YOUR LETTERS

WELL another 90, 000 euros down the drain again by the regional government. Here the government are trying to convince us that the Catalan language is the way forward. Whilst I agree that local traditions need to be preserved, children in the current education system find it extremely difficult to cope with the Spanish language once they leave school. Students are restricted to enrolling in either the Balearic or Barcelona universities as their Spanish language skills are deficient.

Christopher Jackson
Marratxi

Dear Sir,

I WAS most impressed by the letter of David Lee (Saturday 7th June) which spells out so logically the problems which are besetting the Middle East, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs in particular. I agree with him wholeheartedly that your correspondent, Ray Fleming, appears to have an irrational prejudice on this issue, and cannot somehow bring himself to realise that very few, if any, international conflicts can be settled over a cup of tea with some gravy train merchant from the United Nations. Mr Lee is right, that until Iran is called to order, and its pugilistic despot Ahmadinejad is ousted, peace will be difficult to achieve across Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian lands.

It is both amusing and sad that Mr Fleming had been placing some hope in Barack Obama to take an anti Israel stance but, as it now seems, this can no longer be expected. Quite the opposite.

The same applies to Mr Fleming's continuous apologias on Gordon Brown's current predicament. Trying to pass off the PM's problems on global trends is total nonsense. Much of the economic disaster now affecting the UK can be attributed to Gordon's years at the Treasury, selling off the nation's gold reserves at rock bottom prices, adding at least a million to the drone class of bureaucrats and increasing borrowing for public sector expenditure. The hens have merely come home to roost, and predictably soon, Brown is surely going to fall, or be pushed off his perch. It has been suggested he should go and take an economics degree. I do hope Mr Fleming will soon realise that the facts of life are not necessarily to be found in the Guardian or the Times - and certainly not at the BBC. If he wants to catch the real mood of the main issues, he should consult the rightish wing media of France, Germany, Spain and the UK.

Yours faithfully, Andrew Ferguson