“This,” says the legend, “is a kitchen with attitude, designed to make a strong statement in your home.” The reference was to the kitchen, not to the people in it. It was a nice example of what John Ruskin called the pathetic fallacy, or the transference of the viewer’s emotions to the external object being viewed. THE advertisement in a morning paper showed a group of four people relaxing in a fitted kitchen before, or perhaps after, an evidently delicious meal. Even to this day some people are a bit sensitive about the incident, though there used to be a pub called the Hartlepool Monkey
JOHN MARTEN
Cottinham, East Yorkshire. I READ with interest and sympathy John Lichfield’s article, until the description of the so-called “Whitby Incident” The event had nothing to do with Whitby. It took place at Hartlepool, and the animal hanged by the locals was a monkey, not a chimpanzee. This makes obsolete the argument that the final decision should be left to the client.
Who are we to put our opinions and needs above those of the people of Burma? We all have a responsibility to address these issues and make ethical considerations a central part of our holiday planning.
PATRICIA BARNETTTourism ConcernLondon N7. Burma is different, as Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of the country, has expressly asked tourists to stay away. While we strongly urge tourists and all involved in the travel industry to weigh up the ethical considerations of tourism, we do not advocate boycotts, agreeing with David Abraham that they often hit the wrong people the hardest. That’s why we suggest that, in places such as Indonesia, people should visit small-scale community-based tourism enterprises that support local people rather than human-rights abuses (listings on the Community Tourism Directory at www.gn.apc /tourismconcern). In many ways their attitudes are far more flexible than the older generation’s; they have had to become more tolerant than previous generations, and face different problems.
It is certain, too, that they don’t accept as readily as previous generations did the perceived wisdom of their elders. There is surely an undeniable case for the maintenance of media anonymity for accuser and accused, of either sex, until a verdict has been reached.GEOFF HINCHLIFFEThetford, Norfolk. I WAS interested to read Laurie Taylor’s article “Still behaving badly? The baby-boomers who refuse to go quietly” (14 November). If she were to take off her feminist blinkers long enough to read a few local newspapers, she would find that men are being accused, publicly pilloried and subsequently found innocent regularly and often, while the anonymity of their feminine accusers is preserved.
While acknowledging that many such accusations are proved justified, the damage done to those men and their families, where innocence is declared, is often irreparable. IN “A VICTIM of schoolboy fantasies” (14 November) Joan Smith complains of the naming of, and publicity given to, the young lady charged with, but subsequently found innocent of, indecent assault. She then cites the case of another young lady convicted of false allegations of rape, and infers that there are double standards of a sexually discriminatory nature at work
The double standards here are her own. Perhaps this is not surprising, since we now know that both Hitler and Stalin experimented with fluoride at 1ppm in the water because of its known effect of making the population more “compliant”.