The public are given empty promises

IT is not a pretty sight seeing the Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box trying to convince people of the UK he is fit for the job. BSkyB and Andy Coulson apart, we seem to be paying good money for very little. The word on the street is David Cameron should go. The trouble is, there is no one in the Tory party to take his place.

Some have voiced that there should be a General Election. I don’t think we want to go through being promised the earth for our vote. It didn’t work last time. From Government, we should get openness; from our police, honesty; and from the media, no skulduggery.

I honestly don’t believe I will see it in my lifetime and no-one over the age of 21 will either.

From: Ron Ward, Elmfield Avenue, Sheffield.

HAVING read David Blunkett’s article (Yorkshire Post, July 22), I can’t help but wonder, is Mr Blunkett on Mr Murdoch’s payroll?

Those of us witnessing what has been happening surely cannot be likened to “ancient crones sitting knitting as heads roll into baskets” as he claims. They’re you and me, decent people from all walks of life who are dismayed to see what might possibly be institutional police corruption and the illegal hacking and deleting of private phone messages. No one has been dragged to an appointment with “Madam Guillotine” or fal len on their swords for that matter so why the drama, they’ve simply resigned. If it transpires that News International instigated or financed criminality, then those complicit in such behaviour have to be brought to justice, that is the law. There’s another old adage comes to mind that Mr Blunkett might recall – “jumped before they were pushed”.

In closing may I say that the Yorkshire Post is a quality paper in every way, from the content within to the quality of the paper its printed on and even the ink, long may it continue.

From: John Gordon, Whitcliffe Lane, Ripon.

THE disappearance of the News of the World, although thoroughly justified in ethical terms, was nevertheless a sad event to those of us who grew up with the paper. The News of the World was essentially for the literate, there were no quasi-pornographic pictures like those in today’s tabloids.

It was considered very daring when it declared after every scandal “intimacy took place”. That was enough to raise the reader’s eyebrows.

A newspaper should reflect the views of the community with all those pictures that do not tell a lie.

Fortunately the photography is an outstanding feature of the Yorkshire Post, the columns are always relevant and the crossword is a “must”. Here is the future.

From: John Wilson, Wilsons Solicitors, New Road Side, Horsforth, Leeds.

IS it really hacking to just follow the instructions? When I got my mobile phone it came with a booklet which told me how I could collect messages left for me from any phone anywhere in the world. All I had to do was to dial a certain number and put in my own personal pin code, which to assist me they had set at a default option, and which I could change whenever I wanted.

The fact is the vast majority of us never use this facility. After all, it is a mobile phone. Why would you ever want to use another phone to get your messages except in the extremity of loss or malfunction, when we have probably forgotten how to do it anyway?

So the net result is anybody in the entire world who knows my mobile phone number can use any phone in the world to get all my messages because I’ve never bothered changing the pin number. In my case, they’d probably die of boredom, but nevertheless the question needs to be asked whether this really constitutes “hacking”?

Hacking as the term is normally understood, is a process whereby an expert in electronics manages to get into the guts of an IT system and make it do things it’s not really supposed to do. It is not a suitable word to describe the activities of people who simply follow the instructions in the booklet. And for the same reason, why are no questions being asked of the mobile phone manufacturers who created this opportunity in the first place?

Imagine if the Post Office promoted a facility where anybody could nip down to the sorting office and open and have a read of anybody else’s post before it got delivered. I’m sure there would be an uproar. But that’s roughly what’s been going on with mobile phones.

From: Douglas Hartley, Irving Terrace, Clayton, Bradford.

I AM reading Charles Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit. Martin, the hero of the story, having been at the receiving end of Chuzzlewit selfishness and hypocrisy, hopes to start a new life in “The Land of Liberty,” America. Accompanied by an attendant, he lands in New York harbour.

A local election has just taken place in the city and party feeling is running high. The press seizes eagerly on the successful candidate’s vilification by his opponents, and on the disturbance in the streets which follows.

Mischievous news boys, aware of the political situation, stand with bundles of daily papers at street corners yelling: “Here’s this morning’s New York sewer! Here’s today’s New York stabber! Here’s the New York family spy! Here’s the New York keyhole reporter!”

The “Sewer” exposes in print an exclusive account of a flagrant act of dishonesty committed by the Secretary of State when he was eight years old; now communicated, at great expense, by his former nurse.

Computers and mobile phones had not been dreamed of, but the hackers of that day evidently used the keyhole in their snoopings!

Could Dickens, peering down the telescope of time, have foreseen the coming of Murdoch and his News of the World?