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Question Time audience was much too youngSo Gavin Allen, executive editor of Question Time, believes the Question Time audience was "made up of a broad cross-section of backgrounds" ("The programme was not rigged - our audience sets the agenda of the show", News Comment).
I beg to differ.
Given over half the population of London and the UK is over 40, I saw barely anyone in the audience older than the usual "advertisers' dream demographic" of 18- to 35-year-olds.
It was a totally unrepresentative audience and the poorer for it.
There was no one who'd fought in the second world war or lived through the 50s Notting Hill riots or Enoch Powell and Ugandan-Asian "immigration panics".Dave Massey London SE24■ The use made of genetics and archaeology by the BNP on the subject of British ancestry are indeed risible, but if Andrew Rawnsley (Comment) is going to try to counter them, he should get his facts right.Nick Griffin claimed on Question Time that the "indigenous British" had been "here overwhelmingly for the last 17,000 years", to which Rawnsley responded that at that time "these islands were inhabited by Cro-Magnon man living in caves".
Actually, neither is right.
There were no islands here 17,000 years ago - just a European promontory.
Furthermore, it was largely covered by ice - an uninhabited polar wasteland.We expect the BNP to get it wrong, but surely their critics need to be a bit more careful.Professor Martin B RichardsFaculty of Biological SciencesUniversity of LeedsWe must focus on HIV prevention While interviewed for the article "Call to cut cash for HIV in Africa" (World), I raised a range of other important points with your reporter.
For example, I described how in some 10 countries (mostly in southern Africa) Aids continues to be an unprecedented tragedy demanding our fullest attention.
I also emphasised that dramatic progress has been achieved towards making HIV treatment more accessible in Africa.
What is now urgently needed is determining how best to extend this success to the crucial matter of HIV prevention, and to addressing other pressing health and social-economic problems in developing countries.Daniel Halperin, lecturer on global healthHarvard University School of Public HealthBoston, USNo smoke without chocolateYour article on obesity ("Obesity epidemic: who's to blame?", special report) didn't mention that its rise over the last 30 years coincides with the decline in smoking.
Tobacco has long been recognised as an appetite suppressant: in the old days, when someone felt under pressure or a bit peckish they reached for a fag.
Now they reach for a chocolate bar.
What did you expect?Jeff Fendall Broadstairs, KentA broad church? I think not Diarmaid MacCulloch's excellent piece ("Pope Benedict opens new front in battle for the soul of two churches", Focus) omitted to mention the legal context of the debate.
Why are the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches allowed to opt out of equalities opportunities legislation for clerical appointments in this country and in Europe generally? Both churches pray for a more equal world yet discriminate against women and gays in their own structures.June Purvis PortsmouthTeacher's Kafkaesque treatment While I was a parent governor in my local secondary school, I was involved in a case where a pupil made a false allegation against a male teacher ("Teachers fight back against false claims of pupil assault", News).
As a result, the teacher was hounded from the state education system.The allegation was made during sessions for girls with low self esteem, held in the school by the social services.
One girl made an allegation of grossly inappropriate conduct.
The teacher was suspended for three months, without having the allegation explained to him.
The allegation was disproved but this Kafkaesque treatment convinced him never to return.As a governor, I took part in the investigation.
Afterwards, I attempted for over a year to determine who was responsible for this denial of the teacher's basic rights.
I met a brick wall, with a culture of multi-disciplinary meetings (which were always confidential) enabling each department involved to avoid accountability.
The injustice stands; there is no reason it would not happen again.David CooperNewbury, BerkshireThe trouble with trickle-down It was interesting to see an economic journalist referring to "trickle-down" again, even if in less than glowing terms (Ruth Sunderland, Business).Margaret Thatcher came to office in 1979, Ronald Reagan in 1981, both promoting this already long-discredited dictum.
John Maynard Keynes on the other hand once famously remarked: "In the long run we will all be dead." Just how many years have to pass before it becomes acknowledged that "trickle-down" economics doesn't work?Some years ago, William Keegan recommended an approach where, instead, finance was diverted to pensioners and the less well off, who it was reasonably assumed would spend it in on their needs in the local economy.
He called this "trickle-up".
I wonder why the bankers have never considered it?David CookNewcastle upon TyneUnion is obstacle to prison reformIt's a bit rich for Stewart McLaughlin of the Prison Officers Association to scream "Don't blame prison officers" (Letters) when his organisation remains the main obstacle that any prison reform has had to surmount.The POA constantly claims to be downtrodden and hard done by, but this is the union that in August 2007 flipped the prison system into self-destruct by walking out on an illegal national strike in an effort to secure more pay.
Last year the POA ripped up the Joint Industrial Relations Procedural Agreement it had with the government, so ending its ability to talk sensibly with its employer and causing the government to bring in a statutory ban on future strike action.
As for Wandsworth prison, can I remind Mr McLaughlin that the prison's Independent Monitoring Board in its latest report said that there was a £1m-a-year trade in illegal drugs in the prison, much of which it claimed was due to corrupt staff.Mark Leech, editor The Prisons HandbookManchesterWhat's fame got to do with it? Like Euan Ferguson (Opinion), some years ago I developed an aversion to "celebrity" titles - specifically the ubiquitous "celebrity chefs", so took to signing my emails "John Rathbone, celebrity stock controller".John Rathbone Banbury, Oxon
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