The reason given for this is the saturation of the golfing market because of the number of clubs that have recently been opened. It is perhaps an appropriate time to point out that the market that is saturated is that for men, not for women. From Professor Enid Mumford Sir: In the last few days a number of newspapers, including the Independent, have featured the fact that many new golf clubs are in serious financial difficulty. Notwithstanding this, surely such bales could easily be positioned on dangerous descents, especially around concrete bollards of the type that Fabio Casartelli hit.Yours faithfully,Hugh MillingtonBoston Spa,Wetherby19 July. From Mr Hugh Millington Sir: Following the tragic accident yesterday of Italian cyclist, Fabio Casartelli, on the Tour de France, I was surprised to hear general comment from sports commentators and even Chris Boardman, on Radio 4's Today programme, reflecting that there was no real solution to improving safety on the Tour, other than making the wearing of helmets compulsory, which has already been tried, without success. I was heartened to see just a month ago when I cycled up Mont Ventoux (site of the last Tour fatality in 1967) that many dangerous bends had crash bales in place - only to learn later that they had been installed for an annual car race that weekend. Residency has nothing to do with it.The case could just as well be heard here, and then the whole story would come out.

Maybe that is why the Chancellor is frightened.The writer is the wife of Nick Leeson, the former Barings broker who is in Germany awaiting extradition to Singapore on charges relating to the collapse of the bank.. He has guaranteed them that he will plead guilty and take his punishment There are no tricks. He knows he has done wrong.It is surely unique in British legal history for a person to go to such lengths to get himself arrested and charged in his own country But still the SFO will not even go and interview him. Why not?The Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, says that he has no doubt Nick will get a fair trial in Singapore - I am left wondering what planet he is living on.Then he hides behind the flimsy excuse that Nick and I were resident in Singapore, and therefore the case should be heard there. That is why he gave the SFO details of five charges that they could bring against him here, and a list of 82 questions which they could ask him in order to reveal his guilt on those five counts - and the whole background to the collapse of the bank. The bank collapsed here and almost all of those hurt by the collapse are here.What is more, many of the things Nick did were offences here Even the Serious Fraud Office agrees that this is so.

That will be my problem and I will have to learn to live with it - although I hope to God I don't have to. But if he is sent to Singapore, there are two other things that will happen which should worry all of us.First, the full story of what happened at Barings Bank will never come out - because the charges against him have been designed to secure a quick trial, a long sentence and as little examination of the broader picture as possible.And I have doubts that he will get a fair trial - the Singapore authorities are notoriously repressive and the defence is often hampered in presenting its case.This is why I have been campaigning to have him brought to Britain to stand trial He is British, after all It was here in Britain that most of the damage was done. By the time you read this I shall be in Germany having my weekly one-hour visit to my husband, Nick, who is in jail there awaiting his extradition hearing to Singapore. I should not, perhaps, expect it to worry you too much that he may soon be incarcerated in Changi jail for 14 years or more, or that I may only rarely be able to visit him. The rest of us may like to know exactly who is saying what about whom, but only if there is a guilty verdict is it really essential for the facts to be made public A breathless hush in the close would be more fitting..

But when the church comes to consider how such cases might be handled in future, it ought surely to decide against public hearings. After all, doctors and lawyers, who are bound by codes of conduct towards vulnerable clients or patients, also face disciplinary action for taking advantage of their positions.There is a lot to be said for this view. This is that the consistory court has been nothing more than a workplace disciplinary hearing, examining an accusation of malpractice against a senior employee. Ranged against the clerics of Barchester, its guns were powerful indeed. Dr Jackson and his colleagues have undergone today's modern equivalent - seeing and hearing their names and faces in every newspaper and on radio and television.No one can blame them for asking: was it all really necessary? Should Dr Jackson's and Ms Freestone's disputed relationship have been the subject of a very public and archaic trial? Many believe not and argue that these proceedings have been yet another example of the church's persistent inability to strike a convincing posture in any discussion about sexual morality.But there is an argument in favour of the way that the church has behaved. The leading articles in this journal are described as having the power in England that the Tsar enjoyed in Russia, or the Kaiser in Prussia. The jogging Dean, however, is pure Joanna. In his novel The Warden, Trollope A (writing in the middle of the last century) describes a campaign waged against the Reverend Septimus Harding of Barchester by a newspaper, the Jupiter.

But add a story line involving accusations of sex after evensong, (not quite) bonking in the (not quite) belfry, clerics in track suits toting vino to the houses of female parishioners - all topped by a courtroom drama - and it was irresistible. Even Trollope J, whose adulterous rector's wife was called Anna Bouverie, would not have dared to name a character "Verity Freestone" Yet there she was. From the start this was a case of the Trollopes meet Tom Sharpe. The characters and mores of the small English world of the cathedral close exert a particular fascination. Deans and archdeacons, canons and vergers, their personalities and jealousies, have for over 100 years been the perfect stuff of middle-class soap opera. For the participants in the proceedings - the plaintiff, the defendant and their families - this must have been a painful week For the rest of us, however, it has been unavoidably comic.