Hear All Sides

I WAS dismayed to read the article (Echo, May 22) 'Milestone as first private mental health unit opens at new hospital.'

I appreciate the article was about a secure unit, but for the ordinary man in the street with little in-depth knowledge of mental health, the reference to the wire fences and sophisticated security camera system could simply fuel the mistaken belief that people with mental health problems need to be kept behind firmly locked doors.

In fact, just a tiny minority of people with mental health problems ever need hospital care, never mind nursing in a secure environment.

Councillor Doris Jones's comment: "These people need to be cared for" did little to tackle stigma. Perhaps the Mayor of Darlington needs reminding that one in four people will suffer some mental health problem in their lives, so these people could include me, you, people living near the unit or even Coun Jones.

People suffering from mental health problems and their families have enough to cope with without articles such as this, which pander to ill-informed views and prejudice.

In future I would like to see The Northern Echo doing something to tackle the stigma surrounding mental health problems rather than perpetuating it. - Caroline Parnell, Redcar.

PENSIONS

IT is a sad picture painted by the report on the low pensions many elderly people are surviving on (Echo, May 22). Something that is not often mentioned, but is taken as read in discussions about pensions, is the fact that today's pensioners never had the opportunity to save large amounts for their retirement.

The wages they earned throughout their working lives were very small compared with today's standards. The value of money has changed and is still changing.

When today's pensioners were calculating their pension to provide for old age, £5,000 was a fortune and £10,000 a figure hardly dreamed of. Small wonder so many are now trapped in hard times that are none of their making.

State pensions need to take into account these factors to a much greater degree. The present generation is much better placed financially to lay aside adequate provision for a good pension. Their grandparents were not. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

BUS SERVICES

IN your recent report about the cancellation of the X95 Lakes bus service (Echo, May 23) Steve Noble, Arriva North East managing director, seems to have got one or two facts wrong.

My wife and I are regular users of this bus service, along with a great many more tourists and walkers. To imply the service was under-subscribed is wrong.

Every Saturday the bus has always had no less than 25 passengers and, more often than not, has been two-thirds full.

The pricing policy, where people could travel on the £14 Arriva weekly ticket on this service up to four times a week, could be something to do with the alleged unprofitability, but this was just Arriva shooting themselves in the foot.

Finally, to say Arriva is a local service providing journeys within the local region is forgetting about the X95 Durham to Kendal service, the X81 Durham to Scarborough service, plus buses to Flamingoland and also Leeds. Or are these services under threat as Arriva North East scales down to become an efficient local service provider?

I am sure any local independent operator thinking about providing a bus from Teesside via Darlington to the Lakes on a regular summer basis will find enough supporters for this service. - W Bennett, Newton Aycliffe.

REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

THE various arguments concerning regional assemblies (HAS, May 22) are, for the most part, prejudiced. As usual, they put the blame for our own region's failure down to someone else's fault.

Ben Ord states that, because of peripheral influences, Scotland and Wales abolished students' fees, yet ignores the fact that it is the English taxpayer who pays for it and it has nothing at all to do with regional assemblies.

Then there is the Barnett Formula, which gives the Scots an unfair advantage over other regions and our region in particular.

I do agree that councillors in our region are not happy with the idea of a regional assembly if it means that some of them will become redundant.

As far as I am concerned, if we were given the same playing field as the Scots, then get rid of the county council and give each district council greater power under a regional authority, then maybe we can see a better future for the North-East.

At the moment we blame the South for our failure. It is time we put the blame where it really lies - on our own doorstep. - John Young, Crook.

WE wonder why the region is bottom of every Government league table produced.

Why don't we vote for more failures and reiterate to the nation what a set of cloth-capped mugs we still are? Do we honestly believe moving the same people from district/county council to regional government is the answer?

Labour recently dropped the idea of reviewing the Barnett Formula until 2006, so don't get your hopes up.

During the 1980s and early 1990s development corporations were parachuted in over the heads of local authorities. I am not that fussed what tactics they used, but they worked and that's what matters.

High tech industry was brought, along with the development of Teesside Park, Newcastle Quayside, Hartlepool and the MetroCentre. We started to throw off the shackles.

The blame for our plight lies squarely with Labour. They rule the region. The Tories and Lib-Dems could do a better job, the people just need to believe. - Jim Tague, Chairman, Conservative Party, Bishop Auckland Branch.