FOOTBALL PARKING

B FOSTER (HAS, Oct 8) complains about having to pay £5 to park at the Reynolds Arena.

The solution is for him to write to the club and ask why there is no free bus service and a park-and-ride scheme.

This would cost Mr Foster nothing, but it would help to alleviate parking problems in the proximity of residents' homes if fans arrived by bus.

Mr Foster does not seem to appreciate that there are many people in the area who do not have drives or may possibly have two cars or company vans. The pensioners' bungalows closest to the stadium have no drives but have families who visit them on Saturdays.

Mr Foster says that when he bought his house he didn't also buy the roadside in front of it. When I bought my house it was located close to a beautiful cornfield, on which the stadium now stands. Neither did I expect to have thousands of people pass my front door both ways up to three times a week. - Name and address supplied.

I AM finding it hard to understand whom B Foster (HAS, Oct 8) is blaming for not being able to afford to park in the football stadium car park.

If I want to go into town I have to pay for car parking, go by bus or walk.

The council, not the residents, set up the Residents' Parking Scheme. It is part of a legally binding planning document, to which the council and football club agreed before plans for the stadium were passed.

Before the stadium opened, subsidised bus services should have been in place from various locations in and outside Darlington with a free bus service from the town centre and Banktop Railway Station.

As for local residents, some don't have driveways on their properties and the parking scheme is the only safeguard they have against what may happen in the future. - Name and address supplied.

GHOST SHIPS

MAY I congratulate your paper and your team of reporters on the first class reporting of the 'ghost' ships issue. You have, on a daily basis, kept us very well updated on the problem as it has unfolded.

We are very concerned in Hartlepool about the possibility of these ships coming.

This is not scare mongering. There is genuine concern for everyone's health.

I find it difficult to accept the assurances of Able UK, a company set to make a huge profit from this job. - Alison Lilley, Hartlepool.

HOMELESS

DID you know that over 100,000 children in the UK are homeless right now and 1.3 million households are living in conditions that are officially unfit for human habitation?

To help change this, celebrities from stage, screen, and sporting scene, from Nigel Havers and Greg Rusedski, to Raymond Blanc and Tara Palmer Tompkinson have been enlisted to put their hands to good use in creating hand print artwork in dough - not dissimilar to Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

All handprints will be framed to form their own mini exhibition, collectively known as the Kenwood Dough Hall of Fame, which will be unveiled by me in John Lewis on Oxford Street on October 13.

The handprints will then be auctioned off on November 19 at Europe's most popular private photographic gallery, Proud Camden, London. The proceeds of the auction will support Shelter's work in helping over 100,000 homeless and badly-housed people every year.

Shelter provides much-needed help and advice to over 100,000 families a year who suffer from housing problems. I'm delighted to be supporting Shelter, so please give them a helping hand by bidding generously. Thank you for your support. - Nell McAndrew.

EUROPE

AS the proposed European Constitution inches (or its metric equivalent) forward, the calls for a referendum grow louder by the day the length and breadth of the land.

We have the ability to shout louder than any politician has ever done, and at a decibel volume that may necessitate the use of sign language to those who fail to listen. The sign being an x in a box other than theirs at the next election.

The French government is known to be deeply divided over whether to ratify the treaty by referendum or by parliamentary vote.

So, Mr Blair, as good Europeans, we wish our voice to be heard. Are you listening? - Neil Herron, Referendum04 Campaign, Sunderland.