EVERY year five million people visit bingo halls, including one out of every five people in the North of England. Bingo tax is levied on the customer, meaning bingo players are paying the Government over £100m every year.

In the Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a consultation on abolishing tax on bingo and replacing it with a tax on overall bingo company profits. This would allow us to work with the bingo industry to ensure that savings and higher prize pots were passed on to the customers.

We have already seen how successful this approach can be since the Government reformed betting and pools taxes. Punters have felt that tax-free betting is a better deal and as a result betting companies have seen their turnover grow. I think that, as one of the most popular leisure pursuits in the UK, bingo and its players deserve a similar opportunity to benefit.

Bingo is an important pastime for many groups here in Redcar of all ages and backgrounds. I know many of your readers will be regular bingo players and I invite them to contribute to the consultation on whether they would support this change and how they feel it may benefit people in our community.

The formal consultation with the bingo industry continues until the end of October. However, we would be interested to hear the views of bingo players and groups right up until the Budget next year. - Vera Baird, MP for Redcar.

CHRISTMAS

WELL done Sharon Griffiths for highlighting the ridiculous charade that Christmas has become (Echo, Oct 23). A mammoth ordeal of getting and spending, eating and drinking that can never live up to its expectations, as she puts it.

The message of giving a loving gift to someone you care about in response to and in emulation of the wonderful gift of Jesus Christ given to the world by God the Father has been all but forgotten.

Christmas has instead become a game of tit for tat. They gave me something last year so I've got to give them something back this year.

For many children, it is a time to gloat over getting more than someone else or getting the biggest and the best.

The fact that shops start to drag us into the spend more than you can afford because it's Christmas mood from September onwards, makes it worse. The Canadians that Sharon mention have the right idea; no decorations, gifts, cards etc on display in the shops until December at the earliest.

Why do people run themselves ragged over Christmas? That was never the intention of the celebration. Come to think of it, why do people who profess no commitment or belief in Jesus Christ celebrate Christmas at all? - EA Moralee, Billingham.

WHITWORTH PARK

SURELY the Government, which says that it will protect our countryside is not going to allow 790 houses to be built at Whitworth Park, destroying the picturesque countryside and destroying wildlife.

Do we really need to build these new houses when so many young people are having to move down south to find work and, with all the local redundancies, who will be able to buy them? Sedgefield Borough should concentrate on getting jobs into Spennymoor rather than this environmental vandalism. - Martin Jones, Environment Spokesman, Liberal Democrats, Spennymoor Branch.

LOTTERY GRANTS

I read the article (Echo, Oct 21) about Kathy Secker campaigning to raise money to build a hospice for children.

It is really appalling that they have to rely on the goodness of people to help them when it is such an important project.

Every week millions of Lottery money is given to any hair-brained scheme imaginable. Hundreds of thousands of pounds has even been given to foreigners who have not been in the country five minutes, and yet the hospital that is so urgently needed for our children cannot have a penny.

In the past 30 years this country has degenerated beyond recognition and it is time the people of this country were looked after. - A Parkin, Bishop Auckland.

UNITED STATES

HUGH Pender (HAS, Oct 18) seems to be unable to distinguish fact from fiction.

America does not have a "growing shortage of oil" as he claims. Nor do we in the West have "far more than our fair share of the riches of this world".

It is a fact that Third World countries have far more deposits of oil, gold, diamonds, copper and mineral wealth than Europe or America. These deposits attract billions of dollars in mining rights and the money goes to tyrants.

Anti-America propaganda such as Mr Pender's began as soon as the Second World War ended, with Russia who had told us it was going to 'bury us', promoted as our 'friend' by the loony Left and America, who helped us recover from the war by giving us Marshall Aid, promoted as our 'enemy'.

Incidentally, when bin Laden openly declared holy war on the West five years ago there was not a murmur of protest from those who now reserve their indignation for when the West defends itself. - Amanda Parry, Newton Aycliffe.

NORTHERN IRELAND

MANY Unionists are members of the Orange Order. The Orange Order has its own terrorist wings, of which the Orange Volunteers are not only the most active but, according to official information within the public domain, this one terrorist group is believed to have more munitions and members than all the Republican and Loyalist terrorist groups combined.

Since Unionists demand that the Provisional IRA must disband and Sinn Fein be expelled from Parliament because of terrorist links, perhaps these same Unionists should set the example by ordering the Orange Order to disband its terrorist groups or face having its members expelled from Parliament. - C McCart, Spennymoor.