HACKED OFF AT THE PRESS

Your article on Lawrence Dallaglio (Sticky Tapes, G2, May 25) made me glad
that I live in France where journalists have some sense of decorum and know
how to draw the line between genuine investigation and spying.

What Britain requires is stricter privacy laws similar to the French and,
perhaps, some general rethinking about what is expected from public figures.

Now, it seems that prominent figures can be hounded, publicly upbraided and
even expelled from office for mistakes they may have made 20 or 30 years ago
in their youth.

Britain is more like the US everyday, with the puritanical McCarthyist
atmosphere and finger pointing by the journalistic (I hesitate to write it)
'profession'.

M Hunter, Paris