Dear Editor, I am 54 years-old, a British subject and tax payer, and for over 15 years myself and my family including grandchildren have been going to the Bulldog Bash.

A four day event, where people from different backgrounds with different beliefs from different cultures, who all come with one common bond - motorbikes. Four days of music, bike racing, drag racing etc, where everyone gets along with one another and has fun, in short a meeting of like minds.

In all the years I have been going I have never encountered any problems or unpleasantness, it was the same last year.

The local community also enjoy the benefits of the Bulldog Bash as do charities and the whole biking community, the pubs and shops have always been welcoming.

The murder of Gerry Tobin, did not take place on site last year, but on the M40. It seems to me that if the police had an objection to this year's Bulldog Bash, surely the Notting Hill Gate Carnival should have been cancelled years ago. If I remember correctly there have been five murders to date, apart from numerous stabbings, assaults and robberies not to mention the riots.

The police reportedly objected to the Bash taking place as they feared a serious crime might occur. On that basis they had better ban shopping in Oxford Street London since a young man was fatally stabbed the other day and I'm quite sure he wasn't the first person to be a victim of a serious crime there, or travelling to work by tube can be risky since Mr Menenez was shot by the police.

Let's be honest, a serious crime could happen anywhere, and I believe these are scare tactics.

I would like to say thank you to Stratford Council for their support and for making what is ultimately a very rational and fair decision which will hopefully set a precedent for other councils to be brave enough to have faith in the biking community.

ELSPETH PEARSON

By email

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Massive response to ME survey

Dear Editor, Earlier this year, we asked your readers to complete our survey if they had, or had had, the chronic illness known as ME or chronic fatigue syndrome, which affects 250,000 across the UK.

We had 2763 people from all over the country respond, which is our greatest survey response ever - so thank you for your support.

The results are published this week - ME Awareness Week. What they show is that while health services overall are improving, one recommended treatment seems to be making one in three people worse.

There is as yet no cure for ME, so the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence recommends symptom management, including graded exercise therapy.

Although some people who responded to our survey said that they had found graded exercise beneficial, 34 per cent said it had made them worse.

Some NHS specialists are obviously delivering excellent care but it seems that other inexperienced or inadequately trained health professionals do not understand the illness.

Action for M.E. is now calling for additional funding for the provision of more ME specialists

Sir PETER SPENCER

Chief Executive Action for ME

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Courting accountability

Dear Editor, Regarding your front page lead article "Family law judge blasts Hemming'' (Post, May 9) may I blast back at Lord Justice Wall's misleading comments in defence of professional impropriety and malpractice in the Family Courts, perpetrated on the basis of the myth that what is being done is "in the best interests of children.''

This old chestnut falsehood is regularly wheeled out as justification, but without any proper scrutiny or accountability. Therefore, many thousands of victims in the Birmingham area alone who have experienced the systematic injustice and secretive workings, with impunity, of the Family Courts and the threat of imprisonment as a deterrent for speaking out, will recognise the validity of what John Hemming calls bad practice that creates countrywide exactly the right circumstances for dysfunctional families to flourish.

The inevitable consequence is that the everyday reality of what is happening in the Family Courts is engineered social disadvantage and decline that should not be tolerated in a joined up democratic society, and yet all too often we hear political comment espousing the virtues of family life.

This begs the question: who benefits from this? Society doesn't and the victims don't, which only leaves the very professionals that manage the system and make a good living out of a lucrative but wicked trade and so John Hemming is again vindicated on this point in regard to social workers, particularly those that have little or no training as family court welfare officers, namely the probation officers who on an ad-hoc basis write welfare reports to the court where children are concerned however, regardless of the circumstances of individual cases.

The report conclusions are remarkably all the same in that they direct the judge what to do and that very few judges ever go against them is significant for two reasons; firstly that the judge's task is made easier and secondly, the system is perpetuated, which is both a travesty and an evil manipulation of jurisprudence.

BRIAN EMERY

Sutton Coldfield

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Underground water for domestic use

Dear Editor, With reference to the recent news items regarding the water table in The Post it has been known for many years, ever since the closing of the breweries in Birmingham, that this was happening and would be magnified many times as all the manufacturing industries closed their doors.

It does seem to me a painfully obvious answer, especially during the summers we have had when there have been droughts, that we should be using this underground water in our domestic supply. Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to use a pumping system to achieve this. Systems have been suggested that heat could be produced but how much more simple to just use some of the water.

DUDLEY WHITWORTH

Birmingham

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Rot of Champagne socialists

Dear Editor, Let us be perfectly honest with ourselves, used to say the late Percy Shurmer MP; the Holland Park Champagne socialists started the rot, when they demanded for themselves the standards appertaining in private education, for their pampered offspring.

Blair-ite socialists and fellow travellers since exacerbated the situation that Sir Geoffrey Hampton has now undertaken to attempt to arrest.

Children in Redditch, no less than 1,000 in numbers, leave the town each day to go to schools in Warwickshire, Birmingham, Bromsgrove and Wychavon.

When we set up the Three Tier System, here in Worcestershire, for sound educational reasons no Middle School should exceed 600 pupils. Yet political chameleons allowed educational entrepreneurs to recruit their schools in middle class areas, up to 750 pupils.

Intelligent politicians not only give careful thought to policy development, but even greater careful thought, to the possible outcomes of their policy decisions/turning a "blind eye"!

The school that I have chaired for the past 38 years, Dingleside Middle School, closes on the August 31, 2008. Needless to say, it is in an area of social deprivation. Whereas local working class snobs, also Champagne socialists, used to be content to send their kids to the neighbourhood school, they deserted to send them to schools in imagined toffee-nosed areas.

I wish Sir Geoffrey Hampton and his band of advisors (even though it would appear that in respect of their campaign for the Black Country that pound coins are going out of fashion) well in their quest. I shall not be holding my breath.

TOM WAREING

Redditch