EMPLOYMENT: MR Hope (HAS, Jul 21) loves New Labour and continues to believe the Tories actually closed coal mines.

With New Labour comes statistics and, yes, a swift check of the facts, New Labour style, reveals more coal mines, a lot more in fact, have closed while under a Labour administration than Tory.

Anyone living in West Durham should know these facts without consulting the library.

If you disagree with this theory, which is your choice, then equally I can blame Labour for the recent demise of Fujitsu, Seimens, Coles Cranes, Vaux Brewery, Rothmans (x2), Sanyo, Electrolux, Black & Decker, Corus, Weardale Steel and Cement works, Barbour, Sara Lee, Courtaulds Textiles, Dewhirst and the rest of the North-East textile industry.

The list is endless, but I do hope you get my drift.

Labour supporters only moan when jobs are "lost" under the Tories, a very strange view on life.

The good people of the region need a level playing field, that's all. - Jim Tague, Bishop Auckland Conservatives.

EUROPE

IN its response to the EU Commission's 2001 White Paper on European Governance "the Labour Government sees the creation of a more direct relationship between local and regional government and the European Commission".

So who will govern the North-East after Tony Blair signs up to the EU Convention? Why Brussels of course.

This will be true whichever way you vote over the NE Assembly elections because a yes vote or a no vote will both leave you with a NE Assembly, elected in the former case and unelected in the latter case! And they call this devolution, it is nothing more than a giant con.

Will the Tories point out the EU link? Not on your life. They dare not utter the word Europe in the regional election context because they handed the whole issue over to Brussels in the celebrated Maastricht Treaty.

As a result they handed the break up of Britain on a plate to John Prescott. Brussels will control the NE Assembly in order to enforce their regulations through our own civil servants at regional level. Your taxes will pay for these civil servants but you the taxpayer will not control them - that will be left to the unelected across the North Sea. Some democracy. Some devolution.

It is crucial to the regionalisation debate for it to be understood that the whole process is driven by a power hungry EU Commission. Demand the opportunity to vote to abolish the assembly. - David Lott, Chairman UK Independence Party.

THREE months ago, the district auditor concluded that the unelected North-East Assembly has unlawfully used public money to promote a regional assembly.

As a result of his findings, both Middlesbrough and Hartlepool Borough Councils suspended their subscriptions to that organisation until the matter was clarified.

Recently, the Assembly held its AGM at Stockton. No member of the public or the anti-regionalisation movement was invited to attend the AGM.

Perhaps, the newly-elected chair of the North-East Assembly would like to comment on the absence of any public involvement and the lack of balanced discussion on the proposed regional assembly. - Eric Wilson, UK Independence Party, Hartlepool.

IRAQ DOSSIER

THERE is always someone somewhere pointing the finger of blame at someone for something. Today's talking point is the dossier on Iraq.

In the first place, Dr David Kelly should never have divulged confidential information to the BBC's Andrew Gilligan, and Gilligan should never have broadcast this information.

BBC news chief Richard Sambrook should not have given permission for the contents of this sensitive dossier to be broadcast.

Perhaps the blame should be shared between Dr Kelly, Mr Gilligan and Mr Sambrook, and the matter of who did what should be laid to rest. - John Stokes, Peterlee.

MARGARET THATCHER

PETER Brown (HAS, Jul 23) says the worst thing Mrs Thatcher did was to force council tenants to buy their homes.

Hardly. The worst thing Mrs Thatcher did was to become Prime Minister, because she inaugurated the culture of brazen selfishness in which we live today. True, things were well on their way downhill before her premiership, but she gave them the all-important official shove.

We were already the effluent society, but to the noxious sludge of individualism and materialism she added the insidious poison of cynicism.

Hence, the unprecedented collapse of all standards - moral, public and professional - we see today. - Tony Kelly, Crook.

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

BOB Jarratt (HAS, Jul 16) states that the Government can not sell what it does not own; this statement is completely erroneous, as witness the sell-off of the TSB.

Our Government did not own it, the real owners must surely have been either the descendants of the Dumfries doctor who started it or the investors in it.

Some two or three years ago I read that approximately one third of the television licence cash went to the BBC. If this is so, then the remainder is indeed tax. - R Johnson, Billingham.