I wonder if anyone has sought the opinions of the examination boards on this? Given, though, that the OCR board sees fit to schedule a Spanish GCSE paper at the same time as papers in English Literature, when surely an enormous number of candidates must be taking both (a mere 76 of my students), whereas GCSE Economics clashes with nothing at all, I suspect that they already regard modern languages as a minority subject.ALASDAIR MATTHEWSTONBRIDGE KENT BBC licence fee is good value Sir: With regard to Janet Street-Porter's article "The BBC should stop trying to do it all" (13 October), I would like to add that I am happy that the corporation employs large numbers of correspondents both regionally and abroad This shows what good value the licence fee is. These are the same freedoms and liberties that the so called war on terror is supposed to protect. The biggest threat to our way of life comes not from al-Qa'ida, or any of the other shadowy groups that may follow their ideology, but from Blair and Bush and their misguided and foolish policies.SOHAIL AHMEDLONDON E11 Language exams double booked Sir: There has, quite rightly, been a good deal of comment recently about the declining number of students taking modern language examinations. He is, once again, trying to scare and mislead the British public into giving away yet more of our precious freedoms and civil liberties. He assures us that the evidence provided by the police for the need to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days is compelling. This is the same man that took this country into an illegal war based on equally compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Those who wrongly cite the Act as a reason for not disclosing information, when in reality they can but are just unwilling to help, do a great disservice to the reputation of data protection.JONATHAN BAMFORDASSISTANT COMMISSIONER INFORMATION COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE WILMSLOW, CHESHIRE Liberties attacked in name of freedom Sir: Tony Blair is at it again. Indeed the Act does not impose the sort of blanket ban on the disclosure of information that is sometimes suggested.The Data Protection Act gives us all important rights including the right to know what information is kept about us and the right to have wrong information corrected. The original was in fact the Concert for Bangladesh, organised by George Harrison, which took place in Madison Square Garden, New York on 1 August 1971. The line-up, which included Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and Ravi Shankar played to more than 40,000 fans and raised much needed funds to help refugees from East Pakistan. STEPHEN WEBBWEST MOLESEY, SURREY Most air gun users are responsible Sir: Like Michael Baldwin (letter, 10 October), I also shot small birds with my air rifle, but over 40 years later, I remember such actions with shame, rather than pride.No responsible airgunner would shoot a pheasant; it is too big to kill with a shot to the body.

Also it is not on the recommended list of quarry, such as rats and rabbits, which may be shot with an air rifle. I now, along with hundreds of others, gain much pleasure from shooting metal targets, which make a satisfactory "clunk", and fall over when "killed".Recent tragic events have not shown air rifles in a good light, but the majority of airgun users are sensible people, and if they use their guns for pest control, they do so as humanely as possible.RICHARD GUSCOTTLISKEARD, CORNWALL Data protection and police operations Sir: The Data Protection Act does not prevent the police from requesting information on an individual held by a credit card company, or the company from providing customer details in response, where this is needed for the detection of crime ("Data Act protects the wrong side", Letters, 21 October). Admirable though Live Aid was it was not, as he claims, "the first time contemporary musicians got together to focus people on a particular plight". Before starting down the nuclear route, promoted by Tony Blair at Labour's conference in Brighton, ministers need to commission an updated comparative LCA of energy options, including nuclear.This is something Sir Nicholas Stern ("Blair appoints Treasury mandarin as climate tsar", 13 October) should embark upon immediately.DR DAVID LOWRYSTONELEIGH, SURREY Midge Ure's short memory Sir: Midge Ure may not be as small of stature as his name suggests, but he appears to have a small memory (The 5-Minute Interview, 13 October). Additionally, nuclear waste management at the "back-end" is already energy hungry in radioactive waste treatment, conditioning, transportation and perhaps final disposal in some future repository.Thus it is essential to compare nuclear's energy's greenhouse gas emissions using a level playing field across the full fuel cycle, called life-cycle analyses (LCAs) of both internal and external costs to asses the true impacts of their entire processes. These arise from the so-called "front-end" of the fuel cycle: uranium mining, ore milling, uranium conversion, fuel enrichment and fabrication of the fuel rods.