Why is ROL allowing itself to be used as a political platform?

The number of 'letters' being posted on ROL by Andrew Wastling is increasing,

Should this be allowed or should they stay out of this one sided politicking?

Personally I think they should stop immediately, what do others think?

I am assuming that the person in question has political affiliations for this question to be broached. if so. Simply - NO. ROL should, as a media outlet, remain unbiased and should not take on board political pundits or allow, without adequate rebuttal, correspondence from the same. The balancing act is a difficult one and they should either adopt a policy of NONE or EQUANIMITY.

The letters are signed and attributable. It is no different to publishing letters from 'Disgusted' of 'Tunbridge Wells' and as such are avoidable.

I would be far more worried by copy not so attributed masquerading as editorial content.

Indeed johnb. It is however very difficult for some media outlets whereby the editorial content is narrowed to the 'owners' of the organisation to remain constantly neutral. Bias is an insidious creature and rears its ugly head in the most democratic of organisations.

Firstly it seems highly appropriate that Letters go to a 'Letters to the Editor' section. I don't know about anyone else but If I do not want to read letters I don't click on the LINK for 'Letter for the Editor' since as likely as not I will find ...yes you have guessed it , LETTERS there...the clue is in the title. That's why I do not click on the Community News Section or the EVENTS guide much. I assume most people are the same in this respect?

Secondly I think its less of a problem of the volume or quantity  of letter being sent by the same few correspondents but perhaps more the fact that so few other people lack the obvious inclination, the motivation or the ability to write letters on different topics that interest them ?

Perhaps if others were a bit more vocal and more politically engaged and moved to set fingers to keyboards then our town would not be  in the God-awful mess it is at present?

Now whilst I agree many of 'Andrew Wastlings' Letters may be a tad obscure .I don't doubt the mans sincerity. The same can probably be said of the regular UKIP posters and a few of the other 'usual suspects' but in my humble opinion it's a refreshing change from the dumbed down nonsense that only needs a mere  a nano seconds attention span required to read so much of the other Twitter and Facebook garbage that seems to infest the world wide web these days.

Some of us prefer a bit of an intellectual challenge from our chosen media outlets these days.

We have a great British tradition in this country of writing letters to newspapers as the Letters page of the Times. the Telegraph and the Guardian will readily testify - Keith Flett is a fine example, along with the likes of Dickens, Trollope and hundreds of others with literary aspirations.

That's exactly what letter writers do, it's not really 'rocket science' or applied algebra.It's their God given right to articulate in words their existential angst to voice opinion and promote discourse & debate if you will.Guess it's in the letter writers job description.

A friend of mine who makes a good living at it spends the first hour in a morning on media posting sites and the like warming up the grey matter before an eight hour stint in front of the old keyboard writing books that pay his mortgage. Some writers type thousand so f words a day. I suspect some of the posters Keith refers to are in similar gainful employment themselves.

What might be 'letters' to some are simply early morning typing practice to others , LOL !

I rather suspect that the poster objecting opposes the political content rather than the authors volume of letters. In which case why not post a few letters of your own. In fact feel free to do so, this is last time I checked still a democracy and love them or loathe them as long as we have letter writers we will have letter readers and thus a functioning and intelligent democracy. They are the canary in the coal mine of any sane and functioning democratic system.

Older readers may remember when the Rochdale Observer's letter page was a two page spread of interesting and current enlivening  local debate. We are lucky if we get a half page of Facebook comments now. Or dumbed down semi-literate 'letters' about 'dog fowling ' or 'fly tipping'

This concerns me far more than a few of the same correspondents being published. In any case doesn't the Editor of RO and the sponsors get to say what goes in their own content ?

It's their Online site after all isn't it ?

Equally older readers will perhaps remember that Rochdale Online has ALWAYS had a political agenda of it's own. That's WHY it was set up online in the first perhaps Keith isn't old enough to remember  that , or hasn't really read properly between the lines ?

Or maybe he just doesn't like others articulating their arguments in  concepts that require more than three lines to express them ?

Either way since RO is now read by many  more readers and gets far more online hits by local readers than ever before in the past decade or two I suspect the letter page will remain an attraction for many loyal readers for some considerable time to come  yet ?

Typing is a tedious way of inputing text, texting on a mobile phone is worse.

I remember seeing a system of text input with a mouse type thing in each hand, a button for each finger, combined presses of different cominations of buttons giving the text. Something along those lines anyway. It's completely different to typing, has to be learned 'from scratch' but faster and easier once learned.

Looks like we are stuck with keyboards because they evolved from the typewriter, and never made the break, as yet, to a better way of doing it.

I know nothing -!