UNIVERSITY FEES: THE higher education minister, Margaret Hodge, attempts to justify the introduction of student top-up fees by asking why the dustman should subsidise the medical student.

I would ask the following in return. In years to come, who will treat the dustman when he falls ill or is injured on the roads if it isn't the medical student turned doctor? Isn't the dustman investing in his own future by subsidising the student? Using the same argument, why should the dustman subsidise the single mother who has decided to raise one or more children using the dustmen's taxes? The graduate doctor will earn so much more than the dustman, probably one to two million pounds more over their lifetime. Is not the tax on this sum likely to be a half to one million pounds? So, the doctor is paying back his debt with interest.

Finally, what of the dustman's children if he can't afford to pay his children's tuition fees? How is it fair that the doctor's adult children will be able to further their education and prospects, yet the dustman's may not, simply because of their parents' lower income?

Five years ago, when New Labour took power, we never read about the universities being so strapped for cash that they had to charge students. Yet now, after the billions upon billions of pounds in additional taxes and the supposed flow of cash into schooling, education is deteriorating before our eyes. - Aidan Ruff, Ellingham, Northumberland.

I WAS interested to read of the proposed top-up fees.

We have privately educated our three children through public schools and universities, have private health insurance and pay enormous taxes. If the minister's question is followed to its logical conclusion, surely we should be entitled to huge tax rebates to compensate us for hardly having used the NHS and state education system.

This Labour proposal strikes me once again as being like so many of their other ideas - part of the politics of envy. - JR Armstrong, Bishop Auckland.

STATE pension

FOLLOWING on from Harry Mead's illuminating comments on the state pension (Echo, Nov 20) I should like to draw attention to the minimum income guarantee (MIC), the income support top-up payable to "poorer" pensioners.

The fundamental problem with this scheme is that it is virtually impossible to ascertain how some became "poor". The scheme, therefore, actively discourages people from making any kind of provision for themselves and consequently penalises those who do. Any reasonable person would accept that, if someone has earned an occupational pension of say, £20 a week and has perhaps £20 per week from capital interest, they should receive £20 per week more income than someone who has not. The MIC ensures that his does not happen. They are effectively penalised for having made that provision.

The Government would point to the pensioner credit (itself delayed until April 2003) to address this matter but, by all accounts, this would not benefit those on even a modest income who would, as usual, be treated as if they were multi-millionaires.

Add to this the news that 770,000 households entitled to MIC do not claim it, and it will be seen that the only fair and just solution is a substantial increase in the basic state pension across the board. - K O'Brien, Ferryhill.

THE saying "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics" is very true. The old age pension rise will be two per cent, in line with inflation, which seems reasonable, until the fact that the pension is under £100 per week.

The rise offered to firefighters is 16 per cent of over £20,000pa.

The old age pensioners would be ecstatic if they were offered less than one per cent of the firefighters' pay. - E Reynolds, Wheatley Hill.

LICENSING LAWS

BEFORE celebrating your extended drinking hours, please consider the less-publicised facts: the Government wishes to introduce 24-hour licensing laws; it wishes to reorganise motorway service station franchises with plans to introduce alcohol sales at the premises; the big supermarket chains would be pleased to handle the service station sites; most motorway stations are open 24 hours.

Get the picture? Who's wagging the dog? Supermarkets have already lobbied Government into introducing Sunday opening which was quickly followed by a revision of licensing laws to allow sales of alcohol all day on Sunday.

Do our fast disappearing local shops get any help? - Name and address supplied.

NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS

IN recent times we have had much evidence that the national press, the tabloids in particular, regard the public as having salacious minds and a low intelligence level.

There have been incidents of great hardship being caused to people in this country and abroad. There have been incidents of great bravery and sacrifice too. Did any of these receive banner headlines? No.

What was on display were rumours, innuendoes, and downright untruths which have never been corrected.

Thank goodness we have a local paper with an editor and reporters who give us real facts and news and are not motivated purely by the get rich quick brigade. - J Else, Redcar.

MODERN SOCIETY

CHRIS Greenwell (HAS, Nov 13) writes about racism and crime and the fact that people are condemned these days for saying anything critical about ethnic minorities.

Ironically, the length to which political correctness has gone has placed the ethnic majority in an invidious position. It has reached the point where the majority is virtually denied the freedom to criticise any other group in society.

The right balance has to be struck. If it is right that ethnic minorities have the freedom to complain about the attitudes of the majority, then it has to be right for the rest of society to have the same freedom in relation to them. - RK Bradley, Darlington.