A NEW Pope has just been elected. I hope he serves his flock as well as previous Popes.
I am an agnostic but I follow the Roman Catholic Church's fortunes as much as any member of that church.
My late first wife was a devout member of the RC fold and was sustained and succoured by the church.
She developed rheumatic fever as a teenager and knew that her time on earth was limited. The Church was her prop and support during her final days.
Despite my not being a member of any church, I believe that they do a good job for mankind.
COLIN D CAMPBELL
Scalford Drive
Wollaton Park
MANY of those pictured in your paper as being "banned" (Post, March 13) are members of the homeless fraternity. Or at the least those who drift in and out of homelessness.
The main reason for their condition being addiction to drugs and alcohol.
The big problem is that the State in its wisdom fails to get to grips with this, preferring to rely on various local government agencies.
Meanwhile the men and women involved are given cash and free accommodation. This is in effect sponsored fecklessness.
It is a policy that merely perpetuates the problem.
These people appear regularly at Housing Benefit Offices to be sent time after time to homeless hostels, who wherever possible place them in social accommodation.
In a good proportion of cases antisocial behaviour and reoffending quickly renders them homeless once more. Often after prison sentences.
Until a better system is devised – one that does not involve funding their habits and, in the case of males who have fathered children, absolving them of any moral or financial responsibility – the problem will simply grow.
We have a generation that has, in some instances, chosen this lifestyle either by default or choice.
This does not mean that the system does not work in all cases, but that it fails to differentiate between those who are sincerely want to better themselves and those who take to a devil-may-care life of low-level banditry, infesting the streets of the city and funding their lifestyles further with petty crime.
However, these people are human beings and someone's children. Many are fathers or mothers. They are being failed by a system that expects them to respond to politically-correct chats based on failed psychology and regular monetary handouts in the hope that they will reform or simply go away.
ANTHONY O WILKINSON
Clifton Road
Ruddington
IT seems that alcohol now has the same place in British culture as guns in that of the United States.
Any proposal to regulate the use of either is met with the most outrageous claims from, not only those with a vested interest in their sale, but also many of their irrational customers.
To suggest that any attempt to control the use of either guns or alcohol constitutes an interference with civil liberties is nonsense – and a complete distortion of what freedom of the individual ought to mean in a rational society.
In neither the United States or Britain is the complete prohibition of either being proposed.
However, the abuse of both clearly constitutes a serious curtailment of the civil liberties of many other citizens.
JACK MILLER
Orford Avenue
Radcliffe on Trent
WITH regard to the the article on the government banning drinking in the street (Post, March 13) we are skating on thin ice when we can't enjoy an ale outside just because of the misbehaviour of a minority.
There are already laws in place to control that minority. We are effectively turning into a Nazi state as our Government is dictating everything to us.
PETER JOHN PEARSON
Wordsworth Road
Daybrook
IN view of the extremely cold weather we have been having, and the chaos caused by the weather in Europe, could it be that we have been too successful with our drive to control the climate?
After all, the Met Office, NASA and, that fount of all knowledge regarding the future weather, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, on whose authority our government bases its policy of CO2 reduction, have all had to admit that the average global temperature has not risen significantly since 1997.
Is it, perhaps, time for the Government to revise this policy, and emulate a character in a certain comic opera by introducing a plan to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, in order to redress the balance?
I'm sure that such a scheme would be just as effective as that now so successfully completed by the thousands of wind turbines on which so much money has been wasted, sorry invested.
In any case, I dare say that many market gardeners would be only too happy at the prospect of the millions of pounds in subsidies that would inevitably be forthcoming.
G L ROBINSON
Steedman Avenue
Mapperley
ROBERT Crosby accused me of spreading misinformation at the expense of the public sector (Letters, February 5).
Well, instead of shooting the messenger, Mr Crosby should ask how many people are employed by government and whether it is cost-effective and practical to retain battalions in the public sector?
Readers will be aware the country has just lost its triple A credit rating and it is now valued at AA1. That may not seem a great loss, but as the Government borrows the equivalent of £400,000 a minute it will be interesting to see if the cost of the loans escalates.
The bulk of the borrowed cash pays for the enormous government bureaucracy consisting of six million plus employees. As big as the number is, it excludes many groups that are not counted in the public sector, but who are dependant on the government for most of their earnings
Higher and further education colleges employ 530,000 and are listed in the private sector, even though most of their funding comes from taxation.
Network Rail employs 33,000, and is counted in the private sector, even though it is a nationalised company in all but name.
Downsizing of local government is long overdue as collectively councils account for about 25 per cent of the nation's expenditure and that is not sustainable.
Taxation pays the instalments, but government borrowing is increasing when wages are being cut and tax receipts are falling, hence within a couple years taxes may not meet the nation's pledges. So, without radical fiscal reforms the credit rating could be downgraded to 'D', meaning junk status. By then the economy would be bankrupt.
Mr Crosby, this is the stark economic reality, not misinformation!
NIGEL J STARBUCK
Carnarvon Close
Bingham