YOUR VIEWS

FRANK Leavers wrote a typically amusing piece on “Majorca Frank & Julie” where he complains of the one way nature of holiday invitations. I'm sure it's a more common complaint among ex-pats here than sun burn. I've suffered more than many. While I am an only child my wife was one of 8. When we moved to sunny Spain we were soon inundated with holiday requests. Obviously I received calls from people I'd never heard of but I suspect my wife too was never that sure either when the net widened from siblings to Aunts & Uncles and more.

Frank writes of the chagrin when his hospitality has not been reciprocated when he wanted to go to the UK this summer. I have not put this to the test. I have had many of my wife's north of England family say good bye with a “you must come and stay with us” but unlike fellow Old Etonian George Orwell I have no interest in passing a fortnight in Wigan. Even then it took a big advance payment to get him on the train - £20'000 in today's terms. I have a suggestion to make. Let's combine an Air Miles type system with Holiday Home Exchange type system. Not for us here to swap our homes which will just aggravate our current troubles but to exchange the offers we've had from our guests. As long as Frank is at home with Lancashire hot pot and dripping sandwiches he'll do fine.

If this doesn't take off do as I did, reduce the number of bedrooms you have. We first rented a MacMansion with 4 principal bedrooms plus two (behind the kitchen) for staff - those were the days. Many times they were all full. We bought our next place so I had every right to downgrade our 4 to 2. I now have an office and a store room. With only one guest room demand has dropped off drastically so with the trump card “unfortunately my daughter has booked that week … pardon… sorry my other daughter has booked that one as well” no unwanted guests.

Mike Lillico
Playa de Palma

P.S. I didn't really go to Eton College, Winsor but Heaton Grammar, Newcastle where the inverted snobs among us refer to ourselves as Old Heatonians.

DEAR SIR

I refer to the letters from Gillian Ford and Leslie Watson both of which were highly critical of my letter which you kindly printed on July 29th.
My letter was not directed toward Gillian Ford's non-practising Muslim husband. (Neither was it meant to be critical of my Muslim local grocer - who is a nice chap by the way). It was meant to alert your readers to the actions of the huge numbers of practising Muslims - as well as their religious leaders who are infecting them with the bacillus of hate and contempt for every other religion and which is the prime cause for the deadly direction which Islam has now clearly taken. My letter, to which both Mrs Ford and Leslie Watson so clearly object, was based primarily on the several ghastly crimes committed by Mullah-led Muslim gangs in which hundreds of innocent people have been - and are being - killed and maimed. It was cognisant of the knowledge that a young woman has received 99 lashes administered whilst her teen-age son was forced to watch, and will surely culminate in her being bound and buried in the ground up to her bosom whilst members of the public will be invited to hurl rocks at her head until, slowly and agonisingly, she is killed. It was because over 2'000 children below the age of 16 . have been executed for such paltry crimes as answering back to a Muslim judge etc. l could list thousands of crimes of this type not just in the Middle East but all over the world.

Many nations have had their fair share of terrorists. But Islam is the only creed whose terrorists are actually encouraged by their religious leaders to commit their terrible crimes on the assured promise of their reward of 72 virgins in the next world.

As to Leslie Watson's sweet dreams of integrating with Islam and thereby influencing its murderous behaviour: this is a case of heart ruling the head. Due to the warped teachings of their religious leaders, many if not most young Muslims believe in their absolute superiority over all other religions as well as their rights to carry out what they are assured by their Mullahs are Allah' s wishes - whether it is the massacring of hundreds of little children in a Russian infant's school or the blowing up of crowded discos in Bali or supermarkets in Tel Aviv: or the machine gunning to death of holiday-makers sunbathing on a beach or the mass killings in Mumbai etc. Until Islam's religious leaders can be persuaded to stop pouring their murderous hate-filled messages into the heads of impressionable young Islamics our only hope is to respect their way of life but contain it to their own lands and do all in our power to stop its spread.

Lastly, all this Gaza business is a fiction. The latest market research shows that the standard of living of the average Gazan is higher than that of his Turkish counterpart. Last week a magnificent new shopping mall was opened in Gaza city filled with all types of food and all the other products available in any shopping mall in Britain. It was also crowded with buyers. Two weeks earlier, an Olympic-sized public swimming pool was opened.

Sir, I fervently wish for all religions to treat each other with equal respect and understanding.
Unfortunately, Islam does not.
Sincerely,

David Lee
DEAR SIR

I have been holidaying in Majorca for over 40 years so I can remember just One Terminal! Now everytime I fly in the Airport is bigger and bigger,than Gatwick, but I miss seeing the sign “Palma De Mallorca” when the plane lands now.

From Susan Smith (Mrs) King's Lynn Norfolk England.