THE pro-euro brigade are hoping that the 25 million Brits travelling to the Continent this summer will come back loving the euro.

However, they will probably come back with tales of price increases caused by the "rounding up" effect.

Exploitation by unscrupulous businessmen has led to price increases of up to 70 per cent.

As for price transparency, is the price of a Mars bar the same in Munich as it is in Athens?

A kilo of bananas will not be the same price in Paris as in Lisbon.

The arguments of the proponents of the single currency are becoming clear.

Let's have the referendum, reject monetary union and the uncertainty that goes with it and look globally, instead of being constrained by an outdated protectionist, introspective, over-bureaucratic European Union.

Once we reject monetary union, withdrawal from the federal agenda will be inevitable and perhaps we will then get the trading agreement we thought we were signing up for in the first place. - Neil Herron, Sunderland.

MODERN BRITAIN

What a mad place British society is. Correction - what mad people run the Britain of today.

So material minded are the media that they've no time to care about the moral standard of the nation. Their one slogan seems to be: "If it ain't wicked, it's wet." Now, I'm not a senior citizen having a moan, but I do know that heroes of television with "feet of clay" are setting an appalling example to our children, if not brainwashing them outright with immoral values.

Most of the major soap operas have generous helpings of wife beating, illicit sex, adultery and drug taking. All good clean family entertainment, with convenient early evening viewing times.

The lifestyles being portrayed in soaps like EastEnders invite impressionable teenagers to draw the wrong conclusions about what it takes to be a success in life.

And because children aren't being exposed to responsible and positive ideas, everything normal is alien to them.

Who can blame them if they grow up with the idea that drugs are things you indulge in if you want to be the coolest young kid around?

There's no room for children to be allowed the period of innocence in which to grow up which previous generations enjoyed.

When the top-rated soap operas can draw over 15 million viewers, and popular newspapers have circulations up to five million, then one would hope that the themes and ideas being portrayed would be decent, safe and wholesome. - Aled Jones, Bridlington.

NUCLEAR WASTE

AROUND the time England face Argentina in the World Cup and with the attention of the world focussed on the tournament, two British merchant ships will slip away from the port of Takahama in Japan.

They will together carry a lethal cargo of 225kg of plutonium. Enough to construct dozens of nuclear bombs within weeks. The 18,000-mile voyage will end at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.

Why is the journey taking place at all?

The answer is that rampant free market economics takes precedence over human safety and environmental protection.

Prime Minister Blair, Presidents Bush and Putin agree that the greatest threat to the world is from 'terrorists' acquiring the means to produce weapons of mass destruction. With impeccable timing, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd has recently been given licence to resume operations producing and commercialising Mixed Oxide Fuel, (MOX), from the extracted plutonium, the by-product left over from nuclear power generation.

All this has significance for Teesside. The nuclear power station, run by British Energy at Seal Sands, transports the highly radio-active spent plutonium by rail to Sellafield for re-processing in the MOX plant. British Energy will, during the Government's consultation period into our future energy needs, attempt to persuade the people of Teesside that a second nuclear power station on the existing site is a good idea.

It is the economics of the mad house, but it is happening now. - Bill Wennington, Press Officer, Teesside Green Party.

TERRORISM

AMERICA has alleged the IRA are international terrorists because of a possible connection with Colombian drug dealers.

What then does this make America? After all, is not the IRA funded by America? Equally, are these not the same Colombian drug dealers established and supported by the CIA to fund American operations in East Asia?

In the mid-1980s, was not George Bush Senior (former head of the CIA) forced to admit to a Senate hearing that these same drug dealers provided the CIA with 50 per cent of its annual income? Whilst under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, these same drug dealers raised funds for people such as that all-American hero Colonel Oliver North?

Do not worry if these allegations destroy the Northern Irish peace process because, as one American Senator noted, there is no evidence to show any involvement by Sinn Fein. It is merely an excuse by American right-wingers to justify a possible war against Colombia. - CT Riley, Spennymoor.