After about a month, however, things changed dramatically: he started to forget about the TV, mornings were relaxed and our son was conversing with us.Getting rid of the TV was the best thing we have ever done as it gave us a period in which to adjust in peace and quiet. Weaning James off television involved organised activities, all day, every day, from early morning to bedtime and he resented the fact that the television had been removed. And then one day I heard myself describe my child as hard work, when I really felt that I hardly knew him It was clear. The TV had to go.
The first TV-free month was, in my experience of child-rearing, the hardest thing I have ever done. It was then difficult to prise him away and the TV’s noise made it impossible to listen to the radio or read a paper. I asked my son, would he like to go and play football in the park? No, came the reply Would he like to ride his bike in the park? No Would he like to go swimming? No What would he like to do? Watch television.

Up to the age of two my son became increasingly drawn to television, switching it on first thing in the morning, without bothering to eat breakfast or say good morning to his parents. I would be happy to eat his cattle but at present have no means of distinguishing it from other beef on the market.Susan CarstairsArisaig, Inverness-shire. Sir: Regarding Peter Popham’s article, “Perils of a zap-happy life” (25 March). I spoke recently to a farmer on the island of Coll, who said that he buys his cattle from Ireland, where this selective culling policy has been in force. Like others in all parties who recognise the distortions produced by the present “first past the post” voting system, I do look for cross-party support for electoral reform where it may be found, but what the reformers seek is a properly proportional system. The Alternative Vote is not that system.
Robert Maclennan MPHouse of Commons. Sir: I am not reassured by the government policy to exclude the meat of older cattle from the food chain.

As a consumer, what I understand of the current state of knowledge is:

1) There may be a link between BSE and CJD.
2) BSE may be passable from one generation to another and may therefore be latent in young cattle.3) BSE may be present throughout the meat of infected cattle through the nervous system.4) There are a large number of herds which have never been affected by BSE.What would reassure me is a policy of selective slaughter of infected herds and promotion of healthy ones. Your report (1 April), which claims that I have “intimated” Liberal Democrat willingness to consider the Alternative Vote system and “suggested” modifications to it is wrong on both counts. We favour the Single Transferable Vote as the system best designed to reflect fairly in Parliament the voting preferences of the electors. We are looking for research and funding proposals such as the Comare report also calls for.Richard BramallLow Level Radiation CampaignBuilth Wells, Powys. Sir: The position of the Liberal Democrats on electoral reform is unchanged.

However, official perceptions of health hazards from radiation depend crucially upon studies of the long-term effects of a single acute blast of external radiation from the Hiroshima A-bomb. for improved knowledge”.In the House of Commons two days before the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster a symposium organised by the Low Level Radiation Campaign and Medact will discuss the health effects of low-dose internal radiation. There is now a large body of evidence that these studies are a poor basis for assessing health damage from chronic, low-dose exposure to radiation from man-made fission products, which may be ingested and incorporated into body tissue.
By 1958, the area around Seascale had been plastered with 5,000 becquerels per square metre of the isotope Strontium-90 – that is more than 10 times the levels of Sr-90 from nuclear weapons testing that shocked officialdom into promulgating the 1963 international test-ban treaty.We are glad to see that the Comare report expresses reservations about “current knowledge” of radiation hazard, and admits there are “uncertainties regarding internal radiation exposures” and an “urgent need … Sir: Press coverage of last Wednesday’s report from the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (Comare) gives the impression that radiation has been cleared of blame for the Seascale leukaemia cluster, because doses from Sellafield are too low Raw sewage, we heard, is a more likely culprit. He also invented Mr Howard’s testimony in the witness stand – a rabble- rousing effort if ever there was one.All of this, as his readers well understood, was fictitious and frivolous. So the columnist was more than somewhat surprised to receive a real writ for libel, from Mr Howard, who claimed that he had falsely invented a libel case involving Mr Howard. Therefore, Mr Howard was suing the columnist for libel, the libel being that Mr Howard had sued the columnist for libel which, Mr Howard claimed, he had not done before although he was doing so now.The case dragged on for weeks, and many witnesses appeared in court, including Mr Lewis.Just as the case was coming to an end, the columnist woke up, so he never found out what the verdict would have been.What do you think it was?.

He told his readers that he had received a writ for libel from the Home Secretary, which he would be fiercely contesting.He then proceeded to describe the details of the writ and, by and by, the progress of the court case, including the testimony of the main witnesses (who included Mr Lewis) and the words of the counsel involved. Even so, the columnist would sometimes lie awake at night and wonder if he had gone too far. He would always be careful to say that Mr Howard seemed to be all these things but, at the same time, he felt vaguely surprised that he had never had a libel writ from Mr Howard.One day, the columnist decided to allay these fears by, rather oddly, inventing a libel case. Columnists do not change things and nobody ever pays attention to them. This was because he not only seemed smug, arrogant, unmagisterial and prone to self-deception, he also seemed to be incapable of ever admitting he was wrong about anything, perhaps on the grounds that if he started admitting he was wrong about the things he had been wrong about, it would take up too much of his working day.Most of the time the columnist wrote about other things but, from time to time, he was so incensed by the spectacle of Mr Howard that he lambasted him in print, saying that he seemed to be the most smug, arrogant, unmagisterial, self-deceiving and rabble-rousing Home Secretary since homes and secretaries were invented.Nothing ever came of this, of course. Not only did he seem smug, arrogant and unmagisterial, but he also seemed to enjoy standing up at Tory Party conferences and making rabble-rousing speeches, in which he threatened to crack down on crime using various measures, none of which appeared to be enacted, except his favourite project of building more prisons.Mr Howard even declaimed that prison worked, although all the evidence showed the opposite.