Letters: Against water metering

Sir: As a Liberal Democrat I am sad to see the party's environment spokesman, Norman Baker, (letter, 21 July) perpetuating the obsession with water metering and measures to deprive the people of this country of the generous water services they have enjoyed for many generations. It was the Liberal parliamentary party which undermined the last effort, by a Labour government, to restore the machinery for a sensible national water policy in 1976 and it continues to show little sign of an informed and objective approach to water supply problems.

The current difficulties, especially in South-east England, were predictable long ago. The response can be to accept more frequent restrictions and perhaps to limit population growth in the South-east; to place more emphasis on leakage control and reduction of water use; and to store more of our ample rainfall in the West and transfer it to where it is needed - the answer which has been self-evident for a century and a half but which has recently become unfashionable, despite its evident advantages for our environment.

None of these comes without cost and the choice is one of economic calculation and political priorities. Can we not have an intelligent debate about these options, including transparency about costs?

B RYDZ

CORSHAM, WILTSHIRE

Sir: The trouble with water meters is that they penalise the poorly paid, especially those with families.

Two people sharing a flat in Bayswater will not use as much and therefore not be charged as much as a family of four in a council house. In the latter case, why should those tenants be forced into making decisions about priorities of water use? It would be better, in times of drought, to impose bans on hosepipes and sprinklers and other unnecessary use.

Better still, instead of paying dividends to shareholders, we should re-nationalise the resource and plough the money into fixing leaking pipes.

STEPHEN COOK

BOREHAMWOOD, HERTFORDSHIRE

Police shooting of the wrong man

Sir: I was surprised by Bruce Anderson's comments ("The police were right to shoot, even if they got the wrong man", Opinion, 25 July). The last time I checked, not keeping abreast of current affairs was not a crime punishable by five bullets to the head.

His comment that Mr de Menezes "was the author of his own misfortune" is flippant and offensive. There could have been any number of reasons for him running from the police - possibly a minor offence or transgression was on his mind. What he, or I in that situation, would not have thought at that moment was that running away might lead to being shot dead. I appreciate the difficult situation our police find themselves in. As a Londoner, I am fearful of further terrorist attacks. But I am also just as fearful of living in a state where acting "suspiciously" can result in being killed.

J HARRIES

LONDON SE21

Sir: Anyone who has been to Brazil lately will know that the young man who was shot dead in south London may simply not have realised that he was being challenged by plainclothes policemen.

In Brazil, gang shootings are by no means exceptional, and he might well have thought a gang was trying to rob him. Furthermore, if the temperature in Rio de Janeiro drops to 20 degrees celsius the Brazilians put their coats on. If we were better educated and did not confuse every non-white person with a Muslim, and were more aware of other cultures and thinking, maybe the shooting could have been avoided.

JENNY BACKWELL

HOVE

Sir: If I was brought up in an environment of police brutality, as was likely to have been the experience of the 27-year-old Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, my first instinct would have been to run if pursued by casually clothed policemen, threatening to shoot me. Have the British police been trained in how to caution foreign nationals?

DAVID HITCHENS

DOWNPATRICK, COUNTY DOWN

Sir: From the moment their suspect started to run down into the Underground station at Stockwell, the police believed they were dealing with a suicide bomber. Knowing he could have a hand-held switch that would have blown them all up in an instant, the police didn't have much option but to kill him as quickly as possible, which they did. We do not need any lessons in police behaviour from a Brazilian government with a deplorable human rights record, but we do need to take into account that Mr de Menezes began to run when approached - perhaps experience in Brazil guided him to do so - and we need to know why there were no uniformed police among the armed, casually-dressed plainclothes officers.

TONY CHENEY

IPSWICH, SUFFOLK

Sir: I note the debate in your pages on whether London is a "City of Fear". Following the shooting of an innocent man five times in the head, while pinned to the floor, I wonder of whom it is that we should be in fear?

BARRY MATHER

EXETER, DEVON

Let's be more like 'Old Europe'

Sir: I'm tired of seeing Tony Blair ducking the question of the link between the bombings here and Britain's involvement in the foolhardy invasion of Iraq. How does he continue to get away with it? How many more bombings will it take before he is finally forced to accept responsibility for the results of his disastrous liaison with Bush?

A couple of years ago when it was becoming clear that Germany, France and others would not participate in Bush's war games, Rumsfeld referred to them as members of "Old Europe", disparagingly. But he was right. The countries of Europe he referred to are indeed mature. Their days of territorial wars are over. They have a liberal, educated populace. On the Continent, Europe's cultural mix is accustomed to living with relaxed boundaries, and it has a better understanding of world affairs than the USA.

Firstly, Blair must resign. We should then put a greater distance between ourselves and the USA, and start behaving like Old Europeans. We should acknowledge the reasons behind what is happening now, and pull out of Iraq without delay.

DERYCK WHITTAKER

LONDON W8

Sir: The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) warned two years ago that invading Iraq could make the terrorist threat to Britain worse. In a recent ICM poll, 64 per cent of people believe that Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq was to some degree to blame for the London bombings on 7 July. The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens has now warned that Britain could be under attack from terrorists for the next 10 to 20 years.

Just as the British Army's struggle against the IRA had political roots which led the British Government to conclude that it was militarily unwinnable and later led to political negotiations after years of bloodshed, so today's "War on terror" is also unwinnable, providing our government turns a blind eye to injustices in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, and elsewhere, and supports the US actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tony Blair should this time take note of what his intelligence services and the public are telling him: that war in Iraq helps to fuel the feelings of injustice among Muslims worldwide which only aids the recruitment of suicide bombers.

Being a Londoner, I do not want to spend the next 10-20 years of my life scared that my next bus or tube journey could be my last. I do not want to see any more the bloodshed and horror of bombs and the killing of innocent people whether in London, or Baghdad, or Kandahar. I expect that our political leaders will understand that they now have a choice: to continue with this madness, fear, death and war, or to negotiate a just world where people live without fear, without bombs and live with dignity, respect and peace.

SIMON BUEHRING

LONDON E5

Sir: Patrick Cockburn states ("The true, terrible state of Iraq and the London link", 20 July) that "It is nevertheless extraordinary to see Donald Rumsfeld ... still holding his job as Secretary of Defence". What is more extraordinary is that in spite of the "true, terrible state of Iraq", Tony Blair and Jack Straw are still holding theirs.

JOANNA KIRCHNER

COLCHESTER ESSEX

Secular society is a vital safeguard

Sir: Atif Chaudhary (letter, 21 July) asks whether British Muslims identifying with those suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya as their own, is fanatical. Of course it isn't, but what Mr Chaudhary fails to point out is that in those countries much of the killing is being carried out by Muslim extremists.

In the world as a whole, the impetus for fanaticism and killing is a loathing for having infidels in Muslim lands. This was so before the American presence in Iraq or Afghanistan. In the West, no decisions of a political nature are taken upon the basis of shared religion or indeed for any religious reason. When Slobodan Milosevic was killing Muslim men women and children, the citizens of this country and the United States paid for Christian Belgrade to be bombed.

I don't like a lot of things which my Government does, and I might vote and protest or lobby against those things, but what I generally don't do, if I'm unhappy, is to go and bomb my fellow citizens. Our secularism and our loyalty to each other as Britons is an essential safeguard and a primary requirement for those calling themselves British.

ANDREW COHEN

WOKING SURREY

Asbo powers are proving a success

Sir: Recent articles in The Independent give the impression that you believe society is reacting disproportionately to young people ("How not to make teenagers behave", Joan Smith, Opinion; "A flawed approach to antisocial behaviour", Editorial, 21 July). From reading your articles one would imagine that the courts are routinely dishing out Asbos for childhood pranks.

For large numbers of people, mainly in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, daily life is made a misery by small gangs of violent and offensive youths. Teenagers are threatening people with hypodermic needles, persistently shoplifting and smashing up cars and street furniture. Town centres are no-go areas. Parents can't take their children to the playground and shopkeepers are being driven out of business.

For these victims the new Asbo powers come as a blessed relief, even more so when it is recognised that a full 60 per cent of orders are not breached. Whole communities are being empowered to reclaim their public spaces.

While it may be that some Asbos have been applied inappropriately by courts in the early days of implementing their new powers, those of us who work within the criminal justice system would be grateful to see some reporting of the vast majority of deserved, justified, proportionate and successful Asbos that are being made by the courts.

PETER GROOME

BRISTOL

'Scandalous' lack of research into ME

Sir: The recent publication of yet more abnormalities which confirm a definite physical basis to the illness known as ME/CFS is welcome news to the 250,000 adults and children who still have great difficulty in obtaining either a diagnosis or appropriate advice on management of the condition.

But the real scandal surrounding ME/CFS is that there has been no government funding into the underlying physical cause of an illness that costs the nation about £3.5bn per year.

Most of the breakthroughs in scientific understanding, including the two genetic studies currently under way, have been the result of research financed by ME/CFS charities such as The ME Association or by private donations. The World Health Organisation and the Department of Health both fully recognise that ME/CFS is a genuine and disabling neurological disorder. Surely the time has come for government to invest some serious money into finding the cause of an illness that has been neglected for far too long.

DR CHARLES SHEPHERD

ME ASSOCIATION RESEARCH DEPARTMENT BUCKINGHAM

Ashes Test defeat?

Sir: I would urge the country not to be downhearted about the result of the first Ashes Test match since we now know that far from being a failure it is simply "deferred success".

GRAHAM JARVIS

GUISELEY, WEST YORKSHIRE

Time to deliver

Sir: It is a sobering thought that despite your commendable petition Tony Blair has not yet been able to organise the referendum on electoral reform that he promised us in 1997. He now has the same amount of time to ensure that all that he has promised for the Olympic Games is in place by 2012. It would be some reassurance if the first promise could now be kept.

BERNARD BLACK

WATERLOOVILLE, HAMPSHIRE

'Neanderthal' poetry

Sir: It would be hard to imagine my views about Harold Pinter being more grotesquely misrepresented than by your diarist (Pandora, 21 July). My point about the "neanderthal" language of Pinter's recent poetry was that it derives from his awareness of how thoroughly corrupt and compromised today's political discourse has become. This leaves the poet who wants to say anything truthful with no option but to step outside "polite" language and into scatology. My admiration for the man and his work is unabated.

JONATHAN COE

LONDON SW10

Children's needs first

Sir: As nanny, teacher and mother of three grown children, I was amazed by Helen Kirwan-Taylor's attitude ("The trouble with nannies, 19 July). I have always been careful to put the children's needs first in my private and professional life. This is obviously a way of thinking that is completely foreign to Helen Kirwan-Taylor and, sadly, to a lot of other parents. She should only get rid of a nanny if her children are unhappy with her. Other considerations are not important.

CAROLINE SMITH

LONDON N13

Paid holidays

Sir: Part-time MPs, so part-time salaries?

CAROLINE STRAFFORD

GERRARDS CROSS BUCKINGHAMSHIRE