The voice is still the most important communication tool we have

The voice is still the most important communication tool we have; powerful enough to make men march, and make men cry.Most chief executives and chairmen of public and private organisations take a course in presentation skills because they want to be professional. This incremental impact is beginning to give cause for concern. It takes a big black plastic bag which, when first put in, drapes over each side of the bin. You then chuck the rubbish into the bag, mostly without looking.

From time to time you check to see if the bag is full yet, and sometimes you find that one of the top corners of the bag was not properly draped over the side and has come adrift, and that all this time you have been chucking the rubbish, not into the bag, but down the side of the bag. This means, of course, that you have to engage on the very messy task of getting the bag out, which is now filthy inside and out, getting the rubbish out, cleaning the bin and reassembling it all.
Whenever this happens, I curse and swear and breathe fire against the person who let it happen.Except that recently I have come to the conclusion that there may be no person to blame.I am working on a theory that plastic bags are more intelligent than we think, and that they have embarked on a malevolent campaign to undermine civilised life.Ridiculous? Well, think of the number of times you have picked up a plastic bag, or torn one off a roll, and then been baffled as to how to open it. From this point of view, it is almost beyond belief that the controller of BBC Radio 2 has decided to end, on Sunday next, a tradition that has proved immensely popular and socially highly desirable for the past 60 or so years, from “Forces Favourites” to “All-time Greats”.Over that time Sunday lunchtimes have, in many thousands of homes, been accompanied by a programme ranging over the whole catalogue of recorded music from the 1920s to the present day. Opinion polls consistently show that more than 70 per cent of people support the use of speed cameras.STEVE HOUNSHAM Communications Manager Transport 2000 London N1 BBC old and new Sir: Although I agree with Elizabeth Bray (letter: “BBC shuns the old”, 26 August), I regret the way broadcasting, like so many aspects of life today, has been broken up into age-related segments. These in-car devices are hugely irresponsible because they encourage drivers to stick within speed limits only when alerted to the presence of a nearby speed camera.

At other times motorists know they are free to break the law. Newspapers that carry adverts for these devices help to fuel the myth that speed cameras do not perform any useful function.Motorists who like to drive fast might not like speed cameras, but most people do. In the 24 speed camera areas in operation in 2002-03 there was a 40 per cent reduction in people being killed or seriously injured at camera sites, saving around 105 lives.The Government, police and road safety camera partnerships are doing their best to make the roads safer for us all but organisations like the Association of British Drivers seem to be desperate to undermine these efforts.Nowhere is this backlash against common sense more obvious than the rise in the use of speed camera detector equipment. If Mr McArthur-Christie doesn’t understand it, he has no business being a “road safety spokesman”.MIKE WRIGHT Nuneaton, WarwickshireSir: Mark McArthur-Christie, in his defence of what he sees as his right to drive as fast as he likes, ignores the danger of speed and the good work speed cameras are doing in cutting road crash casualties. From the moans of “advanced” drivers like Mr McArthur-Christie, they seem to be doing their job.JAMES DAVIS Godalming, SurreySir: Mr McArthur-Christie asks if there is some physical law that makes speeding dangerous.

Well, yes: specifically, the fact that the kinetic energy of a moving body is proportional not to its speed but to the square of its speed. In other words, in a collision, a car travelling at 30mph does not 50 per cent more damage but 125 per cent more damage than the same car travelling at 20mph.This is fairly basic physics. Speed cameras are not put there as a cash cow, nor as some cat-and-mouse game by the local constabulary against the decent driver They are there to catch people driving irresponsibly. It’s large, painted yellow and has warning signs before it, and you really have no excuse if you are caught by one. A recent survey found that most drivers don’t know what a lot of road signs mean anyway, probably mistaking the speed camera symbol for “Camera Museum” or “Photo-Me Booth”.Reduced speed gives the driver more thinking time, reducing the potential for accidents. Not one of these was accomplished, even by those entities under the complete control of the Palestinian Authority, such as the media.All diplomatic initiatives require both sides to co-operate.