Nannying Government is a walking disaster

SIR – You report (August 4) that the Government has spent £1.2 billion of taxpayers’ money on a campaign to encourage children to walk or cycle to school. As with most government campaigns, it had the opposite effect.

This is further evidence that we do not have a proper Conservative Government. As well as the horrid nannying aspect of the campaign, it is a huge waste of money.

The British people object to being lectured by busybodies. This especially includes officialdom, which our current administration appears to be enslaved by. Tim Janman

London W6

SIR – On which planet do ministers live? Do they want to see an increase in the number of children killed in traffic accidents on busy roads?

A decade ago, as a parent governor of a small village school (since closed in the general merger of schools, which is part of the problem), I received a letter suggesting that children should be encouraged to walk or cycle to school. Only five of the 50 children lived in the village; most lived more than two miles away on an estate on the edge of a nearby town, and had been given places at the village school because the town’s schools were full.

The only routes to the village were along a busy bypass, with no cycling or pedestrian lanes, or along country lanes used at speed by drivers trying to avoid the bypass. Not surprisingly, parents brought their children to school by car, there being no public transport and the distance from the school being not quite sufficient to qualify for transport to be provided.

If you close schools within walking distance of where children live, you should allow for the consequences. Bryan Clark

Ludlow, Shropshire