AS a guitar teacher and local musician I am pleased to find, that popular music is encouraged in schools.

It's good that local education authorities allow this.

If we are to educate people in playing musical instruments, eventually they will want to gain experience playing the local venues.

So it comes as a great disappointment to me to find a good quality venue - like the Hop Pole, has had the plug pulled on the live entertainment.

Some of my guitar students gained their first live experience at the Hop Pole and I had a few good shows down their myself.

So why not encourage music in the community as well as the schools?

Please reinstate the Hop Pole and encourage more venues of the same calibre.

Robert Brunt (alias Randolph Flagg)

Cloverdale

Stoke Prior