Your Letters

Batching plant? Law reforms?

Dear Ray,

I was out walking my friend's dog along Furlong Road. A motorist passed us at fair speed. He was in such a hurry that he was putting on his seat belt whilst driving. I wonder how many other motorists do this? Are we living in such a fast world that we haven't got time to arrive before we get started? No wonder there are so many accidents.

Now, as I was walking towards the Cemetery, I looked at the Planning Application for a Concrete Batching Plant. What is a Batching Plant? If any other readers know perhaps they could explain it to me please.

John

Dear Sir,

On June 28th, I bought a copy of 'The Independent' newspaper and saw blazoned across the front page the heading "Give criminals greater rights to sue victims". I double checked to make sure that it wasn't April 1st, and then realised that the world has started to go mad.

Apparently, under reforms proposed by the Law Commission, criminals would have greater rights to sue members of the public. It appears that the high-profile case of Tony Martin has prompted these reforms. The commissioners realise that their proposals are controversial but that even criminals have rights. Wrong! Criminals do not have rights as I see it. Anybody who commits a crime has put himself outside the normal civilised codes of decency and has abdicated all right to his "rights". If a burglar breaks a leg jumping from a window or is seriously injured jumping from a police van, then, tough! Yet these are two cases where compensation claims have been made.

We are moving to a stage where the criminal is being paid more attention than the victim. The cynic in me asks who will gain out of these proposals should they succeed and it is, of course, the law profession who are putting forward the reforms. We must hope that the government will in no way entertain any relaxation in the law for criminal compensation as it stands at the present. I cannot possibly conceive that the voting public would allow it any way.

Yours faithfully,

GE Forster