Letter to the editor: I am appalled that the generosity of spirit that epitomises lollipop people could be denigrated so callously by your anonymous writer (Simply press a button, October 29).

I can only think he wishes to remain anonymous because such bigoted views are calculated to offend. I would like to ask if the author has ever performed a real public service aside from the full-time wage he would have received as a school cleaner.

Lollipop people are up early each school day and not able to stray far during the day so as to be ready for 3pm onwards – all for pretty much the minimum wage and only a few hours a week for all that commitment.

Lollipop men and women are generally located in key areas where there is mass crossing of a busy road rather than general times of the day, and where a pelican or other electronically managed system of interrupting traffic for pedestrian safety is not feasible, and this vital service adds to road safety. Insulting them and making personal jibes that they would be better off picking up litter, and that big girls should know how to cross the road misses the point.

This is a funded council policy that offers considerable additional protection when the mass crossing of roads by children, often in groups that can find themselves easily distracted in the hurly burly of going to or leaving school, takes place at the same time as roads are busiest.

The scheme, uniquely British, should be applauded, not criticised.

For the record, I am 59 and remember being taken to school by my mother only once – at the age of five on the first day. Thereafter, I was under the guidance of not one but two lollipop ladies, from my home in Parkhill Road to Longlands Primary, Sidcup. Their presence meant my mother was able to stay at home to look after younger children. In those days of course, such kind people were volunteers.

Your reader uses the oxygen you have given to continue what I can only describe as a rant about the length of school holidays and other matters that disgruntle him, all of which show him to be someone from an unenlightened bygone age.

STEVE WILLMOT, Orpington