Regarding the Oxford Mail on October 3, regarding ‘machete-wielding burglars’.

The tool pictured, which you so dramatically describe as a ‘machete’, is nothing more than a common billhook – a tool designed for hedge laying, and chopping up fire wood, along with its long-handled partner, the hook shape being accentual for pulling the branches into the sharp regions of the blade.

Every country cottage would have had one, always stowed in the hovel (wood shed). I still have mine to this day.

I expect that, these days, if I walked up the road to cut a few pea-sticks, I would suddenly be surrounded by armed police, plus helicopters, ordered to throw down my ‘weapon’ and to ‘freeze’.

The ghastly development of the crude and destructive mechanical hedge trimmer came in the mid-20th century. It is responsible for the drastic reduction of bird life throughout the countryside, its nasty work taking place at any time of the year, unlike hedge laying, which always took place in the winter months at non-breeding times.

The machete is a long, straight-bladed tool, designed primarily for slashing one’s way through difficult jungle undergrowth, or the like.

Unfortunately, it is now known as a killing weapon.

Not the sort of thing that the scum-bags who your paper has highlighted could easily carry about inside their trousers without the chance of having their lower organs sliced off – more’s the pity!

TONY O’GORMAN Main Street Hethe