Nice one.

robert everitt, wolverhampton,

Anyone read the the study run by the US NHBLI called the Women's Health Initiative. Probably not as it did everything they did not want. It involved 48000 women, it ran for 8+ years amd cost $415 million. Half the candidates in the study were on a strictly controlled and monitored diet while the other half live and fed as they normally did. The study was supposed to confirm that diet would reduce CHD, strokes, cancers (breast, bowel and so forth). Unfortunately to the horror of the NHBLI, diet-heart advocates and most nutritionists, it did nothing. The do as you please groups after 8+ years were just as well as those who had suffered eight years of dietary hardship.

Why was this given little publicity. IT DID NOT SUPPORT THE GOSPEL of dieting.

M. Cawdery, Portadown, UK ( if it still exists)

Fear is the perfect excuse to strip your freedoms.

As we Londoners said after the bombing - I am not afraid.

Who needs terrorist to change my way of life when the govt does it perfectly well, one hard won liberty at a time

Gavin, London, UK

I grew up just after WWII and it seems always to have been a mechanism of government to tell us to be afraid of something or the other. My generation lived under a constant, low-level fear of being obliterated by missiles from the USSR at any moment. Since the Berlin Wall fell, and along with it communism, we have been told told about an ever- growing menu of things to be frightened of.
Thank you for this sensible article. In an era when "We have nothing to fear but Fear itself", an era when we need good, strong government, it's actually the government who are running scared, because they have lost control of everything that matters in this country.

MaxC, London,

Surely the greatest threat to humanity, the universe and everything is politicians.
I am reminded of the cover notes to Terry Riley's a Rainbow in Curved Air
'National flags were sewn together into brightly colored circus tents under which politicians were allowed to perform harmless theatrical games'

Eddie Reader, birmingham, england

So Mr Hume tells us that these comparisons are dangerous, but he fails to tell us whether they are more or less dangerous than the threat of youth violence.

Simon, Brussels,

Good point well made.

It reminds me of the request made by Ian Gillan (then frontman of Deep Purple) to their soundman/soundmen, "Turn everything up louder than everything else"!

deejay, Reading, UK

You don't mention bacon and sausages as the greatest threat this country is presently facing - the Luftwaffe was a pinprick by comparison.

Peter, Cambridge,

Thank heavens they aren't German sausages then, or are they???

David Johnson, WHITLEY BAY, UK

You don't mention bacon and sausages as the greatest threat this country is presently facing - the Luftwaffe was a pinprick by comparison.

Peter, Cambridge,