SIR - Gordon Brown recently asked the news media to be more responsible in the reporting of crime and punishment.

That he is right was demonstrated by A G Goldsbrough's rather hysterical response to your item about tasers. (T&A, July 26).

The only reference to human rights was in the headline above a comment by Amnesty International.

It nevertheless upset Mr Goldsbrough who seems to blame The Human Rights Act (HRA) for every affront to law and order known to man although Article 2, for example, specifically permits lethal force in circumstances where tasers are likely to be deployed.

The other articles are similarly constrained by the concept of proportionality, allowing them to be overridden in the interests of the community and so having the opposite effect to that imagined by Mr Goldsbrough and the tabloid press.

In cases like that of Shambo the Buddhist bullock, the monks tried to use the HRA to prevent his slaughter.

They lost because as the lawyers say, Article 2 (The Right to Life) trumps' Article 9 (Religious Freedom).

In other words, a potential carrier of TB represents a risk to health which is proportionately more important than his status as a religious symbol.

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley