The Spectator

Tall order Two naval cadets were killed and 19 injured when a Mexican sail training vessel, the Cuauhtemoc, crashed into Brooklyn Bridge. How many fully-rigged sailing vessels are there in the world? — Sail Training International lists 383 such ships which have taken part in races and regattas in recent years. — The oldest still in use, Constitution, was built in 1797. It is moored in Boston as a museum ship but still undertakes voyages. — The Australian navy trains sailors on the STS Young Endeavour, a gift from the UK government to mark the 200th anniversary of European settlement in 1988. Other countries which still train naval recruits on tall ships include India, Poland, Germany and Spain. China launched its first naval training tall ship, the Po Lang, last year.

Decline and brawl Sir: Gus Carter’s insightful portrayal of ‘Scuzz Nation’ (‘Streets of shame’, 10 May) is less of a howl of anguish about Starmer’s Britain than an indictment of previous governments of all stripes since the late 1970s. It is also, to me, a call for more sophisticated thinking about the nature of governance in the 21st century. Carter shows, using lots of telling examples that we all recognise, that neither the state in its current form nor the private sector can cope with the multiplicity of challenges posed by a modern society. Of the state’s impotence, the current government is not the principal offender. To illustrate my point, just listen to a week’s worth of the Today programme and all the requests for extra funding that are heard every day.

Ka-shing in Sir: Ian Williams highlights (‘Chasing the dragon’, 3 May) the degree to which the Chinese state has acquired interests in the UK. Yet he overlooks a few tentacles of the Asian octopus that have curled around my home region of eastern England. Swathes of high-quality arable land are being subsumed into solar farms, panels for which are manufactured in China. The resultant electricity will be distributed by UK Power Networks, controlled, as Ian points out, by Li Ka-shing. East Anglia’s biggest brewer, Greene King, has been China-owned since 2019, held by Li Ka-shing through CK Asset Holdings. Our government seems craven in its attempts to lure Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein to list on the London Stock Exchange.

Cruel intentions Sir: Rod Liddle (‘Let’s strike a blow for honesty’, 26 April) seems to have fallen into the same trap as most writers who support the Supreme Court’s ruling on the trans issue – which is to refuse to differentiate between those who have undergone a full gender reassignment, so that they effectively no longer have the same bodies they were born into, and those who simply put on a dress and call themselves a woman. While it can clearly be argued that a man in a dress might pose a risk to women in single-sex spaces, it can hardly be suggested that a trans woman who has undergone full gender reassignment is in the same category, and should be refused access to women’s toilets and other similar places.

Man out of time Sir: That Mary Wakefield left Rowan Williams ‘with my questions for the most part unresolved’ will come as no surprise to his former students, myself included (‘The ABC of faith’, 19 April). As a ‘mature’ student at Cambridge, there was something very inspiring about Williams the academic, but also comfortingly peaceful about the man; someone always on the journey of discovery and therefore reluctant on many issues to be dogmatic or final about them. His genuine surprise at how the real world operated one easily forgave; his naive approach to other issues, such as Islam, was dangerous but never disingenuous. As an Arabist I did find this hugely irritating.