01/12/03

Your correspondent is well wide of the mark with reference to teaching staff employed at North Blunts Primary School in Peterlee looking for alternative jobs.

While Durham County Council is currently consulting on a proposal to close the school, priority is being given, not only to the continuing education of the children but also to the retention of the teaching and non-teaching staff within the wider education service.

Meetings with all staff and their trade union representatives have already taken place and every effort will be made to find them alternative employment. In an era of teacher shortage both nationally and within the North-East region, I am confident that all colleagues who wish to remain in teaching will do so. - Councillor Neil Foster, County Council Cabinet Member (Lifelong Learning), Durham County Council.

PRESIDENT BUSH

YOUR correspondent, Mr Wardell, wants to see protestors against President Bush and his millionaire accomplices locked away (HAS, Nov 22).

Dangerous talk. He sounds like the British military establishment at the time of the First World War, who locked away conscientious objectors to military service (Richmond Castle became one such prison).

The reason that people are prepared to go out on the streets to demonstrate against the Republican President of the United States is not because they detest the people of America (they don't) but because the policy of the US in twice bombing the people of Iraq in the space of 12 years is an affront to our sense of human decency and justice.

Perhaps Mr Wardell might consider supporting the charity MAIC (Medical Aid for Iraq Children) which delivers medical equipment to the hospitals in Iraq where the Iraqi victims of war, injured in our name, are given help and hope. I will gladly give him details. - Rev John Stephenson, Sunderland.

LOCAL HEROES AWARDS

I WOULD like to thank, through HAS, all who nominated me for a Local Heroes Awards at Tall Trees Hotel, Yarm, last week.

I was thrilled to bit to have received my award and was so very impressed with the organisation of the whole evening.

It was so professionally done by the Echo staff, it really did put the Oscars to shame and it was all hosted tremendously by The Northern Echo editor Peter Barron. - Robert Ellis, Director of Coaching, Spennymoor Boxing Academy.

TERRORISM

PETE Winstanley (HAS, Nov 23) alleges we created monsters like Saddam and bin Laden.

The truth is that Saddam had not built his torture chambers when we supported him, nor had bin Laden made his declaration of world-wide holy war.

It was not made until 1988. By opposing the war on terror, Mr Winstanley is, in effect, himself supporting these two monsters and in full knowledge of their evil deeds.

When the CIA trained bin Laden, the communists were trying to take over Afghanistan. His real character was then unknown. Does Mr Winstanley imagine Americans would have done so had they foreseen he would attack them?

Bin Laden is not a monster of our making, he is a member of the Wahabi people of Saudi Arabia, who fanatically adhere to their ancient customs and oppose virtually any element of modernisation. He wants to wage world-wide holy war so he can inflict Taliban-style rule on the world, which would mean rules like no education for women, who would not be allowed to work, no music, films, photos, books other than the Koran, attendance at mosques four times a day, compulsory beards for men and all-enveloping burqas for women, all to be punished by lashing if not adhered to and amputations and death for other crimes. - William Ball, Hartlepool.

PERHAPS only Scottish readers will remember Harry Lauder singing Keep Right on to the End of the Road.

This, it seems, is the depressing message we constantly get from Messrs Bush and Blair.

You see, it all depends on how you define 'terrorism'.

Of course, suicide bombs against innocent civilians is terrorism, but then so is massacre of innocents in Iraq.

Until President Bush radically changes his Middle East policies, not a lot will change and many more innocent people will be killed.

Harry Lauder's song of keeping on to the 'end of the road' may very well be what Messrs Bush and Blair have in store for us, but this road will be a long and bitter one with no light at the end of it. - Hugh Pender, Darlington.

ENVIRONMENT

THOMAS Conlon (HAS, Nov 24) thinks there was deliberate exaggeration 'to create a story' about too many cars in our towns and cities, and water from disused mines.

Well let's look at the facts. Ten years ago there was a huge threat to the River Wear from British Coal's plan at that time to release mineral toxins from old mine workings into the river: a plan that, had it gone ahead, as seemed likely, would have wiped out the Wear's entire fish stocks and, indeed, all of its wildlife and much of its plant life.

Thanks to the hard work of committed individuals, the plan was withdrawn.

And if Mr Conlon thinks traffic congestion is no threat to the urban environment, then he must be living on another planet.

As for the issue of immediate concern, the Ghost Ships, they are the latest phase of a growing trend to use us as a dumping ground for other people's toxic waste.

This is not good enough, and the Echo is right to highlight the iniquity. - Tony Kelly, Crook.

RELIGIOUS SLAUGHTER

IT'S a distressing fact that millions of animals every year have their throats cut in slaughterhouses while fully conscious and it is legal. Killed for Muslim halal and Jewish kosher, they are exempt from the rule that requires all animals to be stunned before slaughter.

I respect other people's cultures and religions but it cannot be at the expense of animal suffering. The law must be changed to make this practice illegal.

The Government advisory body, the Farm Animal Welfare Council, recently investigated this method of slaughter and concluded that it causes 'very significant pain and distress' and that it can take a calf up to two minutes to lose consciousness after its throat is cut.

It has also recommended it being banned but the Government has not responded.

Recent research shows that over 70 per cent of British people also believe that religious slaughter should no longer be allowed, but politicians drag their feet.

Slaughter without pre-stunning has been banned in Norway, Sweden and New Zealand and it's time for Britain to follow suit.

The campaigning organisation Viva! is urging people to call on their MPs to support a ban on this practice.

Please write to your MP and ask him or her to help end religious slaughter. - I J Noble, Darlington.