It’s all so scary

At what point does individual freedom have to be sacrificed to the common good?

According to an Aberdeen University academic, smoking in your own house should be made illegal to prevent harm to those who are not smoking themselves, but who would suffer potential harm therefrom.

By extension, perhaps we should consider other areas in which similar positive action could make a great difference to enable people to have a longer and/or safer life.

Take deaths by branches falling off trees. Indeed, trees themselves can be a considerabledangerinhighwinds.the solution is simple: chop them all down. After all, Edinburgh Council has made a splendid start by flattening enormous areas of the city’s graveyards, making them look as though a hurricane had hit them. Why? Because one child (in England, I believe) was injured by a gravestone falling over.

Stairs should equally be banned in houses because of the number of injuries and deaths that occur on them. By law, everyone should live on the ground floor.

When the number of accidents associated with motor vehicles is taken into account

annually, it is astonishing that an obvious solution – the banning of both vehicles and pedestrians (except, maybe a few with Phds in walking on pavements and roadways) from leaving home – has not been taken up.

Rather like Monty Python’s poet under the stairs, every house in Scotland could have a policeman in residence. Think of the potential for job creation.

As Del Boy would say, you know it makes sense.

ANDREW HN GRAY Craiglea Drive, Edinburgh