need holidays like the rest of us. With Britain about to take up the chair of the EU and G8, I would rather Tony Blair has a holiday and gains strength for the coming year. My hope for 2005 is that we'll get real about the world and leave some of our pathetic cynicism behind. It has become a demeaning national trademark.

EMLYN WILLIAMS
Milton Keynes

Sir: The catastrophe around the Indian Ocean has meant that many hundreds of British people have cut short their holiday this Christmas. Reporters, camera crews and journalists; aid workers; transport and phoneline operators; appeal organisers; civil servants must have been working round the clock over the past few days.

Our media are our eyes and ears; our aid workers are our hands and feet. I am very grateful for their professionalism. What a pity the Prime Minister doesn't think it worthwhile to curtail his own holiday as a sign of support for all these unsung heroes.

JANE PEARN
Ballaugh, Isle of Man

Sir: In his letter (31 December) David Nowell claims that a warning about tsunamis given through the global media might not have worked, "given the risk of hoaxes such as the one which fooled the BBC on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster".

This is far-fetched. The Bhopal hoax was an aberration in a BBC record unsullied for decades. There is no government on earth that would ignore a warning broadcast over the BBC World Service and quoting authoritative seismological institutions by name.

In this instance, a warning broadcast both in English and the Asian languages used by the BBC World Service, to the effect that the earthquake had occurred and that as a result tsunamis were likely in certain areas would certainly have been heeded and would have saved many lives. Reports from Reuters and other news agencies, all of which have subscribers among the Asian radio stations, would have served to reinforce the BBC message.

Why wasn't such a warning issued? If the potential target of the tsunamis had been North America or Western Europe, would a warning to the globe's most powerful news sources, in this e-mail age, have been found to be too difficult to structure and deliver?

The catastrophic information failure reminds us that we live in two worlds - one white and rich and cared for, the other non-white, poor and neglected or ignored. Fortunately, the ordinary people in the white, rich world constantly shame their governments and institutions by demonstrating, through their response to appeals for funds to relieve disaster, that they are more sensitive to the requirements of our common humanity than their governments, bureaucracies and institutions.

CAMERON DUODU
London SE21

Sir: A lone sailor can send back to the UK images of her progress, fighters in Iraq can send us images of their work, reporters can send us back videophone reports. Yet the experts on the earthquake monitoring stations in the Pacific were unable to find contacts to alert people in danger.

This morning it took me, a retired journalist, just two minutes to find the website of Radio Thailand and e-mail the editor.

KEN ASHTON
Prestatyn, Denbigh

Sir: My wife and I have followed the unfolding of events in the Indian Ocean littoral states with horror and compassion. Although we are both pensioners we are giving as much as we can afford.

We are both humbled by the fortitude of the survivors and by the repeated stories of the generosity and kindness of the local populations towards the tourists caught up in this catastrophe. It shows just what the human spirit is capable of. The courage and community spirit shown by these peoples in the face of adversity and calm acceptance of their fate stand in stark contrast to the constant whingeing that one hears so much here at home.

Perhaps after hearing all the survivors' stories of the kindness of Sri Lankans, Thais and Indonesians, our miserable, xenophobic gutter press might think again about their constant campaigns of vilification against those unfortunates who have sought asylum in our country. It appals me to see the hypocritical way these rags are now shedding crocodile tears over the fate of so many thousands who in past months would have been dismissed as of no account.

Let us all hope that the worst is now over and try to do what we can to help the unfortunate populations of the devastated areas to rebuild their lives in the years to come.

BRIAN MAHON
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Quantum pioneer

Sir: In the article on Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis of 1905 (30 December) Jeremy Laurance writes that Einstein's seminal paper in 1905 on the photoelectrical effect gave birth to quantum theory. This is not the case.

The birth of quantum theory took place some five years earlier and was due to Max Planck who, late in 1900, resolved the problem of the so-called ultra-violet catastrophe in black-body radiation by proposing that energy is not a continuum but exists in discrete packages which he called quanta. In December of that year he gave a paper at a meeting of the Physikalische Gesellschaft in Berlin in which this improbable quantum proposition was made public. Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1918 for this fundamental work on quantum theory.

Einstein's Nobel prize was awarded not, as many suppose, for his astonishing work on relativity, but for his paper on the photoelectrical effect in which he extended Planck's quantum theory. Planck was one of the the few physicists who understood and immediately accepted Einstein's work on relativity and he became an unstinting supporter of Einstein.

ROLF CLAYTON
London NW7

My predictions

Sir: The astrologer Shelley von Strunckel (You Ask the Questions, 30 December) seems to believe that because a third of Nostradamus's predictions have come "true" over the past 450 years he "was on to something".

I reckon that I could write a few predictions down today that, given the vast scope for human achievement, misdemeanour and the natural world, will come true over the next 450 years. I reckon I could better his rate of 33 per cent if I am allowed to couch my predictions in ridiculously obscure language. Indeed, I predict a success rate of 100 per cent, given that the whole of infinity stretches before us - as long as I don't make the mistake of predicting something immutable such as the end of the world next August.

MICHAEL O'HARE
Northwood, Middlesex

Victory for freedom

Sir: The frantic shredding of state documents before the Freedom of Information Act comes into force on 1 January is evidence of how much government ministers fear being truly accountable.

The shredding is also a tribute to the achievements of a remarkable man. Maurice Frankel, the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, has given 20 years of his life to the struggle against those who prefer to keep the people of Britain in ignorance. That the boundaries of government secrecy will shrink a little is almost entirely because of Frankel's integrity, endurance and political skill. We all owe a debt to this man for expanding our democracy.

JACOB ECCLESTONE
London SE27

Bashing burglars

Sir: Round these parts we find that the wooden battens used in the popular pub game "Aunt Sallie" make missiles that will see off most burglars or canvassers. As for the womenfolk, for goodness sake, whatever happened to rolling pins?

C SLADEN
Oxford

Beyond reason

Sir: A committed rationalist, in the sense in which Peter McKenna uses the term (letter, 31 December), is something I sincerely hope I never resemble, believing that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in that dreary philosophy.

IAN FLINTOFF
London SW6

Dangerous new year

Sir: Most people do without "antibiotics, antibacterials and steroids" every year (letter, 30 December). However, they are not stupid enough to do without them when needed. I take it that if any of the (adult) Rattigans develop a life-threatening infection in the new year they will stick to their principles and die rather than getting cheap and effective treatment.

CHRISTOPHER ANTON
Pharmacy Department
City Hospital, Birmingham

Daylight robbery

Sir: It's a funny old world when the theft of "an estimated £30m" from the Northern Bank is reported as "the biggest bank robbery in the UK" while the £140m annual "revenue" from cash machine charges, which "penalise poor people", is reported as "business" (22 December).

A FREEMAN
Frindsbury, Kent