Writing to newspapers is not usually my forte, this is only the second in my lifetime. My reason for writing on this occasion is that I am incensed with the Liskeard Silver Band and Callington Town Band for their whinging about having to pay a licence fee to play secular music at Christmas time. This was first reported in your news columns when Callington Band complained about the £21 fee, the same message was repeated in the national press a few days later, with subsequent letters in your letters pages, first from Mike Hasshill (Liskeard) and then Shirley Morse (Callington) – even given Letter of the Week status last week. As a life long Salvationist, living in Liskeard for the past 12 years, I will say to both Mike Hasshill and Shirley Morse, stop whinging. In my home town of Reading, the Salvation Army Band of which I was cornet soloist from 1950 until 1985, played Christmas carols every night from December 1, 6.30pm till 9.00pm, Sundays for two hours morning and afternoon, until the end of the season on Christmas morning 9.00am till 12 noon. At all of these sessions of playing Christmas carols, we never once played a secular tune. If the local bands will stop for once to think of the significance of Christmas, they will then enjoy the music of Christmas much better. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is not the secular commercial celebration that, sadly, it has become over the past few years. Take Christ out of the Christmas and you have no Christmas. I congratulate Caradon District Council and others for upholding this new law and would say, come on you local bands, pay up if you want to play 'White Christmas' or shut up.
MAURICE BENNETT Liskeard
P.S. It may be of interest that I have been associated with both bands mentioned: with Liskeard as cornet/flugel horn player a few years ago and as founder musical director with Callington ten years ago – I started them off.