Letter: Modified food

Sir: Has the world gone quite mad? I am reliably informed that there are plans afoot to bury corrodible pipes in every street and into most every house in the land to carry colourless but highly poisonous and flammable, not to say explosive gas. This is supposed to improve our way of life!

Other so-called do-gooders are seeking to develop a new form of personal transportation relying on a device which involves exploding, at the fantastic and frightening rate of around ten thousand times a minute, a highly noxious liquid refined from the bowels of the earth. These "progressives" assure us that the explosions will be "totally controlled" and safe. I even hear that there are others trying to make this sort of device fly!

Quite obviously, if we had been meant to enjoy or suffer these things, they would evolve by chance and accident. To seek to plan, organise, manufacture and test them is plainly to court disaster on a massive scale. These Grand Modernising Operations should be stopped before it all ends in tears.

DAVID HARVEY

Tynemouth