UR TV CAST

Anything we find there can only be something we’ve brought with us: personal baggage filled with all the things we like best, but also with all the things we can’t imagine how to leave behind, whether we like them or not. As Secretary of State for Health, Mrs Bottomley had extensive dealings with many lesbian and gay people giving devoted service to Aids sufferers and in other health work. We deserve better than her patronising sneers and silly twaddle about “deeply shocked colleagues”.ANTONY GREYLondon NW2. Despite what our detractors believe, science-fiction writers don’t generally go into space to get away from it all.

One can only conclude that he (quite wrongly, in my opinion) discerns some political advantage in whipping up prejudice against them. If so, he should remember that gay men and women are, like everyone else, taxpayers and voters, and he should realise that the time has gone by when they are prepared to be ground down and insulted by his party or anyone else.I was especially sorry to see that Virginia Bottomley is apparently responsible for launching this disreputable bandwagon. who are still liable to be mocked or persecuted by people claiming to represent ordinary social opinion, or the Christian church.” Sadly, this is still true today, even though – or possibly because – homosexual people are much more visible and vocal in society.
The Prime Minister is a civilised man, and he knows perfectly well that homosexuals are still very disadvantaged and discriminated against. It harms both the victimised individuals, and the society which tolerates it… Homosexuals are the only natural minority … In 1978, I was one of the nearly 200 signatories of the statement Towards a Charter of Homosexual Rights, which commented that “We believe that fear or hatred of homosexuals is a social evil akin to anti-Semitism, racism, and slavery, with the same evil consequences.

Learning to write brings with it an appreciation of those fundamentals of the visual world: line, form, space and pattern. The visual illiteracy of the average person today may be partly due to not having learnt to write decently

MICHAEL HARVEY
Bridport,Dorset. Sir: The Conservatives must be in a desperate plight to think it worthwhile playing the homophobic bigotry card by attacking the National Lottery Charities Board’s awards of a tiny proportion of its huge handout to a couple of small lesbian and gay charities (report, 12 June). Sir: Both Ken Welsby (Letters, 6 June) and John Fairbank (Letters, 11 June) miss an important point about the teaching of handwriting. Sir: Representing the “me” society on cars (10 June), Polly Toynbee happened on the obvious cure but without banging that drum loud enough: “Dazzle us with the sunshine of a public transport system so convenient and enjoyable that it becomes irresistible, then we would relinquish our death machines.”

We do not want “improved” transport facilities, but a new concept of civilised travel.