I thank David Kyffin, of the Victoria Arms, Old Marston, for his kind remarks regarding my stance against the closure of many pubs (Oxford Mail, February 20). During my long-gone halcyon younger days, I was a frequent visitor to the Vicky.

I vividly recall punting up the Cherwell with friends for a refreshing pint in this well-known inn.

However, his is just the type of pub, with its Morse and Lewis connections and expansive garden, that are the prime target for celebrity chefs to turn into a gastro-pub, making them well out of the reach, price-wise, of the ordinary man.

It is the standard small town pub with no garden I am concerned about.

These are the pubs that have been most affected by the smoking ban, the target of property spectators and breweries which find it far more profitable to turn them into a block of flats.

It was these pubs that were the backbone of a once-great British institution, but are sadly closing at a rate now increased to 67 a month.

Gradually, over the past 10 years, this so-called people's Labour Government has eroded into our private lives.

Control, control and yet more control over us seems to be its aim.

There is even a proposal to charge smokers £10 a year for a licence to buy cigarettes, countersigned by a doctor if he or she considers smoking will do you no harm.

What doctor will do that? The people who bring in cheap cigarettes from abroad will have a field day. The lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

Regarding Derek Sherwood's letter in the same issue, I am pleased he has been cured of his throat cancer, but how does he know it was caused by passive smoking?

Only because a doctor told him? Perhaps there were other conditions he worked in which could have caused it.

We are all born with some form of hereditary disease.

My own mother, who smoked cigarettes all her life, died in old age through a heart attack brought on by being born with yellow jaundice.

My father never had a pipe out of his mouth, but died from a brain haemorrhage caused through an accident.

All three of their offspring were brought up in a smoke-filled home, yet are still alive in our 70s and 80s.

It's all in the genes, now proven with breast cancer in women.

DEREK HONEY Queen Emma's Dyke Witney