Hear All Sides

Their cries of racist, fascist, Nazi are designed to intimidate those who do not conform to their hypocritical ideas.

In Saudi Arabia, foreign workers have to live in walled compounds and, if they dare to practice their own religions, they are jailed. In Sudan, Muslims take Christians as slaves and have also starved Christians to death and even crucified them. Yet not one word of blame or protest has ever issued from the self-appointed PC police. - ST Prat, Hartlepool.

PETER Mullen insists he is not a racist, and John Young (HAS, July 9 and 13) jumps to his defence. The funny thing is that nobody actually accused Peter Mullen of racism, at least not in the pages of The Northern Echo!

Peter said he didn't know what racism meant - I simply offered a definition (HAS, July 6). I have never accused the British people in general of racism, as John Young claims. On the contrary, I would suggest that Britain has a comparatively good record on race relations. However, it is undeniably true that people are abused, attacked and discriminated against because of their ethnic origin. Racism is a reality which needs to be tackled, but I never suggested it was the only source of social injustice. Unemployment and the unfair distribution of wealth also play their part, as John Young points out. - Pete Winstanley, Durham.

GEORGE W Bush intends to "topple Saddam Hussein from power". Will he, like his father before him in 1991, kill and maim thousands of Iraqi people in the process, or has he devised a method of fighting terrorism which destroys the guilty and liberates the innocent?

I think it will be "business as usual", the flying missiles, coated with depleted uranium, causing havoc and misery, and if unsuccessful in getting rid of the guilty, leading to economic sanctions and further misery for the innocent who survive.

I wonder what your militant priest, Peter Mullen, makes of all this: he advocates war against the Iraqi people. Does he regard the methods of the American President - bloodshed and tears - as a necessary evil and, if so, how does he square this with the teaching of the Church's founder, Jesus Christ?

I await with interest his next round of militant right-wing outpourings in the name of justice and peace: he certainly knows how to rouse the anger of your readers more than any other representative of the Church of England I've ever come across. He reminds me of the crusaders of the 12th and 13th centuries riding into battle in defence of Christianity with a red cross on their tunics, behaving like barbarians. He ought to know better. - Rev John Stephenson, East Herrington, Sunderland.

IT IS suggested (HAS, July 9) that Peter Mullen should move back to the North.

I am sure Peter Mullen only speaks as he finds and his articles are about an England in which his church is being used as a doormat and its teachings are being betrayed by those who don't give a damn for its heritage or way of life.

He may not be an expert on politics, but I am sure it does not need an expert to understand the frailties of an establishment which he, as an Englishman, considers to be betraying his country and his church. - John Young, Crook.

IN October, Peter Mullen wrote: "The fact is that capitalism works better than any other system."

One would expect him to make such a statement as he is Chaplain to the Stock Exchange. He may even have had divine approval from his head office to say such a thing.

But American corporate fraud and the collapse of the stock markets are leading commentators to say that the wheels have come off the capitalist system. Many people have lost very large amounts of money which they had earmarked for their old age.

They are the victims of capitalist creative accounting - or swindling.

None of this is new. There was the South Sea Bubble and an earlier railway scandal than Railtrack which was closely associated with the North-East. The scoundrel in question was George Hudson, a York draper who became MP for Sunderland. He paid dividends out of capital, claimed to have 70 MPs in his pocket and had a railway station designed by Dobson of Newcastle built in his honour: Monkwearmouth Station.

Fiddling the books is as old as capitalism itself. - Willis Collinson, Durham City.

HARRY MEAD

I AGREED with almost every word Harry Mead wrote about foot-and-mouth in 2001 (Echo, July 10). "Barbarity" barely describes the needless culling. To now arrive at the conclusion that vaccination is the way to treat any future outbreak, though welcome news, makes it even more tragic. - Pat Binks, Darlington.

MEAD AND MULLEN

TWO of your columnists have so much in common yet they are so different.

Tuesday columnist Peter Mullen is farther to the right than fellow Yorkshireman William Hague, while Wednesday columnist Harry Mead is farther to the left than fellow Yorkshireman Arthur Scargill.

Peter Mullen is a clergyman, a follower of Christ, whereas Harry Mead is an atheist who does not believe in Christ.

Yet both men have a common hatred of Tony Blair and tell us so at every opportunity.

While I am not surprised that someone with Marxist views should express his dislike of another person, as a Christian I am often perplexed by the un-Christian-like views of Peter Mullen.

I have nothing in common with either of these men since I come from Durham and am a Labour supporter, but at least they give me something to complain about. - F Bowman, Peterlee.