Letters: Collateral damage

Sir: Like Hermione Eyre ("Why I forgive the police for raiding my home", 17 November) I had my door wrongly rammed by the police earlier this year. Rather than forgiving them she should ask whether anyone compiles figures of wrongful forced entries by the police and correlates them with the identity of the judges who granted the warrant. Are some judges granting warrants too easily without demanding a proper standard of evidence from the police?

When policemen break down the wrong front door a judge's signature has condemned a householder to weeks of inconvenience, sleeplessness, social suspicion and, if you happen to be old and fragile, a fair chance of death from heart failure. Policemen are completely protected by a judge's signature on the warrant, but what protects citizens from the carelessness of policemen and judges?

In the past decade the threat of terrorism has been used to justify a frightening erosion of our liberties. The technology of universal surveillance encourages the state to assess all citizens as potential criminals. This cannot but alter the attitude of the police at home to something not entirely dissimilar from that of the Army abroad: Hermione Eyre and I are collateral damage. Should we really sit back and allow casually destructive incompetence to go unpunished? It struck me how easily the police could have checked that I wasn't the bald, foreign fly-by-night drug dealer they were apparently expecting.

Statistics on such mistaken police raids need to be collected and published so that judges and policemen have an incentive to do their jobs thoroughly, rather than assuming that we will forgive them their trespasses.

J Carne

London SW6

Too early to teach children to read

Sir: Your leader on reading (19 November) just mentions in passing what should be at the centre of the reading controversy – namely, that "the age singled out [of six] may be a bit early to expect most children to read".

No one disputes that it is important for children to leave school able to read. But why cannot politicians (and leader writers) question the assumption that earlier is somehow necessarily and always better? The accumulating evidence is showing conclusively that the opposite is the case: that over-formal learning for children at too young an age is harmful to them in the longer run.

The Conservatives' new idea that all children will be tested for reading at six will only entrench the current "toxic" regime of children being forced into over-intellectual, cognitively biased learning at far too young an age.

It is now being widely recognised that children are growing up far too quickly – and we can see the noxious results all around us. We need government policies that will slow down the "adultification" of children, not ones that can and will only make matters even worse.

Dr Richard House

Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University, London

Sir: David Cameron's pronouncement that all children should be taught to read by the age of six is a classic example of putting politics before sense. Many are not ready to learn to read until they are six or seven. It is certainly disgraceful that children are leaving primary school at 11 unable to read. However, pushing them harder earlier is not the answer.

Studies have shown that learning phonics first is important for long-term reading and spelling ability. But our focus on memorising certain key words in Key Stage 1 in order to pass SATs means that children who don't pick up phonics easily are learning whole-word sight reading first instead. Paradoxically, starting their literacy so early is actually contributing to poorer literacy skills further down the line.

Ellen M Purton

Twickenham, Middlesex

Sir: The best way to teach children reading?

Before they go to school, on mum's or dad's lap, after lunch, or at bedtime, listening to a story as they drift off. When they want to, let them, don't make them, follow the words. Of course, that can't happen if parents are bullied into long hours of work.

Make school an exciting place for children, not a battlefield where teachers are bombarded with stats, not a place for force-feeding infants. Wait until children are capable.

Set teachers free to use the method they find most successful for themselves and the children they are teaching. Teachers know more about teaching than politicians.

Bill Hyde

Offham, Kent

Sir: I am greatly cheered by David Cameron's announcement that, once in power, he is going to get every child reading by the age of six. At last we have someone who is prepared to brush aside the failed attempts of thousands of specialists over the last hundred years, go straight to the heart of the problem, and solve it by the exercise of simple Conservative common sense. This is the man we need in these difficult times.

But why stop at reading? There's the problem of renewable energy. And it would be wonderful if he could find the time to deal with cancer, starvation and war. I know who I'm going to vote for.

Michael Swan

Didcot, Oxfordshire

Two places on the autistic spectrum

Sir: I am autistic, and have followed the latest autism "battle" in your letter columns with great interest. Since the National Autism Society has a long history of leading the global effort for raising awareness about autism and about autistics' human rights, its latest campaign has the potential to improve quality of life for millions of autistics, reaching far beyond the shores of the UK.

Nobody questions people's right to do their best to raise their children into becoming independent people, but they will always remain autistic and they will always need recognition and acceptance as such.

While "classical" autism has been widely known for over 60 years now, the more "high-functioning" regions of the autistic spectrum are still mostly unheard of. Your NAS has been doing a great job of raising awareness about the autistic spectrum in its entirety and its latest campaign looks like another move in the right direction.

We, autistic adults, need human society to cherish us for what we are, rather than make futile efforts to change us into something we could never be. It was the great Hans Asperger who wrote: "It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential." And indeed, if it wasn't for autistic qualities, we would have never enjoyed the achievements of great scientists such as Albert Einstein, Alan Turing or Paul Erdos, who all exhibited pronounced autistic characteristics

Eliminating autism from the face of the earth would eliminate qualities that are required in order to maintain and advance human civilisation.

Chen Gershuni

Tel Aviv, Israel

Sir: The range of letters on the subject of the National Autism Society's recent campaign underlines the enormous problem that the wide-ranging autism community faces. I can completely understand an autistic person, happy in themselves and articulate, wondering why on earth someone would seek to "cure" them of their personality.

If I had any signal whatsoever that my own son, who regressed from a speaking, friendly, happy child at two-and-a-half to a non-verbal, head-banging child at three-and-a-half, would grow up into someone able to respond in such an articulate fashion I would be delirious with happiness and pride. Indeed at present I'd be delirious if he could respond to a question about what he wants for breakfast or successfully use the toilet. He is now nine, he has just (after almost three years insisting to the NHS that his self-harming behaviours may be pain-related) been diagnosed with chronic enterocolitis, a condition that responds to medical treatment and dietary and biomedical treatment.

I can't get back the years he's been in pain with a perfectly treatable gut condition. I can and do wish that the NAS would work with government and the NHS to keep abreast of contemporary research that is happening in the US and with families to offer meaningful guidance. Perhaps this exchange of letters may pave the way for that to happen.

For my own son, we hope that he may now be able to reach whatever his potential is free of pain, discomfort and the myriad biological and allergy issues that should have been researched and treated many years ago in order to avoid a great deal of unnecessary suffering.

Stephanie Sirr

Nottingham

Refugees without medical care

Sir: We read with interest your report highlighting the plight of Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa, describing how they were turned away at hospitals and denied primary care (13 November). MDM UK operates a free medical clinic which serves a primarily migrant population here in London and the data of our first year paints a picture that is shockingly similar.

In addition to being barred access to hospital care, our patients are routinely denied access to a GP. Nowhere is this more troubling than in the case of pregnant women and we saw a significant number who had difficulty accessing proper care, despite their entitlement.

Susan Wright

Director, Medecins du Monde UK, London E14

Wildlife on a diet of plastic

Sir: Peter Davis waxes lyrical about the environmental efficiency of plastic bags (Letters, 16 November). He fails to mention the effect on the environment of bags once they leave the shop.

Plastic bags, being lightweight, can easily transfer from landfill to the environment at large. People discard plastic bags in the street or in the countryside. Not everyone reuses their bags or recycles them. The result is that plastic pollutes the environment and never biodegrades, it just gets smaller and smaller until what remains is tiny particles of plastic.

From a whole plastic bag to its final tiny particles, there is an effect on the environment and wildlife. Animals get caught up in them or ingest them. Some will feed the ingested matter to their young who end up with a gut full of plastic, unable to get the nutrients they need to survive.

Jo Walton

Knaresborough, N Yorkshire

Sir: In your recent table showing the counties that are looking to ban bags, Berkshire, unsurprisingly, was not on the list.

At our local Waitrose there is a "green till" that is always the least busy, in fact mainly empty, as it seems that people resent having to buy a bag or, God forbid, bringing their own. It seems therefore that a ban is the only way to make a difference – especially in Berkshire!

Sean Kyne

Ascot, Berkshire

Timber cities of a sustainable future

Sir: P J Stewart's response (Letters, 13 November) to my earlier letter on "How forests store carbon" contains some information of great value. Namely, that when trees are harvested for timber and that timber is kept dry, as in the construction of the roof of a medieval cathedral, the absorbed carbon may be stored out of harm's way for hundreds of years.

As he points out, there is enormous scope for us to supplant carbon-intensive building materials such as cement (which alone contributes 5 per cent of global CO2 emissions) and steel with timber. At Treeflights we are planting tree species specifically for their ultimate use as construction timber. Colin Tudge, in his book The Secret Life of Trees, coined the phrase "cities of timber" to describe what we should now be doing.

Steve Connor's original article referred to a reduction in the potential for forests to absorb atmospheric carbon. We must distinguish between untouched mature "natural forest", which is in rough carbon-stasis, and sustainably managed woodland, which with selective extraction will, indeed, withdraw more carbon from the air than it relinquishes back.

Ru Hartwell

Director, Treeflights Ceredigion

Briefly...

Chancellors in the bath

Sir: I am confused about the singing in the bath (20 November). Simon Carr, your sketch writer, say it was "the icomparable Nigel Lawson", while Jeremy Warner, in Outlook, says it was Norman Lamont. Were they both in the bath? We need to be told.

Anthony Clement

Edwardstone, Suffolk

Journey to Beijing

Sir: Far from being a random name given to the Chinese capital by Europeans (letter, 19 November) , "Peking" is a close approximation to the Cantonese name for the city ("Puck-ing" with a hard "p"). Europe's early contacts with China were largely via the traders and seamen from the south, and they would have adopted, as closely as they could, the Cantonese pronunciations for place names and words. Now, of course, "Mandarin" is the official language and lingua franca of China, and the pronunciation of place names has been standardised.

Shirin Tata

London, EC1

Loving cats

Sir: "Felophile", while alliterative with "famous", is missing from the Shorter Oxford Dictionary ("Famous felo-philes", 17 November). It should be "ailurophile", if "cat lover" is the meaning you're seeking. But then you'd have to change the adjective.

Kerensa Pearson

Exmouth, Devon

Open and shut case

Sir: You report that Jim Morrison ("Rich, famous and accused", 14 November) was arrested for "attacking an umbrella". I assume he was charged with grievous brolly harm.

Peter Saben

Peacehaven, East Sussex

Trains and planes

Sir: I find it very frustrating when people such as David Dawson-Pick (letter, 17 November) persist in comparing the cheapest air fares with the most expensive train fares. To set the record straight, it is possible to travel from Leeds to London King's Cross and return with GNER for as little as £22.50, which also avoids the inconvenience, time and expense of trekking to and from the airport at either end of the journey.

Terence Roy Smith

Biggleswade, Bedfordshire

Point of punctuation

Sir: Julien Evans (letter, 20 November) rightly worries about our chaotic English spelling. He also dislikes "pointless apostrophes". My friends fathers wives agree.

Maurice Hill

Alicante, Spain

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