Just about all that has been achieved here is a probable increase in the circulation of the The Independent tomorrow. Perhaps it is to be hoped that this is indeed the sum total of the achievement.
Mr Calder is a journalist of some experience and renown. He is possibly more articulate than many who have corresponded with him. He will most certainly have been quite selective and editorial in choosing those letters from pilots, or others, to which he wishes to devote newspaper space tomorrow. He is in a position to direct this farrago of an Open Jaw in any way his inclinations or bias may dictate. Fiction writers of prose, whether indifferent or excellent, are in a position of great power when provided in advance with the ammunition of their interlocutors. It behoves those who write to them to assume that what they have put to paper will be snipped, censored and sarcasmatized. It follows logically that any journalist involved in such discussions as are underway in this forum can access these pages and may feel quite free to quote from anything he reads here. Such quotations might well appear entirely out of context.
It really would be of no consequence were we, as pilots, to be portrayed as overpaid and under worked; let the public think as it will, it is of neither matter nor import. It would be however, an entirely different matter were an honourable profession subjected to ridicule, and that situation brought about because more were eager to open their mouths than to keep them silenced.
