Mr Rupert Allason, the Conservative MP for Torbay, was trying to sue Mr Joe Haines, the political journalist, and Mr Richard Stott, the editor of Today That was the first action to be stayed. In the second, Mr Neil Hamilton, the former minister who sits for Tatton, and Mr Ian Greer, who has his own public relations firm, had the Guardian in their sights until they were told to drop the gun. In Mr Allason’s case the judge was Mr Justice Owen; in Mr Hamilton’s and Mr Greer’s case, Mr Justice May. IN HER column, Joan Smith refers to a recent lecture that I gave at a conference of a section of the British Psychological Society (23 July). Apparently, she has relied on secondary sources for her information, and she has seriously misrepresented my lecture. She alleges that I seem worried about changes in sexual practices among the over-sixties “leading to older women being seen, in his words, as randy old hags”.

Research by the Home Office, the Magistrates’ Association and the Justices’ Clerks’ Society of 1989 sentencing patterns reveal a mere 5 per cent being given a custodial sentence for “violence against the person”.
Peter CoadStoke Bishop, Bristol. In that period sentencers have threatened punitive sentences for those committing crimes of violence; the threat has been a hollow one. THE SHARP increase in criminal assault over the past decade is largely due to liberal sentencing policies (“A blind eye to violence”, 23 July). The clinical definition of Aids in Africa, put forth by the WHO in 1986, is an encouragement for established illness like TB and malaria to be interpreted as Aids. The frightening possibility is that as more and more curable diseases come under the heading of “Aids related complex” the doomsday image of Africa may become a self-fulfilling prophecy with millions condemned to die from diseases that should have been wiped out decades ago.Stuart W G DerbyshireUniversity of Manchester Rheumatic Diseases Centre Salford, Greater Manchester.

Disease is being separated from the issue of progress and recast as an issue of moral behaviour. I suggest that Aids is special, not because of the threat it poses to human life, but because of the delicious combination of sex, disease and death which can be squared with a racially prejudiced view of the “dark continent”.I am deeply concerned that the hyperbole around Aids is having far more perverse effects on the understanding and treatment of health problems in Africa. However, Aids as a killer doesn’t even come close to the scale of malaria (between 1.2 and 2.4 million African deaths each year) and has only recently become as important as tuberculosis.
In fact Aids is not even as big a killer as measles, tetanus, whooping cough and diptheria which combined claim around 500,000 lives every year. The World Health Organisation’s estimates of the number of deaths from Aids per year stands at 300,000 and is set to rise to 900,000 within five years.

This is indeed appalling and I do not wish to underestimate the threat Aids may represent for Africans (though it is worth noting that the WHO has consistently overestimated this threat). There is often a similar advantage against capital gains tax. It is through this means that the Tate has been able to afford many of the 17th- and 18th-century British paintings that still hang on our walls.If it were not for this conditional exemption, more paintings, furniture and porcelain would be sold suddenly, at full value, and probably go abroad. As it is, although the things are difficult to get at, there is a good chance that they will finally belong to a public museum in Britain.David Fraser JenkinsTate Gallery, London SW1. THERE is something deeply disturbing about the hysterical debate of Aids in Africa when it is in reality only a relatively minor contributor to the enormous human suffering there (“Aids epidemic chokes the life out of Southern Africa”, 23 July). The Revenue allows the vendor to receive slightly more than the open market value after tax, and this price is a considerable saving to the gallery.