My Letters published in the Daily Telegraph
or the Sunday Telegraph
Published Thursday 31st September 2023
If each of us, when in the role of pedestrian, can be successfully persuaded never to step onto a road, even at a pedestrian crossing, without first ensuring that it is safe to do so, 20 mph suburban speed limits would be unnecessary. Collisions with vehicles could be avoided if only we used a bit more common sense.
Published Sunday 22nd May 2022
You report (15th May), that Oscar Hammerstein was “furious” that the composer Richard Rogers received more credit for their work together.
In Opera, it is universally accepted that the composer gets the praise, not the librettist. Musicals are not so different. The tunes from Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific etc are enjoyable if played by an orchestra without anyone singing the words, but few if any would be interested in hearing just the words spoken, without the tune.
Published Sunday 23rd January 2022
The letter in the Sunday Telegraph (16 Jan) against foxhunting tells just one side of the story, but both sides deserve to be heard.
Some years ago, when foxhunting was still legal, a research project was undertaken in which every fox killed by a particular hunt was sent to a laboratory to establish how it had died. In every case, it was found that the fox had died instantly following a bite on the back of the neck by the lead hound, and all the wounds to the body had been inflicted after the fox was already dead. This proves that hounds do not rip foxes to pieces. The first hound to catch the fox despatches it very quickly. That which is subsequently torn up is not a fox, it is the dead body of something that was once a fox. Tearing up dead meat is not cruel. Hunting must be preferable to the current situation where so many foxes are shot and injured. It is very difficult to shoot dead such a small swiftly moving target – and so they get away and die slowly in agony.
Few of those who hunt have ever been near enough to the front of the chase to see a fox despatched, so it is a myth to claim that enjoying such a spectacle is the reason for hunting. Those opposing it raise no objection to the depiction of savage predation in television wildlife programmes, which are regarded as good family entertainment.
Published 26th March 2019
Baroness Brenda Hale’s insistence (DT Monday) that since women make up half the population, they should comprise half of the judiciary, has two fundamental flaws. Firstly, promotion should be based rigorously on merit and nothing else, striving for complete gender neutrality. Secondly, it ignores the gap of many years between joining the legal profession and getting promoted to the judiciary, indicating that the gender mix of the judiciary should strive to match the same mix as that of those recruited to the legal profession as many years ago as it generally takes new lawyers to become judges. That would be a perfectly acceptable goal.
Published 21st June 2018
There is scope for budding entrepreneurs to find some inexpensive way to retrospectively fit Faraday Cages to school classrooms. Named after Michael Faraday, they prevent the passage of radio waves and thus make mobile phones inoperative inside. Many of us would also like to see them built into theatres, cinemas and restaurants.
Published 10th May 2018
If junk mail is seriously curtailed we would miss out on our usual daily delivery of rubber bands and we would have to buy them.
Published 3rd August 1995
As a 30,000 miles-a-year user of our motorway system, I would fully support the introduction of motorway tolls, but most emphatically not if they are to be based on a mileage charge, as suggested (report Aug 1).
The only sensible way forward is to allow isolated sections such as the Doncaster bypass to remain toll-free as at present, but to charge a flat rate of , say, £5 per car or £10 per truck for entering Britain’s motorway system, irrespective of the distance travelled.
This would favour the long-distance user for whom the main motorway trunk-road system was intended, at the expense of pricing off the motorway those who are using it for only short distances and for whom there are generally plenty of sound alternative routes.
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