HEAR All Sides, December 14, was a sorry mix of mostly right wing and reactionary nonsense.

Take Des Moore, a correspondent who knows nothing of what is happening on the left or in the universities.

Moore blames the Socialist Workers Party for the student protests, but the SWP is a spent force, a pale imitation of what it was. The emerging protest movement is clearly autonomous and anarchist inspired.

Further, Moore calls protestors “left wing fascists”, but he knows that the left fought against fascism and Nazism very effectively.

Lawrence McGowan bemoans the lack of “respect”, but lacking respect is not a criminal offence.

Certainly, the lying politicians and the police, who nearly killed a protestor with a truncheon blow to his skull, do not deserve any.

Finally, Nigel Boddy, whose limp calls for campaigners to support minor regional parties and the Greens totally fails to confront the crisis in legitimacy and democracy that lets the rich pay no tax and tries to make us pay for the crisis the banks caused.

Trevor Bark, Crook.

ON the day a Saville Row-suited posh student swung from the union flag on the Cenotaph, and another urinated on Sir Winston Churchill’s statue, members of the Armed Forces were diligently clearing the streets of snow in Edinburgh.

While I have some sympathy for the real students, to allow themselves to be infiltrated by the usual suspects, waving their socialist flags while wearing designer clothes and £200 Ugg Boots, reminds me that the hardleft are the real people removed from reality – they seemingly want for nothing, but want some more so long as someone else pays.

Some of the Armed Forces clearing the snow will not have had the education a university might offer, but will know even when under-equipped and underfunded, they have a job to do and will give their all for their mates, ship, regiment or squadron.

Such a pity a Cambridge history student didn’t realise the Cenotaph recognises those that gave their all for others. I suspect he and a few more would have learned more from a few hours clearing snow with the Army than many a history lesson in Cambridge.

Jim Tague, Bishop Auckland