Letters: Packaging and waste

Sir: I am afraid that the suppliers your readers are complaining about (letters, 26, 27 January) are designing and producing their packaging in response to customer demand and to the increased sales which more sophisticated packaging brings.

I run a garden centre in Nottingham and the demands from customers for packaging are enormous. People request boxes for items which do not even come in boxes. Any even slightly damaged packaging will render a product unsaleable. Customers are frequently affronted when my staff ask them if they require bags, as if we are trying to save a few pennies at their expense. And unless products come in glossy boxes with pretty pictures on them, they are fundamentally useless to the retailer because they have no chance of selling.

One only has to look at the success of supermarket "Finest" or "Taste the Difference" ranges to understand that customers are demanding more, better and more sophisticated packaging. Manufacturers have to make products that sell, and customers are forcing the issue by overwhelmingly choosing to buy those products which have excessive packaging.

It is too easy to blame the producers while failing to tackle the true nature of the problem. There needs to be a cultural shift among UK consumers if any progress is to be made.

And even more important is to tackle the appalling record on recycling of our councils. I live in Nottingham city and get one general waste wheelie bin. When, as a business, we tried to look at ways of separating our waste and recycling things like plastic carry trays etc, we discovered that we did not generate large enough quantities to interest any commercial companies. By far and away the most cost-effective way to dispose of everything is to chuck it all into one big general-purpose skip - even though this does not reflect the true environmental cost at all.

Surely The Independent should be highlighting the difficulty of recycling, the lack of investment and funding, and the education of the consumer, who is the root of the problem.

CRAIG TURNER

NOTTINGHAM

The Church's role in the adoption debate

Sir: I cannot agree with Mary Dejevsky (25 January) that the proposed legislation on adoption would "remove all discretion" from Church agencies in the placement of children. Sound assessment of those wishing to adopt will still be a crucial task, but they will be forbidden to discriminate against same-sex couples.

The Church insists that its adoption agencies cannot place children with such couples because this goes against its teaching on the sanctity of traditional marriage and its importance in the upbringing of children. Yet Church agencies will place children with single parents regardless of their sexual orientation.

From this it becomes clear that the Church's objections have to do with the presumed physical aspect of a same-sex couple's relationship and the concern that this may lead a child to assimilate attitudes towards homosexual practice at odds with Church teaching. In this regard, the Church's stance on the issue is consistent with its unvarying position in the area of sexual ethics and, as a "self-governing community of the like-minded," it is entitled to maintain that stance.

However, there are consequences for its position in wider society. If, as Dejevsky suggests, the Church can be likened to a private club of religious believers, then the state would have no right to impose its values on it, but it is hard to see how it could then claim exemption from public law while at the same time laying claim to public funding for its activities.

It is impossible to enact a law forbidding discrimination which is then subject to exception, without inviting further exception, to the point where the law becomes meaningless. If, in a pluralist society such as ours, this leads to a conflict of rights, it is for the elected representatives of that society to decide which right must prevail for the greater good. That is the nature of democracy and we must respect it, for it is in that very same democracy that our freedom of conscience is upheld.

FR TERENCE CARR

ST WINEFRIDE'S CATHOLIC CHURCH, HOLYWELL, FLINTSHIRE

Sir: Your leading article (26 January), headed "Unwise appointment" makes the assumption that religious faith is an essentially private matter. Why should we accept this dogmatic statement that religion is a private affair?

Christian faith embraces a beautiful and compelling vision not just for the individual but for society as a whole, and provides a deep motivation for engaging in the public sphere. Are you suggesting that William Wilberforce, Elizabeth Fry, and Lord Shaftsbury should have made no connection between their Christian faith and their social engagement? Would the cause of social liberty and justice have benefitted had they done so? And isn't it a dangerous thing to suggest that a cabinet appointment should be denied to someone on account of their religious convictions? A secularism that arbitrates in this way is by implication pretending some higher claim to truth.

So, please, think again! Let me step outside my private space and say, "There is no better basis of human dignity, equality and freedom than a mutual recognition that we are creatures of God, and by faith in Jesus Christ, his children".

MAURICE SINCLAIR

HON. ASSISTANT BISHOP OF BIRMINGHAM, BIRMINGHAM

Sir: Dominic Lawson writes "It was only in 2005 that same-sex couples were able to adopt children in this country," (26 January).

While technically true, the above statement runs the risk of continuing the misconception that "gay adoption" was introduced to Britain with the Adoption and Children Act 2002.

The Act merely allowed both partners in an unmarried partnership (gay or straight) to become the legal parent of a child via adoption. Before the Act, unmarried couples (again, gay or straight) could and did raise adopted children, but only one member of the couple could become the legal parent.

PAUL WAITE

LONDON SE11

Sir: I am confused over the parallels frequently drawn, in the course of this debate, between discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and on the grounds of race. Is it not notorious that racial discrimination is practiced in the field of adoption, almost as a matter of routine?

No doubt those involved excuse themselves on the grounds that an interracial adoption is "not in the interests of the child". But if that is an acceptable let-out, couldn't a Catholic agency, 90 times out of a hundred, make a similar excuse for rejecting an adoption by gays?

MICHAEL W STONE

PETERBOROUGH

Sir. Seamus MacDermott's letter (26 January) contains false analogies. Muslim and Jewish butchers don't sell pork because they believe it to be unclean. Some doctors won't perform abortions because they believe abortion is wrong. If these people were happy to supply these goods and services to some people but wished to deny them to others, then their position would be similar to that of the Catholic adoption agencies who are happy to provide the service, but wish to deny it to a group of people on the grounds of their sexuality.

PHIL WILDE

HAMPTON, SURREY

Blair's distortions and 'respect zones'

Sir. Tony Blair lives in a bubble of subjective reality in which only things convenient to him are true, such as that the war in Iraq is a great triumph for democracy. With the "respect zones" plan he approaches new heights (report, 23 January). He says "anti-social behaviour" wasn't a concept in people's minds when he was growing up.

I am a year older than the PM, and I remember the "Wilful Damage" posters on the wall of my primary school in Bury, Lancashire. I remember my parents lamenting the lack of manners of young people in the Fifties and Sixties. I remember gangs of "teddy boys" with razor blades and bicycle chains fighting in the centre of town on Friday night. I remember football hooliganism on a scale that would fuel our worst nightmares now; Bolton fans being so incensed at a loss that they smashed the windscreens of hundreds of cars outside Gigg Lane and fought running battles with Bury fans that the police were powerless to stop. I remember foul and overt racism that would not be tolerated now.

Young people today are more caring, more questioning, more intelligent and less racist than they've ever been. I should know, I teach A-levels to an extremely diverse groups of teenagers in an inner-city further education college. They have their faults, and they sometimes annoy people and even break the law, but not one of them has launched an immoral and illegal attack on another country that has resulted in over half a million dead! Respect due!

BRIAN COLLIER

SHIPLEY, WEST YORKSHIRE

The pain caused by emotional bullying

Sir: David Harris (letter, 20 January) obviously has little experience of being bullied; he thinks it does not matter about the bullying on Big Brother because no one was physically hurt. It's like that stupid rhyme quoted by teachers and parents: "Sticks and stones".

I have been the victim of all sorts of bullying at school and in jobs because I have Asperger's syndrome so I come across as odd and a perfect bully's victim. Emotional bullying is far worse than any physical bullying. A slap in the face stings for a bit, being tripped up may graze your knees but it heals over; however, I am still, at 40, badly affected by the emotional bullying I suffered when I was only 11.

Bullies should be shamed and punished so that young people who are most brainwashed by trashy shows like Big Brother will learn that bullying and shouting and swearing are wrong.

ALI BROWNING

LLANDUDNO, CONWY

Prison overcrowding: lessons from the War

Sir: With the overcrowding of prisons in mind (front page, 27 January), I recall the Second World War. Innumerable airfields sprang up in a very short time, on the eastern side of England to carry the bombing war to Germany. The living conditions were basic: Nissen huts, with a single stove, cold in winter, and with condensation running down the sides, the cook house maybe a mile away from your billet, plus many other inconveniences. Yet aircrew and groundcrew all lived under these conditions during the war years, and after. They survived.

Why not construct something similar as a stop-gap? With a security fence and dare I say, guards added. Shades of Stalag Luft I suspect, unthinkable in our nanny state.

P G MORRIS

BATH

Sir: While applauding your highlighting of the absurdity of many judicial verdicts, I have to take issue with one of the examples given on the front cover of your edition of 27 January. Seven months in prison for defrauding the taxpayer of £40,000 seems to me to be a fair exchange.

MARK HOWSON

RUSHDEN, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

Sir: When foreign national criminals are sent to jail, the judge sometimes recommends that deportation follow "at the end of the sentence". Why not at the start?

JOHN BURROWS

LEICESTER

Sir: How will incarcerating Clive Goodman, the journalist found guilty of plotting to intercept voicemail messages of members of the royal family, reduce any kind of threat to the public?

JAMES TAIT

CHESTER

British TV's values

Sir: Attempts to instill "British" values face an uphill struggle so long as schools face competition from the likes of Big Brother and Premiership football. What might pupils watching TV over the last few weeks have learned? That formal qualifications are not important? That cheating is fine as long as you aren't caught? That it's fine for a footballer to earn £80,000 per week but unacceptable for a GP to earn £100,000 per year? Schools are often accused of failing to reinforce "values". In fact, they are one of the few places where any serious attempt to do this is still made.

KATHLEEN MOYSE

COBHAM, SURREY

Sir: It seems contrary to suggest that youngsters would develop more awareness of "Britishness" and "citizenship" if there were less focus on topics such as the Tudors and the Stuarts ("Pupils to learn 'Britishness' in history", 26 January). The Tudor period saw both the establishment of the Church of England and also the origins of what later became the British Empire: both topics which many people consider important in understanding modern British society. The Stuart period saw the beginnings of constitutional monarchy in Britain, also crucial to understanding modern Britain.

ISHBEL M CURR

LICHFIELD, STAFFORDSHIRE

Fourth Afghan war

Sir: Your Helmand correspondent (27 January) is about 90 years behind the times: "the Third Afghan War" was in 1919, consequently we may now be starting on the fourth. The third is little written up, but it may be observed that the Afghans emerged having been granted their war-aim - an independent foreign policy.

P G URBEN

KENILWORTH, WARWICKSHIRE

Who pays for Lebanon?

Sir: While I welcome the news that donor countries at the Paris conference have pledged £4bn towards the reconstruction of Lebanon, given the fact that Israel, with the backing of the US and Britain, caused the billions of dollars in damage to Lebanese infrastructure, they, and not the wider international community, should pay the bill for rebuilding the country.

MAIRTIN O GLIOSAIN

ATHENRY, CO. GALWAY, IRELAND

US military strategy

Sir: Yesterday, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested that a congressional rebuke of President Bush's troop build-up in Iraq would effectively embolden the enemy. I think that by now it is quite clear that President Bush's complete mismanagement of his alleged "War on Terror" is what has emboldened the enemy. A congressional rebuke would be the first clear signal from the US government that some intelligent planning of US military strategy is now starting to happen.

RORY MORTY

GIESSEN, GERMANY