21/03/05

My wife and myself love the countryside too, and walked in the lakes and dales for many years until the years took their toll.

What I cannot understand is why Mr Robinson needs to hunt down wild animals - what has that to do with enjoying the countryside?

He states foxes have to be controlled, but why then do hunts breed foxes for hunting purposes?

Some Tory MPs also voted for the ban on hunting - is he planning to vote them out? - Hugh Pender, Darlington.

MR Robinson (HAS, Mar 3) contradicts himself. He says more often than not the fox gets away, and then he says hunting is the best method of controlling them.

The first step in fox control is easy. Don't encourage them to breed. Wildlife can be managed without tormenting animals for hours. Hunting is an odious form of entertainment and brutalises all involved, especially youngsters who are encouraged to watch. To heap such torment on harmless creatures for fun is no sport at all.

If, as he says, foxes escape, then why do it? Drag hunt instead. Turn bloodsports into real sport. With the scent laid and a route chosen to mimic an animal hunt, few followers would realise the difference.

Apart from all the cruelty, mayhem and destruction inherent in hunting, to support a pastime merely because apologists claim it to be part of our 'tradition' is truly naive.

Our future King should be lobbied to set up a draghunt.

The police have asked for our help. If you hear rumours or talk of illegal hunting, inform them or the RSPCA and League Against Cruel Sports. Let's have a cruelty-free countryside. - D Howe, Newton Aycliffe.

SO hunting and killing is in people's blood (HAS, Mar 3)? It is also in some people's blood to defend the defenceless from cowardly bloodsports.

Why do hunters turn up their noses at drag hunting? Our beautiful countryside can still be enjoyed by all concerned, including horses. You don't have to hunt to ride.

More people would participate where no live quarry is running for its life.

It is proven beyond doubt that hunting is not about pest control, it is about setting animals on to others for entertainment. Old, sick or pregnant foxes cannot escape, neither can the 40 per cent of fox cubs which novice foxhounds are trained to hunt and savage in the autumn. - M Johnson, Crook.

JIMMY MACKINTOSH

I WAS very sorry to learn of the death of James "Jimmy" Mackintosh (Echo, Mar 16). He had been our county and city councillor for many years.

He was twice mayor of Durham City, with his wife Rita as mayoress. Jimmy and Rita were as inseparable as Torvill and Dean or Starsky and Hutch!

We should remember a tireless champion for the needs of people in Gilesgate and Pelaw, always taking up their individual cases and staying in contact. People knew Jimmy from their childhood through to having their own children, and knew that he took a personal interest that was utterly genuine, not because it might help him get re-elected. If anyone embodied the best values of the locally-elected representative it was Jimmy.

His commitment came from experiencing as a young man dreadful living conditions and unemployment in the communities of southern Scotland and then returning from the Second World War determined to improve the lot of ordinary people. This was his passion and he placed it far above theoretical debates on party ideology.

He was a good and fine man, and a great example to anyone now involved in local councils. - John Ashby, Durham City.

DARLINGTON FC

EASTER Saturday will be a very important date for Darlington Football Club, as we celebrate the long-awaited opening of the North Stand.

This marks the completion of the Williamson Motors Stadium and the new stand will be a designated family stand.

I urge all Darlington fans, young and old, to turn out for the match to help make the celebration a success.

We have had a steady stream of more than 3,000 fans turning out for our fixtures this season.

Gates will open at 11am, for a 1pm kick-off, and you can buy your tickets at newsagents in the town, as well as at The Northern Echo and Darlington & Stockton Times' offices.

Bus services run from the town centre on Saturday match days. - Stewart Davies, Chairman, Darlington Football Club.

NORTH-EAST ASSEMBLY

THE Government has created yet another quango, the Finance for Investment Advisory Board. It will have a chairman on £60,000-a-year for "four to six days a month", and four non-executive board members, each earning £25,000-a-year for two days a month.

There are well over 1,000 such quangos, over 100 in the North-East alone. All spend vast amounts of public money. All are appointed by government. None are accountable to the public. Each quango has its own expensive bureaucracy.

Yet these unelected, unaccountable bodies are ignored (HAS, Mar 19) by those who want to abolish the only regional body that has any democratic accountability, the North-East Assembly, whose members are elected, accountable and unpaid.

The assembly gives powers of scrutiny and regional planning not only to local councils, but also to business and community organisations who make up 30 per cent of its membership.

For the first time ever, there is a genuinely open and democratic public debate about the Regional Spatial Strategy (the fancy name for regional planning). Without the Assembly, this debate would not be taking place and decisions would once more be made in secret. - Coun Chris Foote-Wood, North-East Assembly LibDem Leader.

PETER MULLEN

LIKE WI McNabb (HAS, Mar 18), I wonder at Peter Mullen's extraordinary animosity towards the BBC and the Guardian.

Responding to his latest attack (Echo, Mar 8), the Guardian's Diary column recently offered a clue. "It's such a tiny thing," it said, "but perhaps in future Peter might consider mentioning he was once a regular contributor to this paper - an arrangement which, the cuttings indicate, ended rather suddenly."

Now we need to know why Peter picks on the BBC in particular - why not Channel 4 for instance? Channel 4 produces much of the "banality" and "soft porn" which he objects to, as well as many of the pieces of excellent investigative journalism which he dismisses as "left wing propaganda" because they undermine his own political theories. - Pete Winstanley, Durham City.

IMMIGRATION

SINCE both our main political parties have followed similar non-policies on immigration, it is difficult to see how the issue can be called political, and still harder to locate a "neutral starting point" (HAS, Mar 8).

Surely a managed policy, lying somewhere between "closed borders" and "free entry for all" is entitled to a hearing.

I have seen no reference from Pete Winstanley to any possible limit to the number of immigrants Britain can cope with. Perhaps he admits to no such limit. More probably, he disagrees with those who feel that we are seriously overpopulated already. - Bob Jarratt, Caldwell, Richmond.