This article is taken from the November 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

---

Going freelance

It was good to see the importance of small businesses highlighted by Johnny Leavesley (HOW THE TORIES CAN WIN AGAIN, OCTOBER).

This essential part of the economy has few champions. Many are indeed natural capitalists and exemplars of private enterprise, yet they are woefully unrepresented in Parliament.

I put it to the late Nicholas Ridley that newly-elected MPs should be treated as self-employed (as they were in the distant past), paid more and be obliged to fund their own pensions, instead of coming onto the State payroll.

This would encourage them to think and speak up on behalf of that vital employment sector. He replied, “Good idea — but alas you will never wean MPs off the soft nipple of welfare.”
So that idea regrettably joins the list of “if onlys” — unless a reinvigorated Tory party adopts it.

Lord Vinson

Alnwick, Northumberland

A New Common Ground

Jonathan Clark (BONFIRE OF THE VERITIES, OCTOBER) urges that the resolution (and reconfiguration) of current political conflicts should involve all parties and rejects the “unhelpful” left and right way of viewing progress in doing so.

He is right, but he and others should take a leaf out of the late Keith Joseph’s book and aim not for today’s political centre but for the new common ground which lies ahead.

The obvious and prime candidate for that space should be the rescue and rebuilding of liberal capitalism and the massive widening of asset ownership of all kinds to millions of households, bringing with it the degree of dignity, security and fairness without which social and political divisions will worsen.

Lord Howell of Guildford

House of Lords

Quality over Quantity

At the end of reading Patrick Nash’s affectionate memoir of the political philosopher, Larry Siedentop (FAREWELL TO LARRY SIEDENTOP, OCTOBER), I felt sadness not just at the death of an intellectual whose knowledge was made more purposeful through his sagacity (these two attributes are not necessarily found in unison) but also because academia no longer seems suited to cultivating such minds.

Why is this? As Nash points out, Siedentop only wrote three books. But tellingly, they were on big subjects, suited to a broad intellectual sweep and which informed audiences beyond the cloistered clerisy. They were the summation of decades of study and judicious consideration.
But what university would now tolerate such high quality but low quantity output given that departments are, in part, evaluated on their staff’s ability to churn out content as proof that they remain sentient?

The result is an entire subgenre of academic journals that exist not to answer an intellectual need, but to provide a publication platform for departments to hit a production and citation quota — regardless of the obscurity of the research. How appealing is this narrowing of the horizon for any nascent Larry Siedentop today?

Jonathan Collins

Paris, France

Net benefits

Michael Henderson’s article about Test Match Special (RADIO, OCTOBER), in particular Jonathan Agnew’s retirement, confirmed my decision to dump the radio programme.

I agree that Aggers hasn’t sounded himself for some time — another good radio show ruined by the BBC muppets selected to front it. New depths were recently plumbed when one of them read out an email from the widow of a cricket fan who had asked to listen to TMS whilst dying.

I listen almost exclusively to internet radio these days. The options are nearly infinite, and most music programmes come unsullied neither by adverts nor talky BBC-types.

An honourable mention is RNIB Connect’s Sunset Melodies (for those of us of a certain age) and Music Box. The hosts (Gary Moritz and Sandra Gayer, respectively) are excellent and well versed in the concept that less is more. I would welcome an article by Michael Henderson on internet radio.

David Morley

Melksham, Wiltshire