All have been ostensibly predicated on the deaths in New York on 9/11. If we were, God forbid, to lose one hundred times that number in terrorist incidents in this country, it would be a price worth paying for the preservation of our hard-won civil liberties and in support of the rule of law.Anyone shocked by such a statement ought to reflect on the number of lives given and lost in the process of obtaining and defending those rights. I am 71 years old and I do not want to live in a dictatorship run by Blair and Clarke. Having survived bombing in the Second World War, 11 years of Mrs T and 30 years of the IRA, I would rather take my chance with whatever the "terrorists" can offer.PAUL CONNORS Debenham, SuffolkSir: Charles Clarke's latest draconian pronouncements follow this Government's execrable form for democratic subversion. This from a member of the government which lied to us about the reasons for going to war on the grounds that it had solid, intelligence-based evidence.If this farrago of proposals should ever come near the statute book I sincerely hope that all concerned democrats will show the government that the anti-war demonstration was a Sunday-school outing. The security services themselves have forfeited some trust because they proved so responsive to requirements.Measures and men therefore come together in an unholy alliance that imperils freedom and the rule of law in Britain as never before. If it is denied to those who use it, in what other ways might they seek release for their drives? If it is to be permitted, are children to be protected from exposure and recruitment to it?Only the perverse would argue that recreational torture such as bear-baiting is not pornographic in its tendency to deprave and corrupt, and that its passing does not mark progress in our maturing as a humane society largely in control of its primitive id.

I believe it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the end of hunting with dogs will take us further down this road.ROBERT BAKER Arkholme, Lancashire Clarke's threat to British freedoms Sir: Draconian powers as proposed by Charles Clarke, including indefinite house arrest, would be hugely troubling in any circumstances, because there is no way of challenging their exercise in a properly constituted court of law.In Britain today we are additionally being asked to entrust these powers to a government led by a prime minister whose reputation for sound judgement and integrity lies at his feet in tatters because he misused the intelligence services and misled the country about WMD in order to march us off to an illegal invasion of Iraq. Sex with neither affection nor procreational purpose: death with neither food nor defence as its justification.As an issue of public policy it should be addressed in the same terms as sexual pornography. Killing for recreation: where fox hunting meets pornography Killing for recreation: where fox hunting meets pornography Sir: It is apposite that David Dear (letter, 25 January) should use the archaic "venery" as a synonym for hunting with dogs, since the same word also, archaically, means sexual indulgence.It has long seemed to me that the debate on hunting and hare coursing may be best approached in these terms. As he isn't saying yet who he means, this can be a debating point for rock fans.I'm guessing he's not thinking of Jagger and Richards, nor putting Paul McCartney on stage with Paul Simon, nor Bob Dylan with Leonard Cohen, nor Paul Weller with Snoop Dogg.

Neither, I'm sure, has he scoured the globe for the best world music songwriters.The truth, I suspect, will be more prosaic My hunch is it will be Coldplay But Mr Eavis's choice of words is provocative. That is to say, to identify hunting to kill for food or for protection as a primitive drive, on a par in evolutionary terms with the drive to sex for procreation; and to understand hunting to kill for recreation or psychological release, the essence of Dear's argument, as essentially sadistic and on a par with the use of pornography to provide both stimulation and temporary gratification of the urge.Hunting with dogs and hare coursing completely fill the criteria for pornography (the pornography of violence in this case). It has been reported that Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese are in talks about a sequel to Taxi Driver. True, De Niro needs something classy after a series of lightweight roles But I hope actor and director think better of it.