WITH regard to your article Uproar Over Ex-Con (LT, Oct 7). Five people in the article had comments to make about Criminal Record Bureau checks.

None of them seemed remotely concerned that in this case the result of the inquiry was immediate dismissal.

You choose to splash Mr Standring’s name and record in headlines over your front page. Now, anyone who wasn’t aware of Mr Standring’s past will jolly well be aware of it now.

It appears from your article, I know nothing beyond this, that Mr Standring had worked for four months with this firm, presumably without problems. He had also spent four years out of prison and out of trouble.

What your article didn’t publish and, most importantly, was that he was entitled to believe that he had paid his debt to society.

I did not detect in the comments of your contributors, in their enthusiasm for CRBs, any trace of charity, fair play or concern for this man who had lost his job.

I saw no attempt to seek comments, good or bad, from the people he carried on his bus. In fact nothing positive at all.

I am astonished that not one word was heard in support of Mr Standring’s plea urging employers to give people like him a second chance and that firms should not be giving people with previous convictions “a false sense of hope.”

At the risk of alarming our ‘mustn’t smack’ friends, I believe you deserve an ever so tiny smack on the wrist for this very one-sided article. Without leaving a mark of course.

BERNARD TAYLOR, St James Road, Blackburn.