Letters: Heathrow protestors

Don't sit there feeling guilty - visit the Heathrow protestors

Sir: There is a lot of talk about tackling climate change but not much action, so I just had to find time to get down to the Climate Camp at Heathrow Airport. I wasn't disappointed.

Yes, most of the people down there are the classic environmental activist types but the atmosphere is great and their motivation is commendable. And they accepted me (the boring middle-class guy) in a friendly and professional way which impressed me.

So, I would recommend that anyone who is feeling the guilt that we should all be feeling about our insatiable consumption (especially of air travel) should get down there.

Those people at the climate camp are dedicated but what they really need are hundreds of extra people from from all ages and every walk of life to show up and to display their solidarity on an issue which affects us all.

ALAN SEARLE

MITCHAM, LONDON

Sir: Johann Hari (18 August) is to be congratulated. For those of us who are reluctant to be seduced by the siren songs of the green movement, Hari's article confirmed our worst fears. His scenic depiction of life at Hatton Cross was very reminiscent of 16th-century life among the various Puritan sects: ie, apocalyptic visions and end-of the worldisms.

Linking this new phase of middle-class angst to the American Civil Rights movement will not do either. No doubt Rosa Parks would have been criticised for boarding a bus whose petrol was not lead-free; she should have walked to and from work to stave off obesity.

STEVE HIGGINSON

LIVERPOOL

Stop denigrating state schools

Sir: As a committed state-school educator, it is hard not to feel as if you are fighting a losing battle when The Independent's leader on A-level results day (16 August) suggests that state schools should learn from what makes independent schools successful.

Other than the funding they receive, you suggest that the key drivers of high achievement in the private sector are "ethos", "discipline", "encouragement for sport and the arts", and, lest we in the state sector should forget, "their transparent commitment to bringing out the best of every child". How utterly degrading of the tireless work of thousands of state-school teachers that you should rhetorically ask why we can't replicate these qualities in the state system.

How can a system that selects primarily on the basis of parental income be described as having a commitment to every child? How can a system that is not answerable to Government for its exclusions be described as having a transparent commitment?

The truth is that state schools, and especially those in challenging circumstances, are the places where a positive ethos is established for children, often in spite of negative expectations. They are places where discipline is asserted, usually successfully but sometimes not so, in spite of an increased defiance of authority in all its forms by our young people. They are places where children are encouraged in the sport and arts in spite of the constraints of a restrictive National Curriculum (from which the independent sector is allowed to exempt itself).

Those of us making the hard choice to teach in the state sector will continue to strive against the odds in the hope that at some point in the future some progressive party of government will level the playing field. In the meantime, it would be most appreciated if a supposedly progressive newspaper did not buy into the myths of a benevolent independent sector as a panacea for all of the ailments of state education. We've had too much of that from Government already.

KEVEN BARTLE

BUSHEY, HERTFORDSHIRE

Sir: In an ideal world we wouldn't have the choice between private- and public-funded education; we would all go to the local, high-quality state-funded school. One crucial point is the importance of class size. It is surely obvious that the smaller the class size and the higher the teacher/pupil ratio, the better the education.

DR NICK MAURICE

MARLBOROUGH, WILTSHIRE

Sir: The apparent better results achieved by selective schools will be hiding the results of those who fail to be selected.

In fact, as someone who went to a secondary modern, I would like to see selective education outlawed. It was criminal that my classmates and I were falsely judged at the age of 11. We should never go back there again. I can now say this with even more conviction as my son, who went to the local comprehensive, this year received six grade As at A-level. Comprehensive education is both more just, less likely to waste our country's talent and just as capable of providing educational success.

CHRIS RATCLIFFE

HEBDEN BRIDGE, YORKSHIRE

Sir: What makes independent schools successful is the market mechanism whereby parents choose to make payments in exchange for a good service, with school management having the freedom to provide it.

State-school parents have no vested interest in a service they do not have to pay for. Of course they and we all do pay for it indirectly and inefficiently, but it doesn't feel like it and therefore value for money is not demanded in the same way.

If state-schools managers had to satisfy a market operated through a voucher system, there would be improvements in all areas because their customers would go elsewhere if unsatisfied.

HUGH TOLLER

LONDON SW6

The Coalition has helped spread terror

Sir: It suits the US administration politically to blame al-Qa'ida for the attacks on the non-Islamic Yazidis (report, 16 August), but it is equally possible that it was Sunni, or even Shi'ite Islamic extremist militias.

If the Americans are right and al-Qa'ida was responsible for the attacks, then the Coalition bears a heavy responsibility. Al-Qa'ida did not exist in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's secular Ba'athist regime. The Coalition took responsibility for security in Iraq when it invaded. Having manifestly failed to impose law and order, it has desperately tried and failed to pass responsibility on to an Iraqi puppet goverment and the corrupt and infiltrated Iraqi security services.

Terrorism existed on a small scale around the world before the West attacked the training camps in Afghanistan, but the so-called "War on Terror" has helped to spread and increase it - not least in Britain. The invasion of Iraq has certainly spread it to Iraq, which is now a fertile breeding ground for even greater extremism.

JULIUS MARSTRAND

CHELTENHAM

Ageism in workplace squanders resources

Sir: How right Joan Bakewell is (Opinion, 17 August). The justification for retirement being allowed despite our age-discrimination law, is that age is a supposed proxy for declining capability. Well, it isn't, and sure as hell it hurts!

At least two million over-55-year-olds would like to work but are denied the privilege. Many experience age-discrimination in getting work, well before they reach state pension age. The insanity of all this is that with increased longevity and declining birth rates, we should be doing everything we can to encourage older workers to stay and to remain economically active.

Each day my organisation receives calls from individuals, struggling with the technical traps of the "default retirement age". One caller wanted to complete a piece of work before she retired, but her employer was gung ho to retire her. Another told us his employer would keep him on, providing he took a three-week break to sever his contract, with no provisions for sick pay when he came back.

What a waste of human life and creative endeavour. Disdain is heaped on mistreatment, totally pointlessly and without reason. Hundreds of thousands of willing and needy workers are being fired for no more reason than the ticking of the clock.

CHRIS BALL

THE AGE AND EMPLOYMENT NETWORK, LONDON N1

The innocents on US death rows

Sir: Michael O'Sullivan (letter, 17 August) seems to think that people who oppose the death penalty are bleeding hearts, but he doesn't take into account the number of prisoners on death row in US jails who are innocent.

I used to write to a prisoner in the US who I'm sure was completely innocent of his "crime". He had pleaded "not guilty", his lawyer had received just $750 to defend him and, having been accused by someone who then received a reduced sentence for his own crimes, he was found guilty. He was later offered another trial, having been told that a "guilty" plea would get him off death row. He agreed to this and is now serving 99 years in Florida. The catch-22 is that now he is aware of DNA testing which would prove his innocence, he is not entitled to it as he entered a "guilty" plea.

JILI HAMILTON

GENEVA

Gap-year students can do good in UK

Sir: Any student in fear of being taken for a ride for their gap year overseas should remember that their energy and commitment would not be wasted if they chose a UK gap year (report, 14 August).

Volunteers in the UK support offenders, young people in need, and adults with learning difficulties, as well as helping people with physical disabilities to lead independent lives.

Not only is the need to pay for this once-in-a-lifetime experience removed, but volunteers are entitled to free accommodation, food and pocket money.

IS SZONEBERG

CSV (COMMUNITY SERVICE VOLUNTEERS), LONDON N1

Caricatured view of Venezuelan politics

Sir: Christopher Toothaker's piece on President Chavez's proposals for constitutional reforms (17 August) focuses almost solely on the proposal to abolish the limit on the number of terms that any candidate can serve. Placing this proposal in the false context of a debate about whether or not Venezuela is becoming a "dictatorship" is deeply misleading as Chavez is still required to win elections, something he and his supporters have done very successfully 11 times since 1998.

It also removes the proposal from the more interesting context of a series of measures that would radically extend democracy throughout Venezuelan society, such as strengthening the powers of Community Councils which represent groups of between 200 and 400 families or households. It would be a shame if reporting on developments in Venezuelan society became dominated by tired caricatures that traduce the reality of its revolution.

JONATHAN WHITE

LONDON E17

Whitehall ban on use of 'Doh'

Sir: The upper levels of Whitehall must have experienced very real fear at possible contamination by Homer Simpson, to the extent that orders were issued to ban his most famous saying (Letters, 18 August).

My part of the NHS liaised closely with the Department of Health, and - as the Ministry of Defence is abbreviated to MOD - we used the acronym DOH for our central-government colleagues.

A couple of years before I retired we received instructions to use DH instead, and the Department's letterheads and circulars also appeared with this shorter version. No explanation was ever given, but the inference was clear.

In advance of any Freedom of Information Act enquiry I have to confess that we continued to use the politically incorrect version. DOH!

MIKE INGHAM

LINCOLN

Briefly... Student debt

Sir, Where in all your alarming coverage of student debt (14 August) are examples of students' budgeting? This would help to explain how such sums came about. Were they inevitable, or perhaps due to "must have" profligacy?

ROBERT VINCENT

ANDOVER, HAMPSHIRE

Errant children

Sir: In Roddy Keenan's letter of 18 August, he worries that parents nowadays do not know the whereabouts of their violent children.

But even when I was nine in the 1940s my mother often had no idea where I had gone on my very ancient cycle. And when I eventually reached 16, I was concerned only with girls and my BSA motorcycle. Drinking and smoking had no interest for me at all. But I often didn't get home until the early hours.

DAVID VINTER

LOUTH, LINCOLNSHIRE

Avant-garde Proms

Sir: While agreeing with most of what Adrian Hamilton said in his article (17 August), his line "the Proms is no place for the really experimental or exotic" would surely have appalled Henry Wood. Schoenberg's "Five Orchestral Pieces" was first performed in the UK at a Proms performance shortly after being published - and if that music was not experimental, I'm not sure what could be so described.

ROY HISCOCK

LONDON N16

Empathetic animals

Sir: I was very interested in Steve Connor's article "Why do we yawn? It's all about empathy" (17 August). I look after three ponies, and I do communicate with them. In the mornings, when they are resting, they yawn one after the other and when I yawn (which was a contagious reaction by me) each of my ponies yawns back. We can all keep this going for quite a time. Horses do empathise with each other and I think do have quite strong emotions. I also have a dog but he doesn't seem to yawn in a contagious way.

HILARY LUCAS

GUILDFORD, SURREY

A dignified exit

Sir: In exhorting the over-70s to chose a dignified exit rather than prolonged - and undignified - care in old age, Donald Young (letter, 17 August) suggests that it is time for us to stand up and be counted. Surely he means lie down and be counted out?

JOHN GRIFFITHS

CRICKHOWELL, POWYS

'Class war' video

Sir: Like many others I am appalled at the pupils of Glenalmond College in Perthshire producing a "chav hunting" video ("Public school embarrassed by pupils' 'class war' hunt video", 14 August). Neds are a far more serious problem north of the border. It just shows how out of touch these toffs are.

J IRELAND

EDINBURGH