Protection for the volunteers

I WAS pleased to see Tom Holloway of Oxfam describe the Trailtrekker volunteers as “unpaid workers” and equate their value with that of paid employees (Yorkshire Post, June 6). Too often, recruiting organisations insist on making a distinction between paid work and unpaid work, to the detriment of volunteers.

Rationally, the intrinsic value of any work does not depend on remuneration.

Why then are we so careful of the treatment of paid employees and so indifferent to that of volunteers?

The Big Society ought firstly to be a just society. In the scramble to recruit volunteers, the Government and our judges have not yet grasped the truth that unpaid workers need as much protection as those who are paid.

Stud marks

From: Bill Place, Cornfield Avenue, Huddersfield.

I’M pleased to read that Ian McMillan is returning to sartorial elegance and wearing a tie (Yorkshire Post, June 7).

Could he possibly be extending this to a return to collar studs so that we can again wear a smart starched collar and even cuff links in the starched double cuffs on our shirts?

We might even go back to wearing shirts tucked into our trousers! Bring back shirt tails.

Bully for her

From: Kim Hunt, Woodthorpe Road, Ashford, Middlesex.

Hayley Taylor, TV’s so-called “Fairy Jobmother”, is as relevant to the country’s jobless as a blush on the cheek of a dead man.

With mild bullying, she has climbed to fame on the back of the unemployed. In the age of feisty public women, ordinary women cannot get a look in.

There was nothing wrong with good-mannered, feminine women. Let’s have them back. Even if the self-praising Hayley Taylor is out of a job.