LETTERS

I JUST felt the need to do this.

On Saturday, May 25, this year, my mum, who is 81 years old and not in the best of health, my brother who is mentally and physically disabled, and myself – who suffers from bipolar mental illness and have done for the last 30 years – were all sitting outside Oxford Town Hall on the benches kindly provided. We were all eating sandwiches and quietly minding our own business.

It was approximately 1pm and a sweltering hot day, as you may or may not recall.

We were visiting Oxford and Cambridge that weekend on a coach trip, and had set off in moderate weather. I was dressed in all black, wearing a thin pullover.

Whilst we were eating our lunch there on the benches, a young woman and her friend walked past, and whilst she was doing so, she looked at us and proceeded to say 'well, I've seen it all now'.

What exactly she meant by that comment, I'll never know; I once suffered a nervous breakdown because of a barbed comment directed at me.

This letter is not out of revenge, getting even, so to speak, vengeance or retribution, it is just to say that there is a person in Oxford that bears prejudice.

I have since prayed for that woman's soul, as I do for all sinner, not forgetting that I have sinned myself.

I forgive that woman.

She may never know who she is.

ANDREW GRUBERSKI

Oxford Mail:

LEAVING aside the dearth of instructors, stations, lockers, etc. needed to accommodate a further 20,000 police officers, whenever I hear a proposed increase in their number I think that, if this implies more thick, bent thugs, not that all fall into that category, it should be abandoned.

It was perhaps mindful of this – alongside the growing complexity of certain aspects of the occupation, not least the minefield of modern technology – that our current PM purportedly believes that new recruits should either be 'graduates' or prepared to embark upon such courses, not that the latter guarantees a successful outcome, so what then?

Besides, with almost half of youngsters – for obvious socio-economic reasons not invariably the brightest – attending 'universities', the mere possession of some 'degree' is hardly an indication of intelligence, coupled with the fact that many disciplines or pseudo-disciplines would have precious little bearing on the skills required.

Nonetheless, such a policy (if indeed implemented) may well cause their average IQ to creep up into three figures in the expectation, realistic or not, that its theoretical ethical counterpart would rise accordingly, though there may still be some role for the relatively dull as one does not want them too profoundly contemplating comparatively straightforward issues.

Just as the academically unqualified may be dissuaded from applying, so, of course, will many – given the present reputation of our forces of law and order – at the opposite end of the spectrum. Furthermore, most 'graduates' are unlikely to be willing to remain at the bottom of the ladder, resulting in an idiotically unbalanced hierarchy, or more probably, frustration, the consequent temptation of various forms of misconduct and widespread resignations.

DAVID DIMENT

Riverside Court

Oxford