23/06/05

I am not sure your front page headline "Disgraced doctor escapes jail" (Echo, June 21) lives up to that.

Dr Robin Wade has an impeccable previous record and is popular, well respected and a caring medical practitioner. He is one of the few holistic medicine practitioners who would advise homeopathic medicines or yoga to his patients before they embarked upon modern drugs, which quite often have very unpleasant side effects.

Your report about him forging prescriptions does not say anything about so many of his satisfied patients who are more than grateful to him for his help in restoring them to health.

Some of his patients have said to me: "Doctors take in so much of the suffering and sorrow of their patients during their working lives, but one slip up and they are alone."

This does no good either to the NHS or to the morale and confidence of the public. I feel, in the name of the standards and protecting the public, the pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction. - Yosh Suri, retired NHS consultant, Darlington.

RELIGION

MARGARET Greenhalgh (HAS, June 16) makes some interesting points about a health authority removing Bibles from patients' bedside lockers, but is there not a more important point that is being missed?

Regardless of our own personal beliefs or views on religion, no-one has the right to deny someone who is dying access to a private place where they can make peace with their maker, or to the religious texts and symbols which would help make their passing easier. This is literally what hospital administrators are doing when they remove Bibles, Christian symbols and close hospital chapels.

By taking such actions against a specific religion, not only are these hospital administrators guilty of religious intolerance, but they are in direct contravention of both the United Nations and European Human Rights conventions concerning the freedom to worship. - CT Riley, Spennymoor.

EUROPE

IT cannot have escaped the attention of all the Eurosceptics that our Prime Minister has been putting up a sterling performance to safeguard our European Union budget rebate.

Of course, the sceptics are mainly Tories, but a little grudging praise for the energetic Tony Blair would have been a nice gesture.

It is apparent that France is the primary beneficiary of the present EU agriculture policy - one man with a cow in his backyard is a farmer as far as President Jacques Chirac is concerned.

The outcome of these discussions may not be resolved until the spring of next year so let's hope Mr Blair wins his battle to secure our budget rebate or, if not, a complete review of the disastrous Common Agriculture Policy. It costs householders dearly in the UK and other net contributors but not France, which gets back almost all it puts in to subsidise its farmers.

Mr Chirac is on the back foot, so this would be a good time to put him down. - Hugh Pender, Darlington.

DISABLED PARKING

IS IT not time for the regulations governing the issue of disabled parking badges to be tightened up?

They are not fixed to the car and there is no number plate written on them. Why not have a photograph and a signature of the disabled person visible?

Friends or relations can borrow the badge and use it to park in disabled bays (often preventing other disabled persons having a free parking place).

The University Hospital in Durham City has free parking spaces (although limited) and when you see a car parked in one with a disability certificate showing, there is little you can do when the couple inside - certainly not disabled - gets out and catches a bus into the city centre. Two hours later they return with full shopping bags and then drive away.

It is obvious that they had borrowed the disabled badge to do shopping and park for free. - E Reynolds, Wheatley Hill.

HISTORY

J COOK (HAS, June 16) has a very poor sense of history when he asserts that we "allowed the Nazis to re-arm after the First World War".

There was no Nazi Party in 1918 when the war ended.

In 1918, Adolf Hitler had returned from fighting to find that the Communist Party was about to take over the country. Because he was appalled at the way the Communists were turning the German people against their own people, and because German politicians did nothing to stop this state of affairs, he joined a political party, the German Workers Party.

He later renamed the party the German Workers and National Socialist Party and fought the Communists tooth and nail.

Had he not done so, they would have taken over Germany and it would have been the Germans in the slave labour camps and the death toll may well have been higher.

Communism is responsible for around 170 million deaths worldwide, including the 70 million killed by the Chinese Marxist Chairman Mao.

Communists had a hand in the Second World War as in other wars since then. Why is there such a deafening silence on this matter? - Andrew Bell, Darlington.

GROCERY SHOPS

E REYNOLDS (HAS, June 20) tells how a local grocer used to call on his mother, take her shopping list and deliver by bike a couple of days later.

Of course, modern supermarkets help their customers in a similar way today. What he has described is remarkably similar to Tesco's online shopping. You write your order online and print off your list. You pay by card and choose your delivery time. Then, without fail, in that two hour slot you have chosen, the Tesco man arrives. He delivers your shopping with a bill, for you to check against your order, and a cheery smile.

I also remember the Brough's man Mr Reynolds mentions, but from the 1960s when he drove a mobile shop around the villages. I remember one awful day when the Brough's man found my friend's father, our neighbour, dead in their kitchen. I will never forget them coming to take my friend out of class; we can only have been nine or ten. I have long since lost touch with that family but if any of them are reading this they will certainly remember that sad day. - Mrs K Harris, Barnard Castle.

PRIORITIES

I WAS appalled to read of the death of a pensioner in Middlesbrough (Echo, June 21).

While Tony Blair and his left-wing comrades are flying all over the world to tell nations about the plight of the Third World, our poverty-stricken pensioners are left to fend for themselves and left to live on next to nothing.

I do not want any more of our taxes being sent to foreign causes, but donated to the welfare of British pensioners. At least this way, they would have sufficient food.

Never mind Africa, Mr Blair, what are you going to do about helping our elderly? They deserve our help more than the inhabitants of a village in Angola. - Christopher Wardell, Darlington.

The School Closure Debate

SCHOOL CLOSURE: I AM angered by the vehemence and hostility shown towards Eastbourne School by the Hurworth objectors. They show a complete lack of respect and regard towards the educational community and to the wider Darlington area with their blinkered vision of what education means for our children.

Yes, Eastbourne school has had its problems, but none that cannot be resolved with the support from its excellent teaching staff. With the faith placed in them by its pupils and parents, success can - and will - be achieved.

Remember, it wasn't that long ago that Hurworth itself was in dire need of reform. Were the people of east Darlington throwing stones then? No.

Hurworth parents should also note that the Eastbourne children they are now castigating are the same ones that went to primary school with tschool with their children. They are all one and the same community.

Let's not be divisive - it sets a bad example to our children of the type of society we all want to live in. - Julie Welsh, Darlington

AS a resident of Eastbourne, I must express my annoyance at the residents of Hurworth. Why are they so worried about keeping their "high-performing school"? Surely if and when it moves to Yarm Road, it will still be the same high-performing school?

Are they worried that the pupils from Eastbourne will bring the results down?

Also, I want to express my complete disgust at the way the teachers at Eastbourne are being treated. Why are they losing their jobs while the teachers at Hurworth keep theirs? Surely last in, first out!

Eastbourne Comprehensive has been given a raw deal. It is the pupil and not the school that determines how well he/she will do. Both my children went to Eastbourne school and are now at university. My daughter achieved 11 GCSEs - two at A* and eight at A.

My children, like many, both did well because they had the ability - regardless of which school they attended.

Finally, why is the new school to be called Hurworth School? Why not Eastbourne School? - Name and address supplied, Darlington

I HAVE just returned from a restful holiday to find my usually peaceful village in total uproar.

Whose brainchild was it to amalgamate one of Darlington's top-achieving schools with one at the bottom of the scale? Does the adage 'the speed of the convoy is the speed of the slowest ship' no longer have any meaning?

Teachers and parents alike have worked estremely hard over the years to make Hurworth School the success it is today. No one wants to see their efforts wasted.

Our MP seems to be keeping his head down. Where's the "education, education, education", Mr Blair? Come to think of it, where is Mr Blair? - Pat Wilson (mother of three ex-pupils), Hurworth

AS your reporters were not allowed into Tuesday night's meeting between parents and governors at Hurworth, here are the key messages:

* Disappointment from the parents that the press was kept out of a meeting;

* Margaret Asquith gave a commitment to deal with the Hurworth community openly, honestly and transparently;

* She confirmed that what was being proposed was the takeover of Eastbourne by Hurworth lock, stock and barrel;

* She reported that the £20m was only available for building one new school and that it would be built, whether or not it was supported by the governors;

* She undertook to publish work that had been done by the local authority to discount the building of a new school in Hurworth and the other options to address the issues of raising school standards, falling rolls and the condition of the school buildings;

* She also undertook to publish evidence to support the contention that bringing together schools that are completely different schools (one in the top 50 and one in the worst dozen) sustains the academic achievements of the higher-performing school;

* The governors agreed to publish details of the privately-commissioned report considered at their meeting on June 17. - Martin Phillips, Hurworth

BY refusing admission to the press to Tuesday night's meeting, it suggests that the authorities have something to hide.

And why did none of the board of Hurworth governors attend Monday's open meeting at the town hall when Eastbourne's did?

For all interested parties to piece together the various scraps of evidence, a website has been set up at www.croftc.co.uk - Ian White, Hurworth

TUESDAY'S march through Hurworth had a great community spirit, even though feelings were running high.

How deflated I felt at the end of the meeting as questions had only been answered with the usual political jargon. They weren't interested in the congestion that will be caused, or about Darlington's attempt to be a "Town on the Move" - how will the new school fit into that ethos when at least four buses as well as personal vehicles will be used transporting all the village children into town?

The answer is to extend Hurworth to accommodate 900 pupils, which would be the most it could take, and let the council still build a new school. Hurworth would then still have a reasonably-sized school which would retain the village's community spirit. - A concerned parent (name and address supplied), Hurworth.