I APPLAUD and support the campaign launched by Litter Free Dorset to ban the sale of cheap disposable barbecues that have been responsible for the countless deadly fires that have destroyed so much natural habitat in recent years.

However, it is going to take a sea-change on the part of the country’s supermarket giants, for the campaign to have any chance of succeeding.

In the last few days I have been in three supermarkets and was appalled to see huge stacks of cheap disposable barbecues piled high at each.

When I expressed my dismay to the manager at one of them, the response was that “Barbecues don’t cause wildfires, people do!”

That, of course, echoes the barmy argument used by those who oppose gun control in America, whose tiresome mantra is “Guns don’t kill, people do!”.

ROBERT READMAN

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth