The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 19

THE LEADER PAGE 19 TbeOuardlaih comment 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER Wednesday May 5 1993 When law reform sounds the retreat Newbury, the electors get a different sort of vote. If Newbury, returning a Tory with a majority in a relatively close-fought general election a year ago, swings massively to the Liberal Democrats, then mid-term blues will have started earlier than ever and ministers will start worrying again about the rippling possibilities of a summer reshuffle. When, over the coming 72 hours, you hear a politician say either that this is just one test of opinion among many, remember to ignore it They are all scared about Newbury. Local government's powers have been disgracefully gelded over the last decade, but this week's council elections are not merely a useful mass of data for the political scientists. In spite of everything that has happened to it, local government still embodies a pride in community and a sense of local civic identity.

It remains, in defiance of the new order, an alternative way of judging the needs of the nation. But change is in the air here too. In counties where the old Toryism still clings on, a further Conservative victory threatens to bring a new Thatcherite radicalism to power, upsetting old settled ways. In others, the prospect of experimental agreements, between Labour and the Liberal Democrats beckons. Elections divide in a multitude of ways.

The cross-party fissures over Europe which consume Westminster are not the same as those which split the voters for the local elections. Parliament is riven over Europe, but the issue remains damp tinder on the doorsteps. The agendas of the electors and the elected remain obstinately unrelated, but the loss of Newbury tomorrow will make the parliamentary arithmetic even more nerve-wracking than it is already. Letters to the Editor Fare deal on the railways Peace plan's poor reward for the heroes of multi-ethnic Bosnia RISTOTLE is still causing trouble 2000 years on. The Magistrates' Association does not like his injunction on justice: treating equals equally and unequals unequally in proportion to their relevant differences.

Yet even Margaret Thatcher, who opposed all other forms of egalitarianism In office, insisted that there should be equality before the law. This was the principle behind the new system of unit fines: to ensure the fine imposed on a rich man hurt him as much as a fine imposed on the poor. It is a principle which the courts were supposed to have been applying for decades, but which never achieved any consistency under the old system. A working party under Lady Howe produced just one of many reports showing the inconsistencies of the old way. Hence last October's Criminal Justice Act introduced amore systematic approach based on pilot schemes at four magistrates' courts.

These increased the fines, reduced the length of arrears, and led to fewer people being imprisoned for default Now the new system is to be changed. Why? First and foremost, because the better-off have been complaining. Suddenly, they have discovered just how hard the poor suffer for driving and other offences. To be fair to the magistrates, however, two other complications have arisen: the increase in maximum fines which coincided with the new system, plus mistakes by defendants in confusing net income with disposable income after living costs. Under the scheme, magistrates decide how serious an offence is on a scale of from one to 50 units.

They then have to assess a defendant's disposable income, and multiply the two. In the pilot scheme disposable income ranged from 3 to 25, but with the increase in maximum fines this now ranges from 4 to 100. A host of absurd anomalies have emerged, like a 200 fine for a late library book (the mother had not disclosed her low income) to 500 for parking on a double yellow line (reduced to 36 by the Appeal Court). Much of the magisterial heat was taken out of this issue by the Home Secretary's retreat yesterday: a pledge to reduce the 25 to 1 multiplier to something nearer to the 8 to 1 in the pilot scheme. Meanwhile, the row over taking a defendant's record into consideration is more complicated.

Its principle, too, has been well established. No offender should.be punished twice for the same offence. This section only enshrines what was supposed to be court practice: offenders should be punished for their latest offence and no more. First offenders may get reductions, but recidivists should not have extended sentences. What the row has exposed is a lust to punish for previous offences.

Aristotle would not have approved. ordinated services without fear of interference from the competition authorities and a drastic reduction in the role of Rail-track, so -that companies have responsibility for all the factors involved in service provision ie track, signalling and trains. It is likely that the private sector could manage our railways better than the present BR organisation but it will have no chance whatever of doing so within the bureaucratic and legalistic tangle proposed in the present Railways Bill. Neither will any reputable company wish to become involved on the terms now on offer. (Prof) W.

P. Bradshaw. Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford. YOU SUGGESTED (May 1) that private rail companies would raise fares substantially. Apart from business journeys into London, raising fares will not increase revenue.

It is a fact that price increases of the order of 25 per cent would drive away 33 per cent of passengers except those using Intercity and Network Southeast at peak times. Ministers and policy advisers do not recognise how weak is the competitve position of the railway against the lorry and the car. In this weak position fare increases are not a viable strategy. Even in the business and commuter markets if fares are raised substantially business will gradually seep away towards coaches, car sharing and work relocation. But as higher fares drive away passengers, any attempt to cut costs proportionately will also fail because railways have such a high level of fixed costs.

A train with 70 passengers costs as much to run as one with 100 and when service frequency is cut more passengers are lost If privatisation is to be successful the government must urgently re-think its strategy and create conditions in which the private sector will bring the huge amount of investment needed to modernise the railway. These conditions include long term (25-30 year) exclusive franchises for large geographical areas of the country; a willingness to let bus companies become involved in providing co IAN BLACK'S remark that the Vance-Owen plan for Bosnia appears to reward the aggressors and punish the victims is of course accurate (Compromise deal recognises ethnic cleansing, April 3). Any ethnic "cantonisation" of Bosnia, where the Muslims were concentrated in cities while most Serbs were spread widely through the countryside, would inevitably produce a map unduly weighted in favour of the Serbs. The apparent bias of the plan is an inescapable consequence of accepting the doctrine of ethnic segregation which the radical Serbs have demanded, and to which the UN negotiators have effectively surrendered. Mr Black, however, omits to note a less familiar but perhaps even more tragic injustice of the plan; its complete failure to provide for those Serbs and Croats who have remained loyal to the elected Bosnian government For instance, the city of Tuzla, presently in government hands and allocated to a Muslim canton by the plan, still contains over 40,000 Serbs, who have had the courage to defy the logic of ethnic particularism, and who support the government's vision of an ethnically-integrated state.

Is it the fate of such Serbs to remain in an overcrowded Muslim-dominated canton, or must they migrate to the Serb cantons to face the wrath of those whose prejudices they defied? Poor reward, in either case, for their principled stance. Similarly, and even more cruelly, the plan ignores the many Bosnian citizens who are born of mixed marriages. These people represent some eight per cent of the country's total population, yet are unlikely to feel properly at home in any of the new ethnic cantons. The same goes for the country's smaller minorities, such as the Jews, the Albanians, and the Gypsies, who would have enjoyed equal citizenship of a multi-ethnic Bosnia, but will now be deprived of any natural home. Let it be noted, as part of the funeral rites for Bosnia's elected and multi ethnic government, that the victims of the plan include not only the Muslims, but the loyalists of other backgrounds, whose resistance to the nationalist propaganda of Zagreb and Belgrade has made them the real, albeit ignored, heroes of this war.

Michael Sugich. Bristol. YOUR claim that Yugoslavs have black market currency deposits in Cyprus is misleading (UN tightens the economic noose on Serbs, April 20). The implicit suggestion that somehow this takes place with the knowledge of the Cyprus authorities is totally unfounded. Cyprus has strictly complied with all relevant UN Security Council resolutions and will not countenance any breach of sanctions against Serbia.

Christos Ioannou. Deputy High Commissioner, Cyprus High Commission. I UN I VfR SITT HotlPAY ROTA Paying for peace THE TROOPS for Bosnia not only have to come from somewhere. They must be paid for too. The expanded UN role under the Vance-Owen plan will make this a larger and more costly intervention than Cambodia or Somalia.

It also raises very sensitive political questions as to how far the UN can really be in charge. Those who make up the pay packets make the decisions too: in the Gulf War the UN did neither. If Bosnia becomes a real operation under UN control, it will need a lot more real money. Two years ago the UN had some 15,000 peacekeepers around the world. Now it has nearly 55,000.

The budget for 1992 was $1.4 billion, of which more than one-third was owed by member states at the end of the year. Somalia by itself now makes these figures look derisory. If the UN forces who took over there yesterday stay for a year, it will cost $1.5 billion. In Bosnia, exceptionally, peace-keeping forces for UNPROFOR have been funded separately. This reflects the way that troops were committed last year through decisions by individual governments.

Such an ad hoc approach is even less desirable now. Last week the Secretary said the UN should have "overall political and strategic control" exercised by him under the Security Council. Funding should be provided by UN member states under the "peacekeeping scale of Giving the UN the cash and the soldiers it needs to do its peacekeeping job properly has been resisted' before by the Permanent Five who reckoned that was their job. Under the pressure of appalling events, this attitude is changing. A year ago the Secretary-General sought to improve UN funding and provide a permanent way of raising armed forces.

The Security Council only gave a perfunctory nod of approval. This year the Ford Foundation has produced a more far-reaching plan for UN funding in its report "Financing an Effective Where Mr Boutros-Ghali had proposed a peace-keeping reserve fund of $50 million, the report called for $400 million. It also proposed a unified peacekeeping budget, financed by a single annual assessment with a revised scale of charges to spread the burden more fairly. Late in the day, these arguments are finding support among governments once scornful of much more modest ideas. The Clinton administration has begun to take a more positive view than its predecessor.

On Monday its UN ambassador said she was in favour of a standby force provided for in the Charter but blocked for the past four decades. The sums required for effective UN peacekeeping may seem enormous (although there is some double-counting: the troops and the equipment are already waiting to be used). But countries like Britain with forces in Bosnia area are paying separately anyhow. Compared with world spending on national it is a small price to pay for the real thing. Out of order on genetic care No picnic on the campus AIHTLST I am delighted that David Hencke draws attention to the worsening salary, position of university teachers (Guardian, May 3), I am very unhappy that he has perpetuated the myth that we have a relaxed lifestyle with long holidays.

Let us get the facts straight. Undergraduate students have long vacations. University staff, whether they be academic, technical, secretarial, administrative or contract research staff, together with post-graduate research students, do not Indeed; most university staff have less holiday than, for examples civil servants with equivalent seniority and qualifications. Furthermore, research, to which Mr Hencke alludes as if it were an optional extra, is actually required of us as part of our job description. Far from merely "keeping us in the spotlight amongst our the research of every university department is rigorously assessed at regular intervals by the Higher Education Funding councils.

Naturally, research goes on right through the year, but certainly more is done when the undergraduates are away. Failure to understand these basic facts about what universities actually do lies behind suggestions by government ministers that a fourth teaching term should be introduced. This would not decrease the length of our holiday, but it certainly would decrease the research output of the universities. Finally, any suggestion that Quality Council Division of Quality Audit and assessed by the Assessment Units of the Funding Councils. The former place considerable emphasis on the need for staff development to improve the teaching skills and practices of individual staff, and the judgments of the latter are reflected in their councils' funding.

Anything more, and in particular the linking of pay to individual teaching, would be counter productive. It is also worth noting that the recent research by the Quality in Higher Education Project at the University of Central England has shown that students are more concerned about the quality of their learning environment (lecture halls, laboratories, libraries, as well as access to staff) than about the teaching skills of individual lecturers. It is to be hoped that this prime demand of students will be recognised in the proposed charter, even if it should commit the Government to increased resources. Lewis Elton. Professional Adviser, Universities' Staff Development UnitoftheCVCP.

the day-to-day life of an academic is laid-back must be treated with derision. The reality is that as we deal with vastly increased student numbers, decreased funding, regular assessments of research and teaching quality, visits of validation boards, and ever-increasing amounts of administration, many of us are working with high levels of stress: ask our partners, our families, our GPs; they will confirm the truth of this. (Prof) J. A. Bryant.

University of Exeter. THERE IS a far stronger argument against the linking of pay rises for academics to students' assessment of their performance in lecture hall and seminar room than any presented in your report (May 3). It is that what is important for students is the quality of the totality of their learning experience, which includes not only lectures and seminars, but tutorials, laboratories, field work, projects, etc; the objectives, structure and content of their courses; support services and the quality of university life. All this is of course already audited by the Higher Education YOUR article (May 3) of the legal action being taken by a father to persuade the Health Secretary to provide potential life-saving treatment for his son, will be the first of many if the NHS internal market does not change its rules to accommodate the needs of those with rare genetic disorders. As things stand, there is, as your story so graphically highlights, little incentive for any NHS Trust Chief Executive or District General Manager, to develop facilities to treat any of the 4,000 separately identified, genetic disorders.

At present, there is little pressure to do so because for many, there is as yet, no treatment available. Our understanding of human genetics is advancing rapidly and it is probable that many of those disorders will, in the foreseeable future, will be treatable. Given the rarity of each of these conditions, when taken separately, it will not be economic for any one hospital to develop as a treatment centre. Taken together, about half of childhood deaths are due to genetic causes and by the age of 25, five per cent of the population will have been affected by a genetic disorder. The demand on NHS resources by these families, now and in the future, is enormous, yet the money to provide treatment and a possible cure, cannot be found because of a short term approach to financial accountability and an internal market which is dominated by a need to balance the books now, at the expense of greater long-term costs in the future.

Rare genetic disorders are not sensibly managed by the mechanism of the market place. The Secretary of State must adopt' a more strategic approach, which recognises the devastating impact of genetic disorders on whole families and the rate of scientific advance, which will make many hitherto incurable diseases amenable to treatment in the future. Alastair Kent. Genetic Interest Group, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford. Boothroyd's bombshell POLITICIANS rely on votes, and for that reason they also fear them.

Elections, and even important parliamentary divisions, may seem routine matters from the outside. To politicians, accustomed to remaining in charge of their destinies and safe from change, votes are their kiss of life or death. Yesterday Parliament got its vote on the social chapter of the Maastricht Bill. By deciding that MPs could vote on this key issue, Betty Boothroyd did a service both to earthy common sense and to the loftier theories of representative democracy. If she had not done so, Parliament would have been an ass.

But the eye-opening consequence of her decision was the nervousness it caused. All of a sudden, merely as a result of Miss Boothroyd's decision, ministers trembled. Men and women who have told us insouciantly for months that the results of particular votes on Maastricht amendments did not matter, conferred anxiously in the corridors of Westminster. The briefings which calmly assured us that the amendments were a technicality turn out, when tested against reality, to have been more smokescreen than substance. Ministers won't lose their bill in the end, but they are being made to sweat for it How gratifying to see it, even for a few hours.

Tomorrow, in the counties and in Social justice across the colour divide Classy talk at the dinner table and the south-cast who habitually refer to their mid-day meal as dinner and their evening meal as tea, as do working class people all over the country. The reason Jill Morrell calls her mid-day meal dinner has nothing to do with where she comes from and everything to do with her social background. L. F. Shlppey.

120 Fox Lane, London N13. WHY DO so many Northerners (such as the one who presumably penned your leading article, Movable feasts, Guardian, May 3) constantly labour under the Illusion that Southern England is populated ontlrely by the middle classes? Your leader writer (who presumably during his time in London has never ventured east of Clerkenwell) should know that there are millions of working class people in London A Country Diary association with totalitarianism and those who want to claim him as a martyr without acknowledging the centrality of his communism to his beliefs, fail to understand the true nature of the man and of his influence. Throughout his life Chris was motivated by a passionate belief in the achievement of social justice through the reorganisation of society. It is true that he trained in the Soviet Union when that country was one of the few prepared to give material support to the opponents of apartheid and when the liberal democracies were bolstering the fortunes of big business and the white minority. He was always grateful for that support but it did not blind him to the faults of Soviet society and his brand of socialism was very different He understood and tried to explain the excesses of township militants but he imer condoned, let alone orchestrated, them.

Chris Hani dedicated himself to the struggle for freedom in South Africa. He lived his ideals every day under the ever present threat of assassination. Guardian journalists are lucky that the price of expressing their opinion is a letter to the editor not a bullet in the head. M. Nkosana.

London NW6. there are forces of darkness at work in that country, they were responsible for his death, not guiding his life. Hopefully, his positive influence will survive the cruel and wasteful nature of his taking off. Pearce. could, I suppose, argue that he was merely trying to redress some sort of balance, given the large number of eulogies written for Chris Hani.

He also seems to be suggesting that for a white (Brink) to be attacking other whites (the government) is hypocritical. Many whites have been part of the struggle from the earliest days. A love of justice is usually colourblind. If Andre Brink was black, would that be OK? Michael Shevelew. London E17.

THE colleagues that Edward Pearce castigates for their "caramel textured" coverage of the Hard murder took the trouble to research their subject What Pearce does is to regurgitate the right wing propaganda and demonology which played a major part in stirring up the political hatred which led directly and Inevitably to the assassination. Yes, Chris Hani was a communist and he was proud of it. Those like Pearce who use this allegiance to vilify him by EDWARD PEARCE'S PS (April 29), although purporting to be a critique of Andre Brink's piece, had far more to say about Pearce's attitudes to the situation in South Africa. Heroes, by the very nature of that position, do not evoke lukewarm responses. When someone held to be a hero is brutally murdered, the response must surely be expected to be more than "Oh, shame." Pearce makes much of Chris Hani's involvement as leader of Umkhonte we Sizwe.

He clearly does not approve of the organisation's activities. We are not told what he thinks of the 45 years of National Party government oppression. An interesting element of the article was the outline of the agenda for a South Africa under the "bogey man" figure of "Comrade Is this speculative opinion or informed comment? If the latter, from whence the Information? Pearce obviously discounts any notion that the ANC may in fact, be a non-racial, nonsec-tarian, broadly based party, whose aim is a free and democratic South Africa. Clearly this does not make good copy. Chris Hani was a pivotal figure in the moves towards freedom and Justice for all in South Africa.

If Music to the traveller's ear in the fields aboot Orleance and lions in France, from whence they have been brought into the most part of Europe." The first record of "wild" colonies 6eems to have been that of one on Ruislip Common, Middlesex, around 1700, but the Oxford sites "in damp meadows near Oxford" were only noted in 1780. The" comparatively recent appearance of this plant as a widespread wilding is supported by Dr Claridge Druce's observation in his Flora of Oxfordshire "It is not a little singular that the fritillary, so conspicuous a plant of the Oxford meadows, should have so long remained unnoticed by the various botanists who had resided In or visited Oxford." WD CAMPBELL. OXFORDSHIRE: In my schooldays in Oxford, at this time of the year, gypsies placed themselves at sites such as Carfax and outside the Randolph Hotel, to sell bunches of Snake-shead Fritillaries. The nearest site where these could have been gathered was in Magdalen Meadows. But these were protected and other local sites had presumably already been over-exploited, for the gypsies had to go further afield to a damp meadow near the Windrush at Ducklington.

I was taken to the site once again and the display was at its best. A flat field near the Windrush was dotted with thousands of the blooms. Most were of the normal dark-che-qered red form, but whites were plentiful. I had just remarked to my companion that it was odd that no intermediate colour forms existed, when she said "What about this?" and pointed to a rose pink specimen but we could find no other. In this site, with an undercarpet of dandelions in bloom, and the abundant foliage of Greater Salad burnet and grasses between, the fritillaries looked perfectly natural.

But although it is possibile that it is a rare native, there seems abundant proof that most of our colonies had their origin in introductions from the Continent in the late 17th century. Thus no 16th or 17th century herbalists or early botanists, knew of the Snakeshead as a native, Gerard wrote "These rare and beautiful plants grow naturally wilde the week. I am glad I didn't because it was a magnificent concert, under a first rate conductor, given at a very convenient time for folks who live out of town and don't want to be travelling around late at night Please could we have more concerts early in the day? Lindsay Charlesworth. Aston Road, Brighthampton, Witney, Oxon. DAVID MELLOR should know (On a Haitink to nothing, April 30) that the Albert Hall was almost full for the Berlin Philharmonic anniversary concert at the "bizarre hour of 10.30 am" last Saturday.

I am sure that poor advertising caused the Initial slow take up of seats. I only saw a small advertisement by chance and then nearly returned the tickets on hearing the usual banal advertising on Classic FM during.