Only a fool would claim it would be desirable to reduce British wages to Indonesian levels, but this ignores the impact of trade with developing countries in reducing demand for unskilled labour in advanced countries, while increasing demand for the more skilled. That relatively small levels of trade with developing countries have had a significant impact on wages and employment shows how significant globalisation is, not the opposite.
Globalisation has led to a relative rather than absolute shift in power from nation states to global markets, but this has still undermined much of the post-war order A good example is industrial policy. In Britain, as in many other countries, this has largely been reduced to offering incentives to multinationals to locate here, effectively transferring taxpayers’ money to them.Jonathan PerratonPolitical Economy Research Centre, University of Sheffield. Brian Josephson (Letters, 12 January) misunderstands Richard Dawkins. The selfish gene theory doesn’t require “a direct correspondence between specific behaviours and specific genes”. A gene’s direct effect is to synthesise a protein, which indirectly affects physiology and behaviour.

A specific behaviour pattern can be statistically more common with a particular gene than without it. This is all that is required for that gene to be selected; if the behaviour aids the survival and/or reproduction of that gene, it becomes more numerous in the gene pool. The term “a gene for” is often used, which is not genetic determinism but shorthand for “a gene making [a specific behaviour] more frequent than it would be without the gene”.
In fact, such “genes for [a specific behaviour]“, aren’t usually real, known genes, but hypothetical genes, used to show how any DNA “causing” the certain behaviour would spread throughout the gene pool.William HoppittFiskerton, Nottinghamshire. The most corrupting thing in political or, indeed, in any other kind of journalism is personal friendship The next most corrupting is making a forecast It is so in two respects. The forecaster may try to make out that he has been proved right whatever the evidence to the contrary. He may attempt also by one means or another to make the forecast come true Against both tendencies I am constantly on my guard.

For towards the middle of last year, certainly well before the beginning of the present session of Parliament, I predicted that Mr John Major’s government would fail to last the winter At that time he had a small but still an absolute majority. Some people who cannot see beyond their noses and think that everything stays the same thought that miraculously he would retain it. Others were prepared to acknowledge that he might lose it but thought that nevertheless he would contrive to reach his preferred date of 1 May 1997.
After all, Lord Callaghan had survived with a minority government in 1977-78 by means of the Lib-Lab pact. Even when the Liberals withdrew from the arrangement in 1978, he still managed to carry on until he was brought down by a combination of Conservatives, nationalists and Irishmen. The government fell because of its immobility in the face of the Scots’ failure to jump the voting hurdle for securing devolution.

The barrier had been erected by the Labour MP Mr George Cunningham. Contrary to mythology, the so-called winter of discontent had nothing to do with the matter – though it affected the subsequent general election.Three politicians were principally responsible for Labour’s survival in 1976-79 (for the government had lost its absolute majority in 1976, before the formation of the pact). They were Mr Michael Foot, the Leader of the House; Mr Michael Cocks, the Chief Whip; and Mr Walter Harrison, his deputy Mr Cocks was ennobled Mr Foot does not care for such baubles. And Mr Harrison? The former electrician retired from the lower House in 1987 and lives in his old constituency, Wakefield. I do not know whether he wants to be a member of the upper House. But if he does, and if membership of that body is to be conferred on persons who have done the party some service in their time – as it constantly is – Mr Harrison deserves at the very least a life peerage and would deserve a hereditary viscountcy if such peerages were not shortly to be abolished by his own party.Here, incidentally, as we are on the subject, there is a certain ambiguity about Mr Tony Blair’s intentions.

When the proposal to abolish the voting rights of hereditary peers was first muted, Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor- in-Waiting, let it be known that those of first creation would be spared. There were only a few of them, the best known being Lords Whitelaw and Tonypandy together with assorted members of the Royal Family. Now the message has changed: those to be preserved will be peers, not necessarily of first creation only, who play “an active part” in the deliberations of the House Make of that what you will. I should guess that Lord Whitelaw would be saved for the nation, while the royal peers could safely be exported to the Getty Museum at Malibu in California without any fear of public protest; if, that is, the museum in question wanted them in the first place. No one seems to have thought of the position of the royals under Mr Blair’s scheme. As with many of Labour’s proposals, it comes apart when closely examined, like an old cardigan that has been got at by the cat.