Express and Echo correspondents can be broadly categorised into two types. For most it provides a kind of sparring arena so that they can hone their vitriolic pens whilst waiting for the break onto the letter pages of the Daily Mail. On the other, much smaller side are the people who decide that it is upto them to provide some balance to the letters page by using those underhand tools of fact and reason to rubbish the outpourings of the vocal madmen (and women) of Exeter.
In my letter writing days I took the plight of asylum seekers as the area I would try and provide some balanced argument against some of the almost unbelievable letters that the Echo published. Others have taken on the causes of travellers, the smacking of children, speeding and national service. An important area is providing the case for not bringing back the death penalty - an issue dear to some Echo corresponedent's hearts.
So enter G R Holwill to give some balance to the calls for stringin' em up.
THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL MURDER
I wonder what Richard B Roberts thinks he will gain from the return of judicial murder as a form of revenge? It takes 20 years of appeal upon appeal, while lawyers grow fat and the taxpayer poorer, until every avenue of appeal is exhausted and a middle-aged man, a model prisoner and born against Christian, is taken out and executed for a crime he committed as a teenager.
Doh! Fine sentiment, but by arguing that after 20 years prisoners become anti-Christians is kind of undermining Holwill's point.
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