LETTER: Online article is welcomed

Good, an article last week by Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher's old press secretary! I do like the way he's always relevant and down to earth.

Present day life is certainly ‘at once sensitive and insensitive’. Take Twitter. It can be a repulsive source of almost unchallenged obscenities, threats, racism and slander – much of it from people who can’t face the presence of a person, idea or statue that represents attitudes different from their own, and they want ‘safe spaces’. (From statues?)

And after the dictatorship of the ‘twitterati’ and the ‘safe spacers’, Sir Bernard can see another dictatorship looming – enforced state regulation of the free press – and it’s not even Theresa May pursuing it. It’s the Lords, in the form of new data protection laws.

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Newspapers that don’t sign up for state regulation would have to bear complainants’ legal costs, win or lose. Good point, Sir Bernard.

Do we want to be standing in the streets making collections for local newspapers, to try and stop them having to close down because they can’t afford to go on? No, if I’m not mistaken, we want a free press and any spare money anywhere to go to hospitals and social care.

Jacqueline Deeks

Wendy Ridge

Rustington

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