If, as Mr Attard asserts (‘It should be Greek to us’, Opinion, June 15) , Mr Bines is not a classical scholar then he is not alone among the vast majority of our population.

Displaying his own evident classical knowledge at considerable length, Mr Attard states that democracy, human rights and equality originated in ancient Greece.

When, 80 years ago, I went from elementary school to central school secondary education I learnt among other matters that the ancient Greek democratic state was founded on slaves doing the hard graft: no human rights and no equality. Much like today in this highly advanced “big society” where the mass of hard-working, lower paid members bail out with their taxes the overpaid and over-spenders who have run this country into the economic mess we are now in.

As to the subject of integration of immigrants and education in faith-based schools and the building of a Greek school which Mr Bines wrote about, my view is that there should be one national system of education in this country and that all faith schools should be taken into that system.

I do not mean that the various faiths should be abolished: immigrants and long-standing citizens of the UK would be free to practise in their own way their different beliefs in their own time while respecting the laws in the UK.

Tony Connolly
Broadfields Avenue, Winchmore Hill