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I would, through your letters page, wish to thank all the passengers, Steam Packet personnel, Betteridge’s Garage and Haydn Minay Ltd who assisted me when I suffered problems with my car on the Douglas-Heysham route on Wednesday, February 15.

Everyone was most helpful and concerned and I was not just left to sort everything out on my own.

Melanie Smith, Tosaby Road, East Foxdale.

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I read Samantha Ash’s letter (Examiner, February 14) with a sense of frustration.

A frustration for a young articulate person who is endeavouring to overcome her problems to achieve her ambition to help others.

I briefly worked with her at Fairfield School where as a feisty, determined 11-year-old she negotiated the highways and byways around the school with great aplomb as well as coping with academic work.

Quite by chance a few weeks ago I was driving to work when she was interviewed on Manx Radio about her career ambitions. She came across as a highly motivated intelligent young person.

Hopefully the company she mentioned will rethink their decision. If not knowing her determination , their loss will be someone else’s gain.

Name and address supplied

Editor’s note: See our story about Samantha on page 24 of this newspaper.

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I object to being labelled ‘pro-life’.

I am rather ‘pro-death’ and certainly do not wish to find myself corralled in a group claiming evidence and proofs of their anti-killing stance are to be found in superstition.

If we are to allow the undamaged and unthreatening to be killed in the womb as well as those clearly honourable cases of the damaged and life-threatening can we also consider less contentious killings too, please?

Painless death for those with no real appreciation of their existence nor chance of recovery should not be in the exclusive gift of the Late Lord Dawson and his like.

Assisted suicide is consistently refused by our ‘democratic’ representatives despite a clear majority being in favour.

There are many valid objections to euthanasia but there are also easily definable scenarios which could raise none. The enabling legislation required might be hedged about with precautions to protect the vulnerable but I cannot believe that drafting it would be too difficult.

I am not promoting a mass slaughter of ailing wrinklies, arranged with the same enthusiastic abandon as practised by Harold Shipman, but some middle way.

It is not as if the Brompton Cocktail or his Lordship’s last prescription for King George V are secret it is just that their illegality denies them to many patients enjoying care ‘lacking in the same finesse’.

I would not like anyone at my deathbed or dementia-cell inhibited in this way.

Public opinion has only recently ‘caught-up’ with Westminster’s undemocratic decision to abolish the death sentence. That argument seems to be a dead duck, however is it not an absolute absurdity that one of the vilest murderers of all time is being kept alive against his will?

Surely self-confessed offenders of this nature who want to do away with themselves should be allowed to, more humane too, I reckon.

I wonder if sufficient parental candour and bravery exist to muster a panel of the undamaged who have survived the womb thanks to the protection of the law as it stands. Such a panel would clearly carry overwhelming weight when considering if the protection justice afforded them should now be withdrawn. Perhaps it is only such a panel that could carry any weight at all.

David Varley, Peel Road, Douglas.

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I was wondering if any readers could help me answer this as it has puzzled me for some time.

I don’t doubt that fellow readers will know what I mean and be able to give an example of how this is used.

This old chestnut is rolled out mainly when’s there’s any hint of foreign aid being given or heaven forbid, we consider the possibility of taking in a handful of refugees. There was certainly no exception to this rule in the last few weeks in response to stories regarding Syrian refugees. But what does it mean?!

As a ‘liberal’, I am usually quick to dismiss this sort of rhetoric as thinly veiled racism but apparently this is a patronising standpoint to adopt so I’ve tried my hardest to resist coming to this conclusion.

So, last week, when I saw the headline that improvements were going to be carried out on a number of council houses I foolishly expected jubilant comments online and on social media that at last, finally we were ‘looking after our own’.

Sadly, the vitriol aimed at the tenants of said houses was akin to that directed at refugees.

So, who are ‘our own’?

M Talavera, Mount Murray.

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I would like to thank the performers, producers and technicians, in fact everybody involved with the ‘Century of Song’ recently held at the Villa for a wonderful evening of entertainment.

This once again showcased the wealth of musical talent in the island.

Well done to you all.

Looking forward so much to Legally Blonde.

Karen Rodger, Victoria Road, Castletown.