Letters to the Editor

Within 48 hours they had churned up all the grassed area and thrown beer bottles, pizza boxes and other rubbish into the open space between the trees. They have effectively taken over half the field so that local dog walkers have hardly anywhere to take their dogs plus they risk problems from the travellers' dogs. Where are they disposing of chemicals from their caravan toilets?

When I rang the police, I was told they could do nothing and it was up to the owners of the land to take out a prosecution. Last time I heard of a company doing this it cost time and money applying for a court order, time and effort of the local police to enact the order and £3,000 to clean up after the travellers had finally left - and apparently they were only on site for 14 days.

Why should these people be allowed to get away scot free and everyone else pay out to get rid of them only for them to move on to the next innocent landowner's property?

Carol Younger, Westbury Street, Bradford 4.

SIR - Mike Priestley (North of Watford, May 10) is quite right to highlight the scandal of the continued imprisonment of Tony Martin.

What sort of a country do we live in where Tony Martin is in prison while the burglar he injured is given legal aid to pursue a claim for compensation?

What kind of a country is it where the murderers of James Bulger are given holidays to protect them from the stress of the anniversary of the murder they committed?

The fact that Tony Martin is still in prison is just a symbol of a criminal-justice system which most people think is a bad joke, run by politically-correct do-gooders with no real connection with the real world.

Philip Davies (Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidate, Shipley), Otley Road, Shipley.

SIR - I was disappointed to read in Saturday's North of Watford that Mike Priestley has leapt on the "Free Tony Martin" bandwagon. In the same issue we read about the £400 fine received by the landlord of the Old Kings Head for illegal firearms possession, a sentence described by the chairman of the West Yorkshire Police Federation as "extremely lenient".

The self-defence theory in the Martin case is somewhat undermined by the facts. He owned an illegal shotgun, having been specifically ordered by local police not to obtain one. He lay in wait for the intruders, having been the victim of earlier burglaries, chased them out of the house and shot them both. Hardly self defence.

He then left 16-year-old Fred Barrass to die several hours later from his wounds.

It seems clear that Martin intended to kill or maim his victims, and it is significant that he has shown no contrition or remorse for his crime.

We all fear crime to some extent, but most of us do not believe in a right to own dangerous weapons and to use them indiscriminately on intruders. That way madness lies. We have a legal system, however flawed it may be, and in a civilised society it is on that that we must rely.

C D Priestley, Hatton Close, Odsal

l Mike Priestley says: "I haven't leaped on the bandwagon. I've been on it from the start."

SIR - To Alan Holdsworth of Menston, who apparently would like to die coughing his last breath and hoping his heart gives out before his lungs, then so be it if that is what he wishes (Letters, May 10). But maybe he should take a walk first on to an oncology ward and see first hand what lung cancer can do to you.

I had cancer and I gave up smoking, and I can now run up stairs instead of being out of breath. Admittedly I do miss it, but I value my life more than a cancer stick.

It was ruling my life and so I went to an acupuncturist, and it worked. Everyone can do what they want with their life, but since my bout with cancer I treasure my life much more than he apparently treasures his.

Diane Duguid, E.4th St, Deer Park, New York

SIR - I am delighted to see that the Council's education scrutiny committee has called in the Council's decision to pay Serco more money for under-achievement. However, undoubtedly this will do no more than delay the inevitable and Serco will get its extra money.

I wonder if the Council could explain why it is determined to pay Serco more money when Serco has failed to meet the performance targets which it had contracted to achieve.

Serco was brought in to achieve the improvements which the Government thought the Council education authority could not bring about. Now Serco can't bring in the improvements either.

Rewarding Serco for failure is hardly likely to motivate them to attempt to bring the education improvements which are needed to give Bradford's children a decent chance in life.

Why is the Council satisfied with year-on-year failure in education? And why is it happy to reward the current architects of the failure? I think that Bradford's council tax payers deserve some answers though it is becoming clear why the Council has needed to raise the level of council tax to such an extent.

How many other failures are beneficiaries of the Council's generous reward mechanisms?

K J Trocki, Birchdale, Bingley.

SIR - When are the British Government going to take some action to stop the barbaric treatment of a group of British citizens in Saudi Arabia?

In this supposedly modern, affluent country there are up to seven innocent men, jailed on trumped-up charges, who face a possible 800 lashes and two of them public beheading. They have been subjected to the most degrading treatment and have been tortured to extract confessions from them.

What hope is there for the Middle East when atrocities like this are carried out by one of the supposedly more civilised Arab countries in the area. You could imagine this was a story about the worst excesses of the Middle Ages so it is frightening to realise it is not. Torture and public executions are not the actions of a modern society and this rich, autocratic country should be ashamed of itself.

Our Government should make it perfectly clear to Saudi Arabia it will no longer tolerate this barbaric treatment of its citizens and they should be returned home immediately.

M Wood, Westercroft View, Northowram.

SIR - What on earth is David Blunkett up to now with his new life sentences? A person's life used to be judged by the sum of three score years and ten, but according to Blunkett this equals 20 years.

Life according to the judiciary is ten years (thick or what?), but it is being upped to 20 years. But then again life could mean 30 years or more - or is this life and a half?

Bearing in mind that people live longer these days, life should mean four score years and ten - and for Blunkett's benefit, that equals 90 years!

However we all know that life will never mean life, as this would take many criminals off the streets forever and the judiciary and their hangers-on will object as it would reduce their overpaid livelihoods. What price justice?

Trevor Williams-Berry, Bredon Avenue, Wrose.

SIR - Regarding the letter from Mr Chappell about Concorde (T&A, May 9), I worked at the Thornbury works in the wages office of Lucas Aerospace, who shared office and works space with English Electric in the early 1970s.

They were a completely different firm and it was Lucas Aerospace who made parts for Concorde.

I wonder if any of your readers who also worked for Lucas at this time can confirm this?

L Webster, Thornaby Drive, Clayton.

SIR - An animal behaviourist, Dr Franoise Wernels Felder of the Scottish Agricultural College, has been funded by the Government to study the behaviour of pigs.

This week she reported to a scientific conference in London that in Britain a happy pig is a rare creature!

She reports that a happy pig scampers outdoors, is curious and bouncy, loves humans, is sociable with siblings and when contented lies down and rolls on its side.

In factory farms unhappy pigs live in crowded pens on concrete slats and on floors without straw. They never leave their indoor prison. They are agitated, bored, irritable, listless and helpless. They cannot hide away or withdraw from a dominant pig.

After studying pigs for seven years, Dr Wernels Felder concludes that intensive pig farming causes serious suffering and in many ways is unacceptable.

If this causes you concern, please look for free-range if you buy bacon, pork or sausages, and please write to your MP objecting to the inhumanity of factory-farming.

Daren Crossley, Ferndale Avenue, Clayton.