D.K.Marsh (I hate PC brigade and their ban on handguns, Soapbox, April 18) illustrates perfectly what a meaningless expression is "PC", or "political correctness".

S/he takes a number of unrelated things s/he doesn't like and lumps them together as PC.

Some of what is often called PC is simply having regard to other people's feelings.

I don't know whether D K Marsh knows any black people with family backgrounds from the Caribbean or the USA, but many of them do find gollywogs offensive.

They represent caricatures of "minstrels" who performed for white people at the end of slavery in North America.

"Centuries of customs"? Well; gollywogs were around for about 150 years, I suppose.

I've not come across a banning of gingerbread men, perhaps D K Marsh would like supply more detail.

I remember vague references to cancelled Christmas cribs. I believe this has happened - in very few instances.

Does D K Marsh have any real knowledge of this?

Another old favourite example of PC not mentioned by D K Marsh, but trotted out from time to time, is that of restrictions on playground and school activities arising from supposed health and safety regulations.

Such regulations are more likely driven by insurance companies, mindful of the ever-increasing tendency of parents to take schools and playgroups to court for compensation.

But worried, possibly grief-stricken, parents are a less popular target than some mythical, faceless group such as the "PC brigade".

I agree with D K Marsh that the law banning handguns seems not to have reduced gun crime.

I believe this measure was an example of the tendency of governments to legislate in haste after a wave of no doubt quite real emotion following some ghastly event (remember the Dangerous Dogs Act?).

But what this has to do with political correctness, heaven only knows.

Christopher Walker-Lyne, Millfield Road, York.