EDUCATION

I VIEW with extreme sadness the news of the so-called proposed closure of the Northern School for the Deaf. It inevitably means that the decision has already been made to close the school.

In Middlesbrough, the closure of the Beverley School for the Deaf has left a void for the deaf and hearing impaired community that has not been filled.

Mr Blair's bold spin of "education, education, education" appears yet again to exclude specialist funding for schools that deal with children with disabilities or special needs. When will the Government look at children's individual educational needs?

Once again funding for the special provision of a school to meet the requirements of some of the most vulnerable children in society has been withdrawn to meet general educational funding.

I hope the trustees think very carefully before closing a very special school that can never be replaced. - Bob Pitt, Linthorpe.

IMMIGRATION

THERE is a skill shortage in many areas of our economy. We need immigration, whether people like it or not.

A simple visit to a hospital will often be sufficient to prove the point when you see how many overseas nurses there are.

It is also true that every doctor we take from abroad saves us £200 000 in training a new one, a trainee doctor we may not be able to find anyway from this country as more and more doctors quit due to stress, and the job becomes less attractive.

Far from immigration being a strain on the NHS, it could be argued that it is what is keeping it going.

Like it or not we are an ageing population. Life expectancy is going up all the time and the general trend is for fewer and fewer children to be born.

This means that there are more and more elderly people to be supported, to a large extent from taxation paid by fewer and fewer wage earning people.

We are going to need young skilled immigrants. I for one do not savour having to work until I am 70-years-old. - Peter Sagar, Gosforth.

DAFFODILS

SOMEONE always has to be miserable about something, but it was a surprise to find the poor daffodil taking a pasting from Harry Mead (Echo, Mar 17).

So we have to put up with a few weeks of untidy stalks while they die back, but that is a small price to pay when you consider the joy the flowers give us at the end of a gloomy winter.

As it happens, I think Wordsworth would be happy to see them so widespread now. After all, when his daughter died, he and his wife planted a field full of them next to their home at Rydal Mount in her memory, and they, or their progeny, are there still, to gladden anyone's eye.

So come on Harry, lighten up, or are you one of those people of whom the poet wrote: "Little we see in nature that is ours"? - Teresa Sutton, Bishop Auckland.

HOUSING MARKET

HOUSE prices will continue to rise because of the rate at which new properties are being built, which is being slowed down by red tape, giving young people no chance to own their own dwellings in life. - N Tate, Darlington.

TERRORISM

THERE is something disturbing about the way politicians and tabloids respond to terrorist attacks such as the recent one in Madrid.

Quite rightly they condemn such attacks as outrages, atrocities and barbaric.

Why is it then when the US and ourselves murder thousands of Iraqis it is described as 'collateral damage' or 'regretful' or 'unfortunate.'

The double standards are becoming truly scandalous and unless we clean up our own back yard such attacks will continue.

When the state of Israel was created what happened to the Zionist terrorists who had murdered hundreds of British soldiers? They became the government of the new state of Israel.

Of course, the deaths in Madrid were Christians and those in Iraq Muslims.

It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy if racism accounted for the obvious disparity in the way terrorist acts are described and reported. - Hugh Pender, Darlington.

COUNCIL TAX

PEOPLE of Ferryhill are constantly reminded that their Town Council is a 'top council'. With the arrival of next year's council tax bills we now know what is meant by that statement.

With a staggering 9.7 per cent increase in the Ferryhill council tax it is probable that they are indeed top of the league when it comes to taking money from the people of Ferryhill.

Unfortunately the money-grabbing antics do not stop there. Allotment holders in the town are to be confronted, in the next two years, with increases in allotment rents of up to 300 per cent. Gardeners on the council's Broom allotments have already had a 100 per cent increase imposed upon them for next year. - Brian Gibson, Ferryhill.

THE total council tax increase in the borough of Stockton for 2004-5 is 6.98 per cent, yet another inflation breaking tax rise by the controlling Labour Group supported by the Lib-Dem and Thornaby Independent councillors on Stockton Council.

Only the Conservative Group stood up for the residents of the borough living on fixed incomes and savings. We felt these people should have been protected from such a savage increase.

We put forward a budget which would have reduced this tax burden by one per cent by highlighting savings in the council budget and using a small amount of cash from the council's massive balances, which at present stand at over £6m.

The Conservative Group's proposals would not have affected any front line services or any job losses.

We believe the Labour, Lib-Dem and Thornaby Independent councillors have sadly let down the people of the borough by agreeing such a large increase in council tax this year. - Councillor Stephen Smailes, Leader, Conservative Group, Stockton Council.

MEDICAL SERVICES

SCARCELY a week goes by without some report in the Echo of medical malpractice, often of a heinous character. This should be of major concern to us all, because we are all at risk from it, and when at our most vulnerable. Why is there so much medical abuse?

I blame it on the underlying philosophy on which university courses in the life sciences, including medicine are based: behaviourism - the view that people and animals are just complicated machines, and that their basic feelings, and indeed rights, can therefore be safely ignored by the experts.

Once again in tracing the origins of wickedness in our society, we find lurking in the background, that of which behaviourism is a form - atheistic materialism. - Tony Kelly, Crook.