Letter: Blue viewing

Sir: What a storm in a satellite dish to make an international incident about the satellite channel 'Red Hot Dutch' (report, 21 January). If something like 0.06 per cent of the population are stupid enough to go to the trouble and expense of having a satellite dish, receiver and decoder installed and then pay nearly pounds 200 per year to watch pornographic films in the small hours of the morning, then what harm are they doing?

If, as Lord Rees-Mogg says, the material is like being shown round an abattoir and is totally untitillating, then why all the fuss? Perhaps the Government ought to concentrate on more important issues such as unemployment, where the number of unemployed exceeds the 'Red Hot Dutch' subscribers by about 100 to 1, rather than approach foreign governments about their television output.

The idea that people watching this material will become rapists and perverts must be untrue if one considers that there are occasionally, on French television, some highly pornographic films yet the French seem a lot more mature and balanced in their approach to sex than the English, who would probably like it banned.

Yours faithfully,

C. CROFTON-SLEIGH

Rotherfield, East Sussex