Too much government
Sir: How right David Williams is about risks.
When people asked why I be- came incumbent of a Lake Dis- trict Parish twenty years ago, aged sixty, I answered that it was the only part of England in which it was still possible to get lost. I know and honour members of the Mountain Rescue Teams: but I feel glad that I climbed alone before they were invented I went safely, because I knew my own powers and something of the rocks and weather which challenged them.
It is ironical that a Conservative Prime Minister used 'Safety First' as a political slogan—and deserved to lose the election. The place where it belongs is roads; where other people's vagaries are the danger, and where it is notoriously absent.
Let the State protect us from hazards of an overcrowded island. But if for enjoyment we choose to take risks by land or sea, don't protect us overmuch. If we do kill ourselves by accident, neither we, nor the world will have suffered much loss.
J. A. H. Bell Springfield, Grasmere, Ambleside, Westmorland
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