CRIME DETECTION

A DISTRAUGHT 83-year-old widow in an interview on television begs the two young men who have killed her husband to come forward and give themselves up. Later it is found to be that she stabbed her husband to death.

A similar case in Peterlee, where a sobbing father asks the murderers of his two children to admit their crimes and give themselves up to the police when in fact he had set fire to his house and was responsible for the deaths of his children.

A recent case of two school children being murdered by the school caretaker (Ian Huntley, left) and with his girlfriend lying about his alibi.

Is it not about time that the courts can order a lie detector test to take place in these circumstances? Of course, it is not 100 per cent certain but if the criminals knew it was due to take place many would admit to their crimes and save the police forces' time and trouble, and the parents and relatives of the victims would also be a little more comforted with the investigations being a lot shorter.

The person conducting the lie detector examination would be independent of both the police and anyone else connected with the case. - E Reynolds, Wheatley Hill.

LEISURE

SHARON Griffiths writes about the vision and expectation 20 years ago of the 21st century being a time of shorter working hours and more leisure (Echo, Mar 10).

As she says, it is not so. The dreams of the future are far from the reality.

This is even more true of society in general. How naive we were to imagine back in the 1980s that by now we would all be living in palatial style, that our streets would be spotless, our towns and cities models of urban sophistication. The graffiti, litter, dog fouling, vandalism, pollution, traffic-clogged roads and yob culture did not figure in the futuristic view of 2000-plus Britain.

The sad thing is the visions could have become reality. Instead, too many chose the 'I'll do my own thing' way of life.

By ignoring the behaviour, standards and morals a 21st century civilised society should be and was expected to follow, progression towards the dreamed-of society halted and went into reverse.

Much of what we have now is no better than the Middle Ages. Remember how in history lessons at school we used to gasp in horror at the description of people throwing their rubbish into the stinking streets, attracting rats which led to plague?

To our shame it is not Back to the Future but Forward to the Past. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

TERRORISM

SEPTEMBER 11, subsequent events in Bali, Moscow, Turkey and now Madrid represent a fundamentally new kind of terrorism: one that is limitless in its scope and global in its implications.

Let's not kid ourselves about this. What we are looking at is the possibility of a third world war involving WMD with all that entails for human survival (not that considerations of survival would remotely concern the terrorist mentality, with its implicit belief that death in the cause guarantees instant admission to paradise).

World leaders are still groping for an appropriate response to the threat, although their best efforts to date would appear to have made matters worse.

However, Blair and Bush are in touch with the realities of the situation, which is more than can be said for their critics who appear to think that harping on about the human rights of terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay etc is a valid response,

Sorry, that's a luxury we can't afford. We need to get real - while we still have a choice. - T Kelly, Crook.

LET me say at the start of this contribution that I totally deplore the killing of so many innocent people in Madrid and the misery caused to relatives, also not forgetting the many injured.

Sadly, the response from politicians in particular is a reflection of the gross disparity which exists between so-called Christian countries and the Muslim Middle East.

American and British bombs killed thousands in Iraq, many of them children, but the response from US and British politicians was that it was 'collateral damage.'

Change that attitude and you will go some way to preventing more terrorist bombs. - Hugh Pender, Darlington.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

IF a working-class single parent is caught 'adjusting' an electricity meter by £50 in order to keep her children warm she is charged with fraud, could face a custodial sentence and have her children taken into care.

However, when the capitalists of Britain's banks, building societies and insurance companies 'mis-sell' endowment mortgages and in doing so con eight million people out of £40bn, no action is taken.

Mis-selling, there is a work for you. The word does not exist in the dictionary, probably because it is impossible to mis-sell. You either sell honestly or you sell dishonestly and clearly endowments were dishonestly sold in order that the fat cats of the commercial world could line their pockets with huge houses at the expense of honest, hard-working people.

So let's drop the word mis-sell and call these financiers by what they really are. - John Gilmore, Bishop Auckland.

Richmond

YOU will know the people of Richmond have a few problems which are going to cost a lot of money to resolve. I wish to put forward a few ideas I have which I hope will help as follows:

The council proposes to demolish a school and replace it with new buildings at a cost of £8m. The school concerned is the first on the left as you enter the town from Darlington and is only some 20 years old. This appeared to be a great waste of money.

The council also proposes to build new offices at Colburn to replace the numerous houses in Frenchgate used at present.

I would like to suggest the following solutions:

Taking over the school and using it as offices is surely possible.

Build a new school elsewhere in the town. One site that comes to mind is the land in Reeth Road opposite the convent. This site could be extended north to include part of West Fields.

The great benefit of this plan would be to remove some of the school buses, parents' cars and pupils from Darlington Road.

I feel sure that council employees would prefer working in Richmond as opposed to travelling to Colburn. - Robert Hardy, Richmond.