Sir, Melanie Reid is right to remove much of the blame from the young man caught haplessly on camera while on a night out in Sheffield (Opinion, Nov 5). Freshers activities have been part and parcel of life in university towns and cities up and down the country for years and very few people would begrudge them their moments of, mostly, harmless fun. Even if cheap alcohol were not available or if event organisers did not exist, people still want to party with the inevitable occasional risk of such incidents as that reported.

The greater shame is that other persons should choose to take or obtain pictures and then distribute them such that they become widespread public property. Irrespective of the spoiling of the memorial, this is too harsh a price to pay for a moment’s indiscretion; the incident was being appropriately dealt with by the courts and that is where it should have stayed. At best you could conclude that the old sayings of “not gloating over other people’s misfortunes” or “there but by the grace of God go I” have been forgotten and, at worst, that the circulation of the pictures was an act of unmitigating cruelty.

Clive Hall
Sandown, Isle of Wight

Sir, Melanie Reid is quite wrong to state that “no punishment the judge can dish out to Philip Laing can make his situation any more dreadful than it is”. As the adjutant of a regiment based in Sheffield, I am responsible for the parade in Barker’s Pool this Remembrance Sunday, the location of the cenotaph upon which Laing urinated. If the judge were to agree, I could arrange a session of military corrective training, run by my regimental sergeant major and assisted by Mr Fred Powell (veteran of the 4th Army in Burma and chair of the Sheffield Ex-Servicemens’ Association). Make it about 1045hrs and I can also guarantee an audience of about 2,000.

I. G. Thompson
Adjutant, 38 Signal Regiment (V)

Sir, It is utterly disingenuous of Melanie Reid to state “show me a parent of one of today’s students who did not get hopelessly drunk as a teenager as a rite of passage, and I will show you a liar”. It is precisely the thinking behind this kind of statement that leads people to think that excessive drinking at some point in life is absolutely the norm. My husband, my father, my son and myself have all been through university without ever having been remotely drunk. To be called “liars” perpetuates the myth that “everyone does it”. This myth is a large part of the problem in young people feeling unable to say no to the pressure to over-drink.

Pam Davies
Coventry

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