Come on Mr Mitchell, tell us all what you actually said

ANDREW Mitchell is so clear on what he didn’t say. We must be told what he did say (Tom Richmond, Yorkshire Post, September 29).

He is calling into question the integrity of the police officers involved. Tell us the truth Mr Mitchell.

Also, David Cameron must be tarred with the same brush or he would demand an inquiry, but then again he obviously knows the truth or he would call for an inquiry now.

The chief whip didn’t just swear at these officers – he used derogatory language, as though they were far beneath him as human beings.

Everyone else has just as much right to be on this earth as he has, money or money.

He should get that into his head and anyone else with ideas of grandeur.

From: Andrew Mercer, Guiseley.

WHAT did it say about the nauseating tone of Ed Miliband’s party conference speech when the biggest cheer came from his attack on Andrew Mitchell, the Tory chief whip who abused police officers in Downing Street?

It is further proof that David Cameron should have sacked Mitchell – standards in public life need to be upheld and he will be a sore on the coalition’s credibility for as long as he remains in post.

From: RC Dales, Church View, Brompton, Northallerton.

WHAT a prominent politician said, or did not say, in the presence of a police officer in Downing Street, has been flogged to death by the BBC and the other media, day after day.

What has not been asked is whether that officer is a very sensitive type, easily upset, and whether we should not have a tougher character in Downing Street? When this incident is compared with the lot of our young men and women, risking death daily in Afghanistan, it is realised that the incident in Downing Street is no more than trivial.

Hopefully the media – and the Labour Party which has tried to score a point – will stop boring us. Their behavi our has not done them any good.

From: Ken Hartford, Durham Mews, Butt Lane, Beverley.

SPEAKING for myself, I am absolutely delighted to discover that I am no more than a plebian! I really would hate to be expected to live up to what is expected of the “governing” class. Again, most bosses in Yorkshire, I’m sure appreciate value and feel proud to be called “Gov!” This gives me a real sense of power and control on a friendly basis, but doesn’t change my “ordinariness” as a bloke - or respect for others.

I am pretty sure that I’m speaking for the majority of people in the North of England - everywhere north of Oxford I would imagine.

No, don’t let us get all “het up” about a name.

There was a boy in the orphanage I was in that we called “Gink”. He didn’t mind and went on to become a senior police officer and his wife was a smasher!

Come on, language is language.

From: Ross Taggart, The Avenue, Eaglescliffe, Stockton-on-Tees.

ALTHOUGH I hesitate to “pull-up” your recent and learned correspondent Dr Vassie (Yorkshire Post, September 27), I feel it incumbent on me to point out that, although he is correct in his assertion that “plebs” is the vocative singular form of a Latin noun, the nominative singular of that noun is also “plebs”, which being a collective noun applying to a whole stratum of Roman society cannot be properly used in its vocative singular to address a single (alleged) member of that stratum; by so doing one is in fact addressing that whole stratum in a collective fashion.

Incidentally, it is perhaps worth noting that in what are described as “Roman times” being a member of the “plebs” implied a desirable social status. Whilst not belonging to the aristocracy, such a person would possess some degree of wealth and by definition be a land owner.

There were very many in Roman society who looked enviously upon the members of the plebs. It was much later, in the over-heated and snobbish world of the English public school, that a derogatory meaning became associated with the word in question.