Term consigned to history

THREE cheers to Sarah Todd for another article full of common sense (Yorkshire Post Country Week, October 26), this time about the ridiculous practice of use/sell by dates.

I have a friend who deals with this in her home by removing the dates on tins with nail varnish remover!

No cheers for Sue Woodcock. She needs to stop using the term “deaf and dumb”. The Oxford Dictionary suggests “avoid dumb in the sense ‘not being able to speak’ as it is likely to cause offence” and indeed it does give offence to profoundly deaf people without speech, people who use sign language as a means of communication.

British Sign Language is a wonderful and expressive language and its users do not deserve to be referred to as “deaf and dumb” – a term which has long since been consigned to history.

Happy days

From: Mrs Patricia Pickering, North Street, Scalby, Scarborough, North Yorkshire.

ON reading Peter Hyde’s letter (Yorkshire Post, October 24), I concur with his sentiments.

The first thing I do with the Saturday Yorkshire Post is to read Ian McMillan’s column.

My husband and I were courting then and we were on our way to the cinema. We called a the chip shop for a fish paté and chips and scraps. My boyfriend wore his older brother’s hand-me-downs. His brother had posh clothes, but my boyfriend was an apprentice blacksmith at the local gas works and was there for seven years. We were poor but very happy.