Letters: Cyber-bullying

Sir: I read John Walsh's "Tales of the City" (20 November) with interest. In it, he gave a detailed and emotive account of bullying and, in particular, cyber-bullying. This is something that I have been dealing with for some time.

Cyber-bullying can take bullying out of the playground and into the home. One of the worst things for children who are victims of cyber-bullying is that it is with them wherever they go.

With recent surveys showing that one in five school children have had abusive text messages, bullying using a mobile phone is a growing and serious problem in the UK. But it is a problem that can be tackled and combated in a very specific and targeted way.

Orange has launched an anti-mobile bullying initiative, called Incoming Message, for use in schools. The short film and classroom resources aimed at children 11 to 14 highlight the issues and offer clear, practical advice to victims of mobile bullying. We urge any young person who receives malicious texts or emails, or any other form of electronic bullying, to report it to a teacher or parent immediately. Mobile phone companies can work with the police to track and trace text messages back to the sender and, together, we can stand up to and stop cyber-bullies.

Incoming Message is now in 40 per cent of UK schools and Orange is committed to working with schools, parents, teachers, industry, government and NGOs to encourage the responsible use of our technology. By working together, we can stop cyber-bullying once and for all.

Christèle Delbé

Head of Corporate Responsibility, Orange UK, London W2

Allow Irving to express his views

Sir: I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. My grandparents, four uncles and aunts and countless cousins were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Despite all this, I believe David Irving (letters, 23 November) should be allowed to express his views at the Oxford Union, however repugnant and nonsensical they are.

For me, a key part of being British is being allowed to say what I believe and others being allowed to disagree with me. As long as this is kept within the law it is a basic freedom we deny at our peril.

To prevent people expressing their view is fascism; in this case, liberal fascists are as illiberal as the more traditional ones. Let David Irving express his views on the Holocaust and let him show himself for the fool he is.

Jack Liebeskind

Radlett, Hertfordshire

Biometric datais not secure

Sir: James Baring suggests that it would not matter if data leaked from an ID database because the biometric information would be of no use to criminals (letter, 24 November). He might be less confident about security if he realised that biometric data can be spoofed.

Fingerprints – obtained from a database or from glasses in a pub – can be used to create gelatine moulds that are capable of fooling biometric scanners. Contact lenses can be coloured or patterned to match recorded images.

DNA is irrelevant to the ID debate: the Government is not proposing to use DNA verification because the process takes too long to be practical for routine transactions.

Furthermore, any biometric data used for identification will eventually be converted into a set of numbers for comparison against stored values. If hackers are able to capture these numbers and inject them into other systems, they are capable of impersonating anyone.

Biometrics are not a panacea for information security. Those who believe otherwise have been misled by the hype.

Geraint Bevan

Glasgow

Sir: One question I have not yet heard asked in the "lost disks" debate is why it was necessary to send the disks in the first place.

Unless the government offices involved are still using 56k modems for their internet connections, the volume of data contained on a single CD can be transferred across the internet far more quickly than a courier carrying a disk. A typical 2MB home broadband connection could probably download the entire content of a CD in under two hours.

Secure protocols for transferring files (offering the same level of encryption and security as online credit card transactions) have been available for many years, and the software required is available as a free download on the Web.

The government should immediately ban its staff from putting sensitive data on disks (which can easily be lost/stolen without any intervention by the mail deliverers) and require all files to be sent using secure file transfer across the internet.

That it was necessary to even extract this data into a separate file is worrying. A well-designed system should have been able to provide remote access to the database itself without the need to make and send a copy. Such remote access would also enable far more control over what any given user is allowed to do.

Tim Williams

Birmingham

Sir: I would challenge Ben Bawden's assertions that ID cards are unpopular and would do nothing to prevent terrorism (letter, 13 November).

First, the British Social Attitudes Survey revealed that 71 per cent of the population think that ID cards would be a price worth paying to help tackle threats such as terrorism. Second, no one is saying they will be the answer to everything. However, the Spanish police have themselves said that identifying the terrorists involved in the Madrid bombings was made easier by their national identity scheme. Our own security services have said that ID cards will help in the fight against terrorism.

Identity fraud is a real and growing threat, and we know that it enables other crime, including terrorism. By linking fingerprints to a secure database with strict rules outlining its use, the National Identity Scheme will allow individuals, business, and the state to prove identity more securely, conveniently and efficiently while protecting personal information from abuse.

Meg Hillier MP

Under-Secretary of State, Home Office, London, SW1

Autistic people are not victims

Sir: In response to Doreen Carlson's letter (14 November), as an autistic person I wish to state that I am most emphatically not a "suffering victim" of some imagined "disease". To borrow the NAS campaign slogan, I may "think differently" from most people, but as such I am no more "ill" than if I were, say, homosexual or deaf.

I am in my early fifties and was diagnosed as autistic earlier this year. What has caused me suffering has not been autism, but a lifetime without acceptance and understanding of who I am. I have suffered from accusations of laziness, stupidity and insensitivity, the disappointment of my family when I failed to fulfil their ambitions for me; failed relationships (due to unrealistic expectations on both my own and other people's parts); lost ambitions; countless hours of pointless psychotherapy (aimed, it now transpires, at curing me of being myself); and most recently some 10 years of unnecessarily ingesting antidepressants.

As an autistic person I can be chaotic, gullible, prone to forgetfulness, obsessive at times and easily overwhelmed by the demands of modern society. I am also creative, artistic, inventive and doggedly persistent. I chair the local residents' association, I've taught at university and in community education and I have organised many exhibitions and workshops.

At present, I'm studying for a second MSc and I am the proud and loving mother of two beautiful, successful, academically and artistically gifted daughters.

Eliminating autism from the population, as Ms Carlson wants, would lead to a dramatic and dangerous loss of biodiversity within the human species.

Selina Postgate

Bristol

Sleepwalking into climate change

Sir: Most people seem to switch off whenever the matter of climate change is aired in the media. For the ordinary mortal, contemplating the consequences of climate change is like trying to understand eternity. Yes, it is happening, but so far the effect on my way of life is beneficial, and a warmer world may not be as bad as "they" think. Yes there may be wars as we struggle to grab the remaining natural resources before someone else does, but that is a long way off. This seems to be the prevailing attitude.

Only when the Government brings us up short will we cease to sleepwalk into the future. The immediate introduction of fuel rationing for all private road vehicles and the issue to every person of an annual non-transferable ration of air miles could do the trick.

Mike Jones

Taunton, Somerset

Iceland's fishing policy success

Sir: You ask "How do we balance conservation with the interests of the fishing industry?"( The Big Question, 21 November). I reply that the first step must be to withdraw from the Common Fisheries Policy. There is no way that a policy based on limiting landings but not catches can ever avoid the obscenity of "discards".

If someone had wanted to design a policy to ruin fish stocks, the CFP must be close to ideal. To assert that things can be fixed with a small increase in quotas shows a truly staggering failure to grasp simple logic. The only way to avoid discards is simply not to do it.

The Icelanders have a policy that works, and plenty of cod. In the Icelandic fishing policy nothing is ever thrown back. If fish are caught that should not be, that sector is immediately closed, but the fish are always landed; no discards.

Unfortunately, this will not happen here, because politics is more important than fish. Never mind all the weeping hearts and angst over poor fishermen; in the end fish are expendable. It would be too politically expensive to withdraw from the CFP, and impossible to get everyone else's agreement to a new policy; so bye bye fish.

Adrian Tawse

Weymouth, Dorset

Youth is blighted by the old

Sir: Janet Street-Porter makes an interesting point: "Now oldsters have the cash (and the inclination) to behave exactly like teenagers used to. Hoorah!" (Opinion, 22 November).

Expanding on this theme, "oldsters" are now behaving like the irresponsible teenagers they have always been, and teenagers today cannot act like they used to, thanks to the damage the "oldsters" have caused to society.

We have suffered from their record (and unique) divorce rates, the dismantling of job security and social infrastructure they voted for under Thatcher, and the pollution and breakdown of communities their consumerism has led to.

Our reward for this is to be blamed for the ills they created, and denied the privileges they enjoyed (job security, free degrees, decent pensions and affordable housing). What's more, we will have to be the ones to sacrifice that consumer luxury to tackle climate change, and we will have to work until we are 70 to pay for their enjoyable retirements, that we won't have.

One consolation for the youth of today: those "oldsters" will probably live long enough to enjoy the benefits of being abandoned in nursing homes like their own parents, thanks to the ageism they did so much to create. Hoorah!

Sebastian Crankshaw (26)

London, SW9

Fuel for thought

Sir: The £200 winter fuel payment introduced in 2000 (of which I am a happy recipient) has remained level for seven years, but fuel prices have increased astronomically in that time, so why has the Government not increased this payment in line with inflation? At least, when one reaches the ripe old age of 80, provided you are fortunate enough not to die in the interim of hypothermia, it rises to £300.

Philip Moran

London N11

One to back

Sir: Another one for Sean O'Grady and his lexicon of business clichés (article, 23 November) is back-to-back, as in "back-to-back meetings". This is supposed to mean two meetings, one immediately following the other. Surely such meetings are back-to-front, in that the back or end of one abuts the front or start of the next?

Mike Norris

Dublin

Word to the wise

Sir: Having never before responded to a review of my work, I must point out that of the nine charmingly antiquated and picturesque 18th-century slang terms (blowsabella, twiddle-poop, wibble et.al.) cited in Sarah Bakewell's review of my novel Scapegallows (Arts and Books Review, 23 November) only one, "scapegallows" itself, is used in the novel, and that only once. I am aware of the irritating effect of overuse of quaint historical slang in fiction and would never subject my readers to it.

CAROL BIRCH, Lancaster

Putting the boot in

Sir: In addition to a new manager (report, 24 November), England's training sessions should be inspected by Offex (Office of Footballing Excellence) to ensure technical ability is being taught and there is no hoofing of the ball upfield.

Stan Labovitch

Windsor

Ron's riffs

Sir: Hopefully, when Ron Wood "finally puts his bass guitar in the attic " (Pandora, 21 November), he will not cease trading riffs with Keith Richards, a role he has undertaken for 32 years. Ronnie has occasionally played bass with the Stones but he is primarily recognised as a foil for Richards on lead guitar and as a fine slide and pedal steel guitarist.

Tony Ebbs

York

Hard to swallow

Sir: The collection of "50 best beers" in The Information (24 November) included some of my favourites and it was good to see the Indy promoting distinctive beers. But it amused me to read that St Peter's India Pale Ale could "conjure up dreamy memories of summer harvests". I wondered how many of the tasting panel were farm workers, and how many readers have experience of harvests as anything other than a nostalgic Neverland of the imagination.

Gillian Goodger

Hornchurch, Essex

Point to chew over

Sir: Whats the point of apostrophes (letter, 21 November)? Yesterday I found there was no food in the fridge, so I ate the dogs.

Mike Rogers

Sevenoaks, Kent