Letter: Lessons of the CB battle

Sir: Further to the arguments for and against mobile phones, I remember in the early Seventies trying to get CB radio accepted as a legal form of communication.

The government of the day's stance was that a driver could not be seen to be in control of the vehicle while using in-car communications. CB then, however, was not seen as something which could be profitable; it was relatively inexpensive and there was no way of taxing the talk time. Mobile phones are at least as distracting as CB was but generate revenue for business and the Treasury. It would seem, yet again, that the hypocrisy of profit leads where common sense is refused entry.

T JONES

Newcastle upon Tyne