SO investing millions in Newquay Airport has, as expected, cost our heliport its future.

It would have been better to invest Objective One money in sustainable businesses like Penzance Heliport.

The decision to close it will diminish Penzance as a market town and hasten its demise, St Ives-fashion, to second home dormitory non-town.

Eighty-eight jobs are at risk. Why wasn't Objective One money spent on a new Somerset-built helicopter fleet?

Moving the heliport back reminds one of the business case for Penzance in the first place: "Helicopter operations from Land's End are not viable due to the environment, poor road connections and the delays to the journey this will add".

The helicopters will be extinct in 12 months, and the "lack of spares" as a reason is telling. The USP (unique selling proposition) of helicopters is fast and convenient – the new base offers neither.

The extra car journeys and associated road death risk, as well as the ending of Penzance's rail-air link, means that this is bad economics for "Cornwall Plc".

Penwith or the new Cornwall unitary authority should zone the heliport site as a STOL (short take-off and landing) facility, despite the stupid decision to allow fast food outlets to blight the site a few years ago.

Development should not subsidise such a poor strategic dis-investment.

Penzance should defend its heliport. in the way that I and others fought to keep InterCity rail in the town in the early 1990s.

Helicopters are in our town's DNA.

Timothy James

Penzance

Pirates deserved it

SO an inquiry has decided that Royal Marines from a Westcountry warship acted "lawfully and in self-defence" when they shot and killed two Somali pirates.

All very well, but what I can't understand is why there was an inquiry at all. Those who were killed were involved in piracy, and as such they deserved all they got.

Instead of holding an inquiry into their actions the sailors who did the shooting should be applauded and given a warm welcome back home.

At least they did what we pay them to do – unlike the sailors who, when caught in Iranian waters, couldn't wait to surrender.

Royal Marines join up expecting that there would be times when they might lose their lives in a conflict, and they also realise that there would be times when they would have to do the killing.

These modern-day pirates are not the Hollywood Blackbeards or Captain Kidds of the past, steeped in glamour and excitement – they are nasty men who will kill and maim at the drop of a hat.

So I say to the Royal Marines engaged in this modern-day shooting of Somali pirates: Well done, and have a happy New Year.

You deserve it far more than the deskbound "sailors" floating along the corridors of the Ministry of Defence.

Colin Richey

Tiverton

Hunt and plate

BOXING Day. And the hunts will have been out for the traditional show of anti-urban defiance. And, sure as eggs are eggs, the day after Boxing Day the WMN will print a colourful photo of a Westcountry meet.

And, sure as eggs are eggs, some huntmaster will explain, for the benefit of deprived urban children, the connection between the hunt and the plate.

He will explain, in simple words, that hunts are voluntary, charitable – and, in particular, humane – vermin control societies. And that without such humane foxhunting, urban children would never taste a crisply grilled lamb chop or see a golden-yolked free range egg.

But the problem for the Master is that urban kids, being more streetwise than their simple rural cousins, will tell him: "Sorry Mister, we don't believe in Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy either."

Theo Hopkins

Lifton

Uphill battle

I TOTALLY support the petition and campaign mounted by my fellow Cornwall county councillors to retain the traditional logo and ditch the proposals to impose a new logo which is costly and resembles discoloured grass.

However those of us who oppose face failure as we are being ruled by a Liberal Democrat "democratic" dictatorship as they have a majority vote on both Cornwall County Council and the One Cornwall Implementation Executive.

They care little on what they spend in regard to this and salaries of the chief executive and service directors and yet continue to cut much needed services such as adult social care and the fire service.

Unfortunately this damage will continue until the first unitary council elections are held, whenever that will be.

John Payne

County Councillor Penzance Electoral Division

Newlyn

Classic cartoon

THERE are so many good reasons for reading the Western Morning News – however, we must never forget the supporting roles of the Letters section, the crosswords and, of course, Garfield.

It is brilliant! Keep up the good work.

Mike Bennett

Barnstaple