31/01/05

The Quayside development at Newcastle and Gateshead, similarly, is a clarion call to the region, and shows the value of planning and consultation. The residents of all these areas can look forward with the confident knowledge that they will reap the rewards for years to come.

However, when it comes to rural regeneration, a very different picture emerges. There is currently a plan that will go before Darlington Borough planning committee shortly that, if passed in its present form, will devastate the village of Brafferton.

You have probably never heard of Brafferton, and that is exactly the point. It does not matter what happens here because we do not influence the outside world. Our MP, the Prime Minister, has not been to the village in living memory. He even managed to avoid us during the foot-and-mouth epidemic although some of our farmers had their flocks wiped out.

There are currently 53 houses with an approximate population of just over 100. The plan to redevelop semi-derelict farm buildings will result in a net increase in housing stock of 20 per cent with a consequent increase in population. It is likely that a further 25 or so cars will traverse a village road that has difficulty coping with its current load.

So, more traffic problems, cars parked anywhere, an increase in pollution, extra pressure on already inadequate services.

If this development goes ahead in its present form, it will typify this council's neglectful approach to what happens in its rural areas.

Still, West Park will be good with its new roads, hospital and new primary school. No need for consultation there. Conveniently for the council, no existing residents. - Bill Wood, Brafferton.

RELIGION

DAVID Lewis (HAS, Jan 22) makes a series of sweeping attacks on the early Christians and the New Testament.

He denies the founder of Christianity ever existed. Would he care to explain then how Christianity itself came to exist? Or why, if Jesus never existed, he has had a bigger impact on the world and all subsequent generations than any other single historical figure?

Or why, to attest their faith in him, his followers from the earliest times to the present day have been prepared to face torture and death? Or why he remains a vital living presence in the lives of tens of millions of men and women today?

In fact David Lewis' letter insults not only Christians but your readers' intelligence, and I am astonished that a reputable newspaper like the Echo should publish such tripe. - T Kelly, Crook.

EDUCATION

WE are beginning, as a nation, to step into dangerous territory when the slightest criticism of Islam is termed Islamophobia.

The name is becoming the excuse to stifle free speech and opinion on the subject.

Ofsted chief inspector of schools, David Bell, is quite within his powers to express concern about Muslim schools (Echo, Jan 18) if he believes he has reason to do so.

Since Ofsted is responsible for inspecting schools, reports of the content of some lessons and standards in certain fields in Muslim schools must have given rise to his comments.

It is unwise for us as a nation to close our eyes to things that threaten the coherence of British society. In the same issue of the newspaper, it is reported that a Muslim woman in New Zealand refused to remove her veil when appearing in court to give evidence in a trial. She said she would rather die than show her face in public.

If Muslim women in this country feel the same way, how is this compatible with our British way of life? Are young Muslim girls being taught such things in Muslim schools? If so, there is indeed need to get concerned that they are not receiving an education that will fit them for modern Britain. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

CONSTITUTION

THANKFULLY, the crown-head of Britain - the ultimate in culture and refinement - isn't a matter for the electorate to decide, for which we must trust in the Lord. Dieu et mon droit (God and my right) is the royal motto.

Meanwhile, Aled Jones (HAS, Jan 22) sees the Royals as part of a system "which is inherently unaccountable". True enough, I can't disagree with you here.

The fact of the matter is that the British Constitution is connected with feudalism, namely the so-called landed gentry. Which is what Parliament was comprised of at the time of the English Civil war, the outcome of which brought a stop to absolutism: a situation in which the crown-head's (king's) words were paramount.

So then, the British Constitution amounts to the work of the bourgeois, and it is, consequently, bourgeois-biased.

What we currently have in Britain equals a pseudo-democracy. - Alfred H Lister, Guisborough.

ORGANIC FARMING

I SEE you have been using a lot of your paper promoting organic food recently.

People were eating and drinking organic food 100 years ago. Longevity was relatively static those days.

Shortly after farmers started to use artificial fertilisers in any quantity about 60 years ago, people started to live longer. Since then, longevity has jumped 30 per cent.

There is a saying: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating". How appropriate this is in this case. - Ralph Hodgson, Darlington.

IMMIGRATION

CONTRARY to playing the race card, the Conservative Party should be applauded for raising immigration as a mainstream issue; the rising number of votes for extreme parties is reason enough to realise this.

Whilst it is for the good of all British citizens that Britain has control of its borders, Labour can hardly talk about the threat from terrorists whilst admitting it hasn't a clue who resides within our nation.

Only last year, a Sheffield civil servant blew the whistle on immigration scams, the result, Beverley Hughes, Labour's Immigration Minister, walked the plank.

Unwittingly, or not, Michael Howard has raised an even more important point, in that Labour's Straw and Blunkett have signed the EU's common immigration policy. So, we "might" still man our borders, but the EU is now entitled to tell us who may cross them.

When the Tories say that they want to take powers back from the EU, they are now drawing attention, some may say too late, to massive issues that are, in part, out of our hands.

I wonder if the lovers of the EU, the liberal left, would remain quiet, if the Tories had ceded control of British immigration to America. - Jim Tague, Bishop Auckland Conservatives.