17/04/04

I was shocked to find that the price for a 40 minute session had risen from £4.40 to the astronomical £5. I recently renewed my Wear Fit membership at a cost of £8 and without this would have had to pay a further £1 for the privilege of using a run down squash court with cracked walls and loose plaster.

Why is it that Spennymoor Leisure Centre can charge £3.80 for the same service?

I find this 12 per cent rise totally disgusting and feel that on top of the almost double figure increase in the council tax for the coming year it illustrates the greedy nature of Wear Valley District Council.

I wonder if the increase in revenue will actually be used to benefit the local community by keeping Wolsingham pool open and improving the facilities in general? - Geoffrey Mawson, Stanley Village, Crook.

GRANTS

HOW sad to read that the Korean-owned Woo One factory in Hartlepool was the victim of an alleged arsonist attack (Echo, April 4) and that it may have employed illegal immigrant workers.

But wait for it! This company was paid £150,000 in grants from One NorthEast with another £100,000 withheld subject to conditions being met.

Just recently in my home town of Wolsingham, a businessman applied for a grant from One NorthEast to support a foundry. This was refused. He must obviously be from the wrong part of the world. - Kenneth Lally, Bishop Auckland.

SEAL CULL

I ASK animal lovers in the North-East to join me in a boycott of Canadian goods, especially fish products.

Once again, the barbarians are killing thousands of seals whose only crime is eating fish.

The lucky seals may die quickly as their brains are smashed with clubs and pickaxes, but the majority will die slow agonising deaths having their skins cut from their defenceless bodies.

What brave men these people must be. Personally, I hope they never have a good night's sleep again and end up rotting in Hell. - Sandra Hall, Peterlee.

TEESDALE

IF ONLY all our towns and villages could, like Teesdale, boast such low crime figures (Echo, Apr 7).

Of course it is much the way it used to be in days not long past. People had less but seemed to be more content. There was certainly far more respect for community and other people's property. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

SOCIALISM

I ASSURE Peter Troy (HAS, Apr 14) that communism is NOT what I seek. I am well aware of the terrible suffering and loss of life inflicted by the likes of Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and Pol Pot.

England's fertile land is becoming more like a nature reserve as farmers go out of business and more and more food is imported. Heavy subsidies and tariffs protect expensive EU beet sugar production, forcing more efficient cane sugar producers in poorer countries out of business. Subsidies to Italian tomato growers produce a surplus, which is dumped on African markets. A bankrupt African tomato grower ends up in London, earning money to send back to his family, when he would prefer to be back home growing tomatoes.

Big business dumps British workforces in favour of cheaper labour abroad. A Chinese man working legally in England can send home more each month than he could earn in a year in China. His neighbour decides he will also seek his fortune in England, but isn't so lucky, and drowns picking cockles in Morecambe Bay.

Is it really a choice between all this and communism? Migration and international trade are essential to prosperity, but must continue on a more humanitarian basis. We are in this together. - Pete Winstanley, Durham.

THE lesson that is generally drawn from the experience of places like the Soviet Union (HAS, Apr 14) is that socialism inevitably becomes an economically inefficient police state and the old capitalist ruling elite is simply replaced by a socialist one.

It would be more accurate to describe this as a defeat rather than a failure. Socialism was defeated by the extremely unfavourable social and economic conditions in the countries involved - although what was defeated was scarcely socialism but something far more embryonic.

This defeat happened well before 1989. The regimes that collapsed around that time had long ceased to be socialist in any sense and would be better described as state capitalist. So the failure of these regimes was not the failure of socialism

Finally, change is often a long and tortuous process and the transition to socialism is no exception. Although, hopefully this transition won't be as protracted and painful as the one from feudalism to capitalism. In Europe that transition took about 500 years and today they are making hard work of it in the Third World.

My conclusion is that the equality of all democratic peoples can/will be improved upon when and if we take the necessary steps to free ourselves from capitalism and become a truly socialist society. - Michael Charlton, Bishop Auckland.

EUROPE

FROM 1997 to 2003, the European Union introduced 11,511 pieces of legislation.

None originated in Westminster, and all in some way will impinge upon our daily lives.

All were initiated by people that we cannot remove from office. Unelected and unaccountable.

Now is the time to stand up and expose the European project for exactly what it is: the theft of the people's democracy.

The European Court of Auditors has refused to sign off the accounts for the EU for the ninth year in a row because of fraud and corruption. If this was a British business the directors would be in prison, but the cost of our membership of this club is over £1.3m every hour.

Imagine how many new schools, hospitals and policemen this could provide.

It was Leader of the Commons Peter Hain who said that if we weren't happy with the EU we should let the Government know in the European Elections. Here's the chance. - Neil Herron, Independent Candidate, Sunderland.