'Chartered' is the key word

As a start to improving our status we could include "Royal" in the Title of our Institution

I agree with Ron Bullen - discussion of the status of Professional Engineers has never been absent from the magazine throughout my 60 years of membership!

He goes on to say "The word engineer has entered common usage and no government has the ability to change its commonly perceived meaning."

But the government has done just that with a word with a more established than "Engineer", i.e. "Marriage". That word had been in common usage since before King Henry the Eighth's time to mean a legal union between a man and a woman. It no longer has that commonly perceived, straightforward, meaning.

If the government has the power to change the definition of such a fundamental word it must have the power to legally protect "Chartered Engineer" on top of the implied legality of our Royal Charter.

As a start to improving our status we could include "Royal" in the title of our Institution, as do the architects, surveyors, accountants and many other professional bodies.

D J Taylor, Abingdon, Oxon

Next letter: In place of HS2