Letters | 1 December 2007

New world order

Sir: Poor old Irwin Stelzer is stuck in an Atlantico-centric world in which the main debate is still about choosing between Europe and America and deciding which side of the Atlantic Ocean is top dog (‘The Special Relationship is between Washington and Brussels’, 24 November).

When will Washington, or Brussels, grasp that this world has now disappeared? Power and influence have now moved away from the Atlantic powers and in three new directions — to a billion or more participants in the world wide web, to two billion-plus new capitalists in Asia and to the lands of the petrodollars — the latter two now generating most of the world’s savings and exporting the capital which drives the planet’s economy (and buys up our assets).

British foreign policy now has to tune into these entirely new networks of which, incidentally, the transcontinental, trans-north-south, multifaith Commonwealth will be an increasingly useful and important element.

David Howell
House of Lords, London SW1

Hood’s lack of style

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Brendan O’Neill

The moment in the ‘grooming gangs’ debate that shamed Jess Phillips

Sir: Lord Patten (‘Westminster politics has nothing on Oxford’s battles’, 24 November) shows less than his usual savvy in dealing with the vice-chancellor’s departure. It was not only the reforms proposed by Dr Hood that so many Oxonians objected to, but also the manner he went about trying to implement them. To bracket Hood with Lucas and North misses the point. The last two, former heads of houses, worked from within the system to effect change; Hood decided to adopt much less sophisticated methods, wholly alien to the traditional tone and spirit of the university’s counsels.

That tone and spirit are not hard to define. As and when the next vice-chancellor arrives, Lord Patten should present the new incumbent with the works of another New Zealander long resident in Oxford and, as it happens, mentioned by Frederic Raphael in last week’s magazine.