04/08/04

With beds in the acute hospitals at a premium and increasing pressure to discharge patients as quickly as possible, small hospitals like Homelands, which provides high quality rehabilitation and respite care, are an essential stage in the process of getting patients out of hospital and back home in full health.

Barnard Castle and Teesdale has such a facility; Stanhope and Weardale has a similar facility. Why should the people of Crook and Willington be deprived?

If, in the end, the key argument is reduced to one of cost, then we will have done Homelands and the dedicated staff who work there a major disservice. What they provide money cannot buy.

If Homelands closes and is not replaced, then in future people who worked all their lives and who, by implication, contributed a great deal to the NHS, will have to spend the last two months of their lives in a private nursing home. - Tom Matthews, Crook.

REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

IN all of the correspondence on the referendum on the creation of the North-East Assembly, I seem to have missed entirely just what is the "North-East".

Are we talking here of the region from the River Tees to the Scottish border or does the southern limit lie elsewhere?

If the border is to be the River Tees then surely this makes a nonsense of the local government changes made in the 1970s, when great benefits were to come from the creation of Cleveland County.

I am very much a pro-European, but I fear this is a case of change for its own sake.

The only two clear results from the last changes that I can recall is that I no longer know where the boundaries of County Durham lie and that certain people in local government appeared to go through a change of job description at enhanced salaries.

I fancy this is a Europe-driven exercise in the cause of regionalisation but one must not forget that, in European terms, England is a region.

Let us have a referendum and if the majority want to be out of Europe then let us be out completely, because I am sure that at some time the rest of the Union will decide that having us as half-members simply isn't worthwhile. - GJ Barraclough, Newton Aycliffe.

ANYBODY who witnessed the display of County Durham pride and passion at the Miners' Gala would take offence at the comments made by Peter Elliott (HAS, Jul 17).

To label the county's boundary as "a mere administrative area" ignores all historical and emotional connections that people have with County Durham.

County Durham owes its name and origins to an administrative area that can be traced back to the Palatinate (County) of Durham over 900 years ago. County Durham people are emotionally attached to their county in a unique bond that has been created by successive generations of shared culture and historic economic struggle. Attempts to undermine this long-standing, proud and common heritage for the sake of political point scoring in the current review of local government are misplaced and disrespectful.

I agree with Mr Elliott when he expressed anger at the whittling away of the historic County Durham boundaries since 1974. But to place the blame for this on the county council is absolutely ridiculous when it has been a consequence of central government policy towards the structure of local councils.

In some respects, the referendum of November 4 represents a continuation of this policy by offering the prospect of splitting County Durham into north, south and east.

But, for the first time, local people will have the opportunity to vote on whether they want this, or whether they would prefer to preserve County Durham by having an all-purpose, unitary council to save their county and bear its unique name. - A Fenwick, County Councillor, Durham County Council.

BEFORE the proposed referendum I hope someone will sort out for me just where local government in the region is heading.

On July 23 we were told what the powers of the assembly will be. A day later we are told about a 20-year vision for County Durham.

It is clear from these two announcements that a lot of work of the assembly and that of the county will overlap or at least that two sets of people will be beavering away on the same things.

On top of that (or perhaps below it) what is left for any other local authorities? They will have their own priorities and if they have to fall in line (or else) they will be next door to useless.

I am sure the 'yes' lobby will say that all these tiers will be working together, but can anyone believe that each will not have its own vested interests, that there will be no overlapping, continual haggling, with the resulting waste of everyone's time and our money.

As for the assembly itself, one can only say that it is an emasculated version of what most people understand by 'regional government'.

One senses that the 'yes' camp are mostly Labour sympathisers who see their mission in life as securing the North-East as a Labour stronghold for the foreseeable future.

Proportional representation won't have much bearing on this in an area where most traditionally vote Labour come what may. - RK Bradley, Darlington.

PETER MANDELSON

IF Ray Mallon (Echo, Jul 30) believes that the people of Hartlepool, when choosing their new MP, will choose wisely, how does he account for their having chosen in the past Peter Mandelson?

He is someone with no connection, in any sense of the word, with Hartlepool and who, when asked in an interview recently what he thought he had done for its people, could only offer some bland generalisation about what the Labour Party had supposedly done for the people of Britain as a whole.

Of course, the reason Mr Mandelson was elected was because he represented a party calling itself the Labour Party in a strongly traditional Labour area, even though this party bears little or no resemblance to the Labour Party of old with which the people of Hartlepool could identify. A similar situation occurred with David Milliband in South Shields and Shaun Woodward in St Helens, Lancashire. - Kevin O'Brien, Ferryhill Station.