Ban the shoddy, sordid and debasing says mother

Sirs,—Being the mother of sons and daughters, some of whom are probably older and others certainly younger than the writer of your editorial. "Censorship Should Go," I expect to be relegated to the— "dying forces of Victorian Puritanism."

Did you not know that that sort of thinking died with your grandparents? Obviously the writer has not read "Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It." by Mae West. No outcry because it is well written without a hint of crudity, yet very little left to the imagination in parts.

On one point I am in wholehearted agreement. Violence and corruption—of which the crude presentation of sex is a part—should be ruthlessly exterminated from our literature and films.

Anything shoddy, sordid, debasing, should be banished from our Tv screens, with odd accents and poor grammar allowed only on rare occasions to give cogency in the Shavian tradition.

Let's face it. You are what you think.

If your only knowledge of England was what you have seen in Coronation Street. Meet The Wife, and Steptoe And Son, would you eare to admit that you are English?

Continual presentation of poor quality situations, attitudes and values on screen has far greater impact than floods of written matter which would pass unnoticed but for outcry in the press.

Could it be an organised publicity gimmick to get certain books moving? It certainly appears so; the pity of it being that in the process honest citizens are swamped in the backwash of insult to their integrity.

Preoccupation with wordy. dissonance and the unconsidered suggested remedy of "organised opposition" is ineffective because it is destructive. Ask any medical student what flight and fight does to the metabolism.

Norine Standish.