Please help our ‘Friendly to Forces’ campaign

NEW research by SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity shows that nearly half of UK recruiters are shying away from hiring service leavers, citing fear of poor mental health as one of the barriers to recruiting. The misconceptions have led to one in three recruiters in Cardiff admitting to being reluctant to hire someone who had previously served in the Armed Forces.

To challenge this lack of understanding amongst businesses and to help service leavers transition from military to civilian life, SSAFA is launching its Friendly to Forces campaign. The campaign asks businesses to sign up and show their intent to offer equal opportunities to service leavers.

The database of Friendly to Forces employers will then be used by SSAFA’s Mentoring Service to signpost potential candidates to employers that we know will value their skills. The Mentoring Service helps motivate, support, build resilience and empower service leavers – to fulfil their potential in their new lives outside the military.

The campaign will underpin SSAFA’s pledge to the Armed Forces Covenant to show advocacy on behalf of the Armed Forces community.

We ask that you show your support of the campaign and encourage businesses to sign up at ssafa.org. uk/friendly

Clare Bain, Mentoring Manager at SSAFA, the Armed Forces Charity

Delivering message often led to caning

MY experience at Cardiff High School for Boys, which I attended in the 1960s, was far from the idyll your correspondent Mr Tom Jones recalls from an earlier decade (“Splott served its folk well in war and peace”, Echo letters, October 21).

Mr George Diamond was nearing the end of his long term as headmaster when I started at the school. Being sent to stand outside his study inevitably resulted in a thrashing with a cane. On occasion, the pupil was only there to deliver a letter or a message. A defence of “it wasn’t me” (which was certainly true on one occasion when I was caned) was ignored.

Mr Diamond had gained his reputation by creating a grammar school on the lines of a public school. Forms were streamed with names like “Lower Shell” and “Upper Remove”. The best teachers taught the highest achieving classes; the pupils who perhaps most needed inspiration and assistance were left to the dreariest and least effective staff members. Latin was mandatory for the lower forms.

Despite Mr Jones’ belief that there was no class discrimination, most of the local Roath and Splott boys were in the lower forms and sets and the lads from the wealthy suburbs like Cyncoed and Lisvane were in the top sets. This may have been no more than a reflection of early years’ education, home privilege and parental support, which still affect educational chances today, but it was noticeable. Or perhaps John Humphrys’ recollections of class prejudice had an element of truth.

Boys who came to the school knowing how to play “rugger” and cricket did well and would end up as prefects.

When I returned to start in the sixth form after the summer holidays, I realised that the local boys with whom I was friendly had disappeared.

Presumably they hadn’t achieved the required O-level grades, but they were never mentioned again by staff or pupils, like casualties in a battle when the war continues.

The focus was unquestionably on those thought likely to go to Oxbridge, whose names appeared on boards around the school. The rest of us were also-rans.

It wasn’t all bad, of course. There were some very good teachers teaching the top “sets”, though subject choice was limited, and combinations of subjects even more so.

This had a significant adverse impact on my later life.

I could write much more, but I have reached the limit for a letter in this column.

Paul Seligman

Fairwater, Cardiff

Youths brainwashed over green issues

VIV Forbes of Queensland, Australia (Echo letters, October 17), points with 20/20 vision to the idiocy of our youth, a youth that through our education system, and a thoroughly infiltrated, complicit government has allowed that youth to be brainwashed by outside interferences into believing man can now control the world’s weather systems.

The outside interference came from the United Nations, that communist organisation that was allowed to feed its ideology into our schools since the late Eighties. What was their aim? Simply to ruin our economy and take control of our country.

The ease of their success has astounded them, as now our youth has been released onto the streets to terrify the population into submission.

Barbara MacArthur (Echo letters, October 16) on the other hand is one of many people that could have told the youths acting stupidly on our streets that the weather today is no different than what she and I have experienced throughout the past 80 years. Weather that has been good, bad and dammed well ugly. Weather that nature will ensure cannot be changed by a few thousand knownothings on our streets.

It goes without saying that the world as a whole needs a great deal of education in the disposal of plastic that is a litter problem, and cars that need to run more cleanly, just to mention two problems that can be solved.

It is time for a platform to be given to real scientists, many of whom are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs.

Consecutive governments continue to be a disaster, when, as spineless politicians, they have failed to speak out, as like children they play follow the piper.

George Chelmis

Canton, Cardiff

Roadworks upheaval is ruining bus trips

I WOULD like to comment on the bus service across the city centre from Penarth Road to Cathays where I live.

I did that journey by bus after having to go down to the Royal Mail sorting office on Penarth Road.

Many buses in fact after trying to decide the best way to get across the

Latin was mandatory for the lower forms

city centre at the moment. It is a bit like a giant roundabout with all of the roadworks on Westgate Street.

This seems like a massive upheaval and surely the buses could be better routed during these roadworks.

I am a regular user of the bus services in Cardiff city centre and I am usually only full of praise for it.

But this upheaval with the roadworks on Westgate Street really is the limit. I think that this warrants a complaint, which usually takes a lot for me to do. David Lloyd Cathays, Cardiff

The small print: Letters will not be included unless you include your name, full postal address and daytime telephone number (we prefer to use names of letter writers but you can ask for your name not to be published if you have a good reason). The Editor reserves the right to edit all letters.