Readers' letters - May 4
When I was younger, I used to get wolf whistled at quite a lot. If I went anywhere near a building site or roadworks, for example, the whistling and howling would soon start. I didn’t like it!I’d saunter off with my nose in the air or shout out what had become my standard retort, “Can I help you find your sheepdog?”, then exit the scene whilst responses like “I’ve not got a sheepdog luv, I just fancy you!” were ringing in my ears.Basically, I saw them as a bunch of sexist louts with no respect for womankind and that they reckoned we were put on this planet purely for their gratification.Now, 30 to 40 years later, no one would dream of wolf-whistling at me, not even on their way to Specsavers! Any trip past a building site is met with a wall, (so to speak), of silence. Yes, I still see them as a bunch of misogynists, but in a strange kind of way, I miss being whistled at! Oh, my twenty-something self would be ashamed of me, but there you go.Oh well, that’s me I guess, never satisfied!CM LanganAddress supplied
Passport puzzle of WindrushI’m quite in agreement with Mike Smith on Windrush (WP Letters, April 26). Something very odd has happened here for this suddenly to surface, especially as those children would have been adults for many years before the present government came to power. As British children can only travel abroad on a passport held by a parent until they are 16, then any children on that passport would be expected to apply for travel documents of their own on reaching that age, especially if they wanted to travel outside of Britain. Do not the same rules apply to those children travelling from the Caribbean on their parent’s passport?It is said that many of them never bothered to apply for passports of their own but it seems very unusual, in this day and age, that they would never have gone abroad on holiday or back home to visit relations. At that point, being no longer eligible to travel on a parent’s papers, it would or should have been picked up. If they were illegally here, then something should have been done to rectify the matter. If they did apply and got a passport, then they must have been considered to be legally here or else they would not be given a British passport.Christine Crossvia emailSo much for democracy
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Hide AdThere is now a concerted effort to overturn the majority result in our 2016 in/out EU referendum, by those who will not accept the result.Members of the House of Lords have inflicted a damaging defeat on the Government by passing a “wrecking amendment” by 335 votes to 244, which is designed to keep Britain in the EU indefinitely. Even PM Theresa May is considering signing up to an agreement that is likely to lead to an “EU Mark Two” Brexit agreement, leading to Britain becoming a “vassal state” of Brussels.Between the Government and the Lords, they appear determined to ignore the democratic result of the referendum and keep us shackled to the EU, only without any power or representation. The problem is that successive governments have been happy to outsource our laws and everything else to a foreign power and many in the Lords receive EU pensions, which they are likely to lose! So much for democracy! Phil GriffithsBroadcaster and CommentatorAnnoying Trump not a good ideaIf Theresa May takes action that Trump approves of, she is accused of “bending to his every whim” (WP Letters, May 2), but if she disagrees with him, that fact is conveniently ignored as not fitting the desired narrative. Trump is not a very attractive person, but like him or not, he is the elected leader of the most powerful nation in the world, and one of our most valuable trading partners. The Corbynite “rent a mob” will probably be out in force on the streets when he visits, but I would suggest that deliberately setting out to annoy him does not seem to be a good idea, aside from being downright ill-mannered.John Wainwright via email