LETTERS

Overpaid imports

What madness that footballer alexis Sanchez is being paid £350,000 a week.

Manchester united keeps splashing out on foreign imports who do not fulfil expectations. Its squad is full of overpaid, over-rated players.

If England fails again at the World Cup, football needs to take a good look at itself. Start stripping the excess, go back to basics and bring youngsters through the academies.

The Premier league needs to forget about importing talent and offload the dead wood. DAVID PATRICK MOORE, Thornton Heath, Surrey. IF Alexis Sanchez were in charge of a company employing thousands and earning this country tens of millions a year, he’d be criticised for his excessive salary.

Is success at sports the only kind of achievement that can be regarded as acceptable?

Kipling coined the saying ‘ the flannelled fools at the wicket; the muddied oafs at the goal’ to protest at the way sport was being put ahead of more important attributes.

Football academies are designed to produce elite footballers, but many academically able pupils are not able to benefit because of the disappearance of ‘elite’ grammar schools.

Is producing 500 elite footballers more important for Britain’s future than producing 500 elite designers, programmers and inventors? Could we be scoring an own goal? PETER DAVEY, Bournemouth. THE photo of gentleman jimmy armfield, who died this week, leading the England team out at Wembley in 1963 when he was captain shows how football has changed.

The players wore the same coloured boots, their socks were all pulled up to their knees, there were no gloves, tattoos or fancy hairdos, and all happy to play for £20 a week. GEOFFREY COLLINS, Trowbridge, Wilts.

Punters mugged

THE surge of bookmakers advertising online is due to the foolproof business plan they adopt. They are trawling for ‘newbies’ — young men watching sport on TV in a pub with their mates.

Sports betting does not only offer a simple gamble on the outcome of a match. you can bet on the score at half-time, the first player to score, red cards and so on.

However, if you show a modicum of knowledge, and thus show yourself to be unprofitable to the bookie, you’ll be restricted or banned. They can make it difficult to withdraw your winnings in the hope you will get greedy and bet your bank away.

How can the gambling Commission allow this? RAY McDONNELL, Peterborough, Cambs.

Forever lippie

Never throw your lipstick away again, advises Femail.

during the war years, cosmetics were hard to come by. I was working in a branch of Boots and with the blessing of the manager, we girls would scoop out the remains of any sample lipsticks left in tubes, melt them down and pour the liquid into a pessary mould.

Once set, voila, a new lipstick! H. McCUTCHEON, Rossendale, Lancs.

School truths

Three articles on education in one issue of the Mail supported my deeply held convictions.

The first confirmed high standards in certain state schools are due to the quality of the teaching rather than pupils’ home circumstances.

The second supported single- sex classes. as a teacher of senior pupils and with 40 years’ experience, I am convinced non-politically correct, single-sex classes provide the better environment for learning.

The third article confirmed my view that fairness and good sense eludes Oxbridge administrators who are allowing more time to complete exams in mathematics to benefit women students. How sad. PATRICIA DUNWORTH, Sidmouth, Devon.

History repeats itself

Dominic Sandbrook’S comparison of Momentum with Militant Tendency is spot-on (Mail).

I worked at the london Borough of lambeth during the Eighties when ‘red’ Ted Knight was council leader. ridiculous hard-left policies were forced on the local people and it was a shambles. It was so liberating to go home at night, shut the door and know that only then were you living in the real world.

The unions would take days of action ( more like inaction) to support some ridiculous cause, but very little action was taken for staff who were having a hard time.

History repeats itself, though packaged in a different way. KATHRYN BONDS, London SE19. I Worked for nationalised British rail in the Sixties and never knew if I would be working or striking from one week to the next. H. BEDFORD, Pontefract, W. Yorks.

Street angels

I Cheer the Night angels in Essex who are patrolling streets to fill the gap left by police cuts (Mail).

I have long argued for a revival of Neighbourhood Watch schemes as an alternative to the police force. It’s better and cheaper than Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who have no powers other than those accorded to ordinary citizens.

I was a Neighbourhood Watch volunteer in my rural area for many years and if there was an incident I could be on the spot within a few minutes while a police response would take at least half an hour.

Problems such as cyber crime, people trafficking and organised crime are the province of a national police force and though they may

call on local help, that funding should be paid for nationally.

People are more concerned with issues such as anti-social behaviour, burglaries and drink-driving.

Volunteers can provide victim support, freeing police for specialist duties. mrs iriS DAiNToN,

Louth, Lincs.

Plastic headache

IT’S not just supermarkets that need to cut down on plastic use (Mail).

I have medication for migraine relief prescribed by my GP that consists of a cardboard box, inside which is a plastic box containing just three pills, each in its own foil sachet. When I renew my prescription, I am presented with 12 of these.

C. BirCH, London SE12. NEARLY every day someone is paid to shove junk through my letterbox. I put this in the recycling bin, and once a fortnight someone else gets paid to take it away.

It is probably recycled into more rubbish to be delivered back to me. No doubt this nonsensical merry-go-round is good for the economy, but it doesn’t do much good for the environment. I never asked for this junk mail and don’t want it, so I do object to being labelled a waste producer. GrAEmE JEFFErSoN,

Fareham, Hants.

Bridge of sighs

SPLURGE £ 120 billion on Boris’s bridge? Surely it would be better spent on widening the Channel. JoHN STEVENS, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex. WILL the traffic switch from driving on the left to driving on the right halfway over the Channel bridge? mErVYN CorNWALL, Aberdare, merthyr Tydfil. LOOKING at the artist’s impressions of Boris’s Channel bridge, I realised it was the same scheme put forward by my old company G. Maunsell and Partners in 1985, using girder spans with Kevlar cables, plastic wind shielding and spiral ramps.

I remember the video showing what the experience of driving across the Channel would be like. STEPHEN Corbet, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.