People write letters to the Echo for a number of reasons. Some believe other people are interested in their views. They feel they are contributing to public opinion and that by getting their electonically scrawled ramblings into print they are somehow validating their skewed view of the micro-world they live in. Other people have greviances to vent and the Echo provides a service that allows them to rant about the latest "Stalinist" law change, 5 minute late bus or PC gone mad. This allows the police to keep tabs on local trouble makers (when was the last time Exeter had a revolution?).
Most people write in response to someone else's letter. This often ends up being either a war of attrition between two teams of ardent correspondents (see Bashing Gay Bashing, Hunting and the eternal Bible battles) or a good old fashioned stoning. These stonings are where one person stands up and airs a view that no doubt to them seems rational, but in the cold hard harshness of black ink aggrevates the entire E&E readership. The fool's letter then has to sustain a good weeks worth of pounding as people hurl letters deriding said fool's misinformed foray onto the letter page.
One recent example was the woman who complained when she had to pay 40p more to wash her 4x4 MPV. I think she genuinely thought she was going to get support behind her arguments that Tarquin needed the space afforded him by her 4mpg hummer.
For 10 days she was relentlessly hammered. It was like that bit in Spartacus when the guy says "I'm Spartacus", but noone else gets up and the criminal is dragged off to his grizzly and extended death. Great sport.
Tonight's featured letter is another dead cert for getting a good 3 columns of enraged bashing. Take it away, Mrs J E Oldroyd of The Cresent, Exmouth:
I AM DISAPPOINTED BY MY DEVON MOVE
(Uh-oh: you can already hear the tip-tap-tap of disgruntled letter writers)
I moved from Yorkshire to Exmouth last year, not really by choice, and I must say how very disappointed I am with the place.The seafront is dead, with just a few shops, swings for young ones and nothing for a child over six years old.
When you compare it to Yorkshire resorts, it beats me why anyone would want to come on holiday to a place like this.
I do not find the people very friendly at all.
They seem to look down on you as though you are something they have stepped on.
As for jobs, my friend has been unable to find work in Exmouth, although jobs have been applied for on an average of six a week, with no response coming from prospective employers.
At least in Yorkshire you do get a reply.
My friend is fit and able to work part-time or full-time. Why will employers not give a job now the season is in full swing?
Isn't there at least one sympathetic employer in Exmouth who will employ a hard-working man of 35 who likes gardening - or is it that they do not like Yorkshire people? I rest my case.
I fear that Mrs Oldroyd has made a basic error here of insulting the place where she lives and then giving both her name and a reasonable amout of her address. If they didn't like you before, they sure ain't going to now.
The "I rest my case" ending makes little, if any sense. Her case, I think, is that Exmouth makes a poor choice for holiday and place of residence. Her concluding argument to support this assertion is that employers in Devon maybe don't like people from Yorkshire.
Unfortunately for Mrs O, I have got my hands on her friend's CV and can assure her that it isn't the fact that he is from Yorkshire that he isn't being offered jobs. This was put in for a job at Alvin Palmer's Crazy Golf course.
Name: Stanley Thriplethwaite
DoB: 1972
Experience:
1974 - 1984. Workin' down't mine. 26 hours per day, living in't box in't middle o't road (continue ad nauseum)
1985 - 1996. Workin' up't mill. Dealin wit trouble at said mill.
1996 - Present. Extra in gritty British movies about young lads who are right ponces.
Likes:
Gardening.
Dislikes:
Devon.
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