Expertise of the Upper House

IN 1995, I was appointed PPS to Lord Cranborne, Leader of the House of Lords. In that capacity, one of my functions was to liase between both Chambers.

My experience of those years was that, in reading Hansard, one could depend upon the Upper House for a rational, polite and clear-cut analysis of any Parliamentary issue that came up for debate.

Under an elected “senate”, this unique benefit to our constitution would disappear quicker than you can say “AV” (Yorkshire Post, May 18).

Unequal treatment

From: Martin D Stern, Hanover Gardens, Salford.

A COMPARISON of the treatment by the US court of Dominique Strauss-Kahn with that of John Demaniuk in Germany is disturbing. The former was initially refused bail even though the chance of such a high-profile person disappearing is minimal.

The latter was released on bail pending appeal against a conviction, which is unlikely to succeed, for being at the very least an accessory to the mass murder of thousands at Sobibor and whom many sympathisers might well wish to help escape.

Selective justice?

Bygone playtime

From: Mrs F Williams, School Lane, Walton, Wakefield.

I WAS born in 1922 in Liverpool, so my childhood years were spent during the depression of the 1920s and 1930s.

My friends and I played regularly in the local park (Jayne Dowle, Yorkshire Post, May 16). The corporation, as the council were then called, not only maintained the swings, see-saws etc, but provided a park keeper, “Parky,” who kept us in order and even supplied a bandage and sticky tape if we fell over and grazed a knee. We even saw the local bobby occasionally!