24/03/04

I have a feeling you wrote those comments on the background to William Wordsworth's famous poem and your remarks on daffodils as being less than delightful, with the sole purpose of stirring up surprise, certainly a response from your readers. Yellow peril indeed!

Well, you've succeeded. Daffodils are beautiful flowers. A sign of spring. I rejoice to see hordes of them planted anywhere and everywhere.

As for the green leaves left behind, they nurture the bulbs for next year, as you well know.

Let them do their jobs and smile at the thought of the hosts of golden daffodils, fluttering and dancing in the breeze, that will come again next year. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

COUNCIL TAX

I STRONGLY object to the way in which the council tax figures are presented.

In the case of my council tax, this gives the impression that council tax has only increased by £6.85m (£649.33m - £642.48m) whereas if the fire component had been included for 2004-5, as it was for 2003-4, the true increase of £39.34m would have been apparent.

The way in which these figures are presented graphically is deceptive and the true and excessive council tax increase will not be apparent to the less numerate majority of citizens. - PWH Moon, Stockton.

GM CROPS

THE National Federation of Women's Institutes is concerned that Margaret Beckett's announcement that the Government will press ahead with the commercial growing of GM maize in the UK will have serious environmental implications.

The NFWI has a long tradition of strong support for good science and of promoting public understanding of science.

The NFWI is therefore particularly incredulous in the light of Mrs Beckett's stated commitment to an 'evidence based' approach, that Chardon LL is to proceed to seed listing, since the tests that 'proved' that this variety of GM maize was less harmful to the environment than its conventional counterpart have been invalidated by the ban imposed on the herbicide Atrazine (used on the conventional maize in the tests), throughout the EU.

The NFWI finds more credence in the Commons Environmental Audit Committee's advice that these trials should be rerun before the crop is planted commercially.

In the light of the evidence that has emerged to date, the NFWI can only conclude that the main beneficiaries of a decision to commercialise GM crops in the UK at this time are the biotech companies themselves. - Audrey Flanagan, Federation Chairman, Durham County Federation of Women's Institutes.

TERRORISM

THE slaughter in Spain has been condemned by all, almost without reservation.

The atrocity follows the massacres in the US, Bali, Moscow, Casablanca, Turkey and more. All involved deliberate targeting of completely innocent men, women and children, most of whom were brutally murdered and maimed long before any war in Iraq.

How can anyone be so incredibly naive as to think that al Qaida would discontinue its horrible activities if we all walked out of Iraq?

No country, no city in the world is safe from what is undoubtedly the greatest threat to civilisation this century.

In my opinion the war in Iraq was a huge mistake, but the war against terrorism is essential for the protection of our own people and for those in every country in the world not just the West, to state the obvious. - J Martin, Easington.

I WILL bet £5 to a pinch of snuff that had there been any other but George Bush leading America, the attack on the Twin Towers would never have happened.

You see, he is nothing more than a warmonger. He has done nothing at all to sort the Palestinian troubles out. He has created the suicide bombers situation. That is what all this is about.

When President Clinton was in charge he did lots of good to try and get it sorted out. When Israel killed stone-throwers not a word was heard from President Bush. That is why Palestine had to go to such trouble and then President Bush condemned the Palestinians.

Now President Bush is up to his neck in trouble with all terrorists and has roped this country in.

I will bet President Bush and his poodle Tony Blair will both be on the sidelines in the next elections. - Ralph Hedley, Bishop Auckland.

THOSE who justify their present actions by an appeal to history cannot decide where history stops being relevant, as some al Qaida supporters are trying to do.

They maintain Spain has always been the enemy of Islam, and the Madrid bombings are, among other things, a belated revenge for the Spanish treatment of the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula, whom they drove into exile.

But what were Muslims doing there in the first place? Far from being peaceful settlers, the Moors established their rule in Spain by the sword in the 8th century.

If the Palestinians are justified in wanting their lands to be returned to them (and they are) then perhaps the Spanish were not altogether wrong in what they did, though probably wrong in how they did it.

Even the Crusades, which some regard as wicked beyond any justification, involved the temporary recapture of lands seized from a Christian state and inhabited by Christians, though no Christian, no man, can be anything but disgusted at the excesses which accompanied the first capture of Jerusalem; worse than the massacres inflicted on its Christian inhabitants by one of the Fatimid rulers a century earlier.

The truth is neither side can appeal to history with a clear conscience and no believer in a just and loving God, Christian or Muslim, can imagine that He is pleased by murder and massacre.

We would be better advised to try to solve our immediate problems and declare a temporary act of oblivion for the past. If you are going to appeal to the past, be prepared to face the true judgement of history. - Rev T J Towers, Langley Park.