Readers' letters - August 5

Watch over your children
A reader urges parents to always keep an eye on their children  and join in the fun themselves  during the summer holidaysA reader urges parents to always keep an eye on their children  and join in the fun themselves  during the summer holidays
A reader urges parents to always keep an eye on their children  and join in the fun themselves  during the summer holidays

Well, it’s here again, the annual six-week school holidays.

I read somewhere that it was instigated so that children who lived on farms could be free to help their parents bring in the harvest, without missing out on their education.

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If so, then it’s somewhat obsolete nowadays, most people having moved away from the land, and farmers using machinery.

So now the children can enjoy this long holiday, but even if they own some sort of electronic ‘babysitter’, sooner or later they have to go outside.

I was in a park, when two young boys on their own ran past, and for a moment I thought they were going to run straight out onto the busy road.

A young couple, following some distance behind them, called out to them, and the boys did slow down a little, but still so engrossed in 
their play that they were drifting closer and closer to the exit.

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Children have no concept of danger, they’re just busy having fun – as it should 
be.

It took some moments, but eventually the young couple were rounding the stand of foliage which must have blocked their sight of the children, but were still so deep in their conversation that even then they did not even appear to look at their offspring.

Recently we have seen some awful things, in America where an innocent rare gorilla had to be killed (to save the zoo’s face) after a small child fell into its enclosure.

And then recently here, when an unfortunate child’s body was found under water.

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I know there are accidents, as children rush about, but how many times are parents so engrossed in other things that they lost sight of their children, fortunate that nothing happened – this 
time.

Sometimes it can be too late, and then it’s a tragedy which changes lives forever.

My mother always knew where I was, and I know it was a slower pace of life then, with fewer distractions, but maybe today’s parents should think about that.

Surely children are treasures, and, like any other valuable, should be watched over to keep them safe.

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And perhaps the parents, instead of taking their children for granted, could try to remember what it was like to have fun, and join in.

Then they could all enjoy the six-week holiday.

Denise Marsden

via email

politics

Members of Posh Boy Club

I would like to point out that barely any current MPs (or, indeed, past ones) have the qualifications to do their jobs.

David Cameron and George Osborne have made a mess of several economic issues while benefiting those with offshore accounts.

Jeremy Hunt and Alistair Burt have no qualifications in healthcare.

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The former defence secretary had no experience in the Armed Forces.

Those involved in the environment have no competence in this area, as shown after the last bout of flooding.

The only thing they do share, many of them, is membership of the posh boys’ club.

That, dear MPs, is the “unacceptable face of capitalism” – rich people with no qualifications to do so, running the country for their own selfish ends without remorse for the pain they cause those they refer to as “ordinary”.

At least Jeremy Corbyn gives the impression of caring as opposed to pretending to.

Terry Maunder,

Address supplied