The almost universal use of the terms "firepower" and "firewalls" in reporting on the financial crisis is odd and strangely revealing (Pressure on Germany to allow ECB to stop the rot, 8 November). Originally "firewalls" were used to combat forest fires, ie a destructive power in Nature, but now the image reminds us of computer programs that combat a malign human agency, albeit in the form of a "virus" and thus, once again, mysteriously, a threat of Nature. In the military analogy of "firepower", the enemy is human, but we all know that human enemies are more comfortably annihilated when they have first been demonised and thus deprived of their humanity.
The implication is that, from the perspective of us kindly, ordinary people protected only by our pensions and savings, those wicked market operators speculating against "sovereign currencies" are unambiguously outsiders, enemies and, even, hardly human. And yet those same fearsome speculators are not outsiders but insiders, an integral part of "the market" that is as inevitable and familiar to us as Nature itself, and whose "freedom" (to speculate without restrictive "regulation") is celebrated as central to "our democracy".
What this imagery reveals, then, is the ambiguity of capitalism, where we cannot distinguish our enemies as a separate and "different" group, because, as millionaire David Cameron tells us, "We are all in this together." But although this is the rationale of capitalism, the emotional quality of our imagery tells a different story.
Professor Richard Winter
Cambridge
? At last, a journalist who uses the term "public money" rather than "taxpayers' money" (Report, 7 November). The latter term reflects a rightwing view that decisions should be made in the interests of taxpayers and, implicitly, that those who pay the most taxes should have the biggest say. The term (like its ugly sister the "tax burden") has become ubiquitous in the past few years. I first noticed it in the Daily Telegraph some years ago, no doubt promoted by the rightwing Taxpayers' Alliance. Now, it is commonly used in the Guardian. Most of us pay tax, but what of those of us who do not, or pay little? Does a newborn baby not have an interest in, say, whether or not public money is spent on schools or on Trident? Shouldn't the interests of an unemployed teenager be considered as much as those of a banker?
Neil Redfern
Ashton-under-Lyne
? Reporting of supermarket profits is symptomatic of what is wrong with our perceptions of the economy. To describe M&S's pre-tax profits for the half year of �320m as a "slump" (Report, 9 November) is to reinforce the false premise that even in times of recession, company profits must increase year on year.
Rick Hall
Nottingham
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/11/words-shift-perceptions-financial-matters
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