Sir: Colin Wheeler’s complaint about people cycling on the pavement (Letters, 12 July) brings up an issue the Government must consider if its cycling strategy is to be a success I ride my bicycle to work every day, on the road. Car drivers regularly behave as if the rules of the road do not apply if the other vehicle is a bicycle. As a Unionist and a one-time resident of Portadown, I am quite prepared to see a compromise settlement with the moderate nationalist community and with the Irish Republic. In addition, I fully agree that the Orange Order marches are at best foolish, and at worst provocative. However, even within the ranks of the Orange Order you must distinguish between those besuited and behatted businessmen observing their, admittedly confrontational, Masonic rituals, and those young hooligans with Orange sashes over their Rangers FC shirts.
This inability to distinguish between factions within a sectarian community extends to nationalists, where it is conveniently forgotten that one third of those same residents of the Garvaghy Road voted for Sinn Fein-IRA in the recent elections, and have done so over 26 years of a campaign of bombing and murder by that group.Maybe Unionists will have to swallow the bitter pill and admit that one of the cherished maxims of the nationalist community is correct: the problem with Ireland is the English.Dr DAVID McALPINENottingham. The failure, or unwillingness, to distinguish within any of these groups ensures that moderate and intelligent Unionists stay out of the debate. Sir: I am dismayed by your coverage of the present situation in Northern Ireland, and by the woefully inadequate understanding shown by most of the (English) correspondents to this letters page.

Sadly this is typical of the mainland press in general, who continue to perpetuate the myth that Ulster Unionists can be summed up by the phrases “dark-suited”, “dour”, “uncompromising”, “Presbyterian”, “Orange”; whereas Irish nationalists may be summed up using phrases like “happy-go-lucky”, “oppressed”, “Catholic guilt”, “Green”. But isn’t that how, in a society which is mature and slow to panic, it absolutely has to be?. All the more reason for the debate to be held school by school and to avoid some crude security formula imposed by the Department for Education and Employment or the Scottish or Welsh Offices.We began with murder and morality; we end with bureaucracy and small, local defences. Money is required but in the form of a fund, organised locally or nationally, to which individual schools can lay claim on the basis of their own assessments.Our correspondence columns have shown how strongly some parents feel about the maintenance for their children of an open atmosphere at school, how vital to avoid any sense of imprisonment. This is, however, an argument in which generalisation should be eschewed. There are locations, not all of them in the heart of the city, where school heads, governors and teachers may for very good reasons wish for some kind of line or barrier between the school and its surrounds, whether fence, security cameras or better policing. Put like that, as it is should be, there is no contest.School security is a less straightforward matter.

Earlier this week our Transport Correspondent argued strongly as an urban parent that the best must not be the enemy of the good. Even if, it was argued, schools could be made safe from assault, the cost of their defences would not just be huge as a sum of money and displaced resources but deeply damaging to schoolchildren. One of the best memorials to the Dunblane victims would be change in policy – a straight ban on the private ownership of hand guns, say. If there is a trade-off, it is between the private pleasure of a small group of people who enjoy handling and firing weapons (albeit in gun clubs and the like) and the public interest in severely restricting access to weapons of destruction. The Dunblane inquiry ended this week with a powerful submission by counsel for the victims’ families, asserting the legal ownership of guns was a causal factor in the Hamilton rampage.There are worrying signs that inquiry chairman Lord Cullen may not grasp the force of that point.