READER'S LETTER: Naked cycle a waste of police time

You devote half of Monday's page 15 to publishing a photograph and report of '˜around 30' (I see four) nude cyclists who, you say were '˜police escorted...in the city's organised annual event' (Heads turn as naked cyclists parade in sun; Police escorted around 30 riders in the city's organised annual event, July 10).

One part says they protest annually against oil and gas dependency; another that they are highlighting the vulnerability of cyclists and lastly we get ‘I just like cycling naked’!

In other words, they appear to be a small bunch of exhibitionist weirdos. Yet police had time and money to escort them when, elsewhere, they would have been arrested.

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No regard seems to have been paid to what the general public thought of Hampshire police devoting its resources (about which it constantly complains) to this feeble exercise of nudist exhibitionism.

No placards or posters – they just peddled their warped little minds around Portsmouth and disrupted the traffic, having distressed many people, no doubt.

Just a few years ago Hampshire police was the ‘Best Gay and Lesbian Employer of the Year’ – and, when it allows this sort of activity, I wonder if its attitude to sexual activities isn’t a little warped nowadays?

Maybe minds are in the wrong place?

Then turn to page 17 and you see a photograph and report of a Hampshire police trade union spokesman whining about policemen who ‘do not have time’ to complete a form to justify the use of violence against the public by the use of ‘force, including a baton, spit-guard, dogs, shields, handcuffs, unarmed restraint, and CS spray’.

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Someone has their priorities wrong from where I sit as a one-time Portsmouth City police officer.

I wonder if the police would disclose the full cost of planning and executing this momentous public service of escorting a bunch of ‘indecent exposure’ weirdos around Portsmouth?

Richard Ostler

The Drive, Bognor Regis