MIKE Parker of Nexus states that the European grant money the Metro received (£14.75m) played an integral part in bringing the Metro to the people of Sunderland and the appointed and un-elected Vice President of the EU, Neil Kinnock, could not resist the visit to Sunderland to revel in the glory and accept the praise.

Yes, it is wonderful to have the Metro and we are so grateful to the European Union for giving us some of OUR money back.

Would we have got the Metro without the EU's generosity? I am sure Mr Anderson, Sunderland's europhile leader, will elucidate.

They repeatedly fail to point out that this burdensome bureaucracy only gives us back half of what we actually put in. So, effectively, it cost British taxpayers £29.5m for the European Union to give us the help towards the Metro and then they have the gall to claim credit for it.

As you travel throughout the country and see the signs "Partly funded by the EU", just remember whose money it really is.

Oh, and by the way, Mr Kinnock failed to point out that the EU's auditors have refused to sign off the EU's accounts for the past six years because of fraud, which the Commission now refers to as irregularities.

You wouldn't be a member of this organisation if it were a golf club, never mind the Federal State it intends to become. - Neil Herron, Sunderland.

THE argument that if the European Central Bank were to set interest rates the result would be detrimental, is spurious.

The Governor of the Bank of England has argued that high rates which harmed the North-East were "a price worth paying" to help the South-East.

So clearly the present system doesn't do much for us.

European interest rates have been consistently lower than those in the UK for several years.

Business for Sterling therefore wants to see local companies pay more to borrow capital and local people have higher mortgages than they need to have.

Now that's what I call downright unpatriotic. Perhaps they should change their name to "wreckers for sterling". - Robin Ashby, Gosforth.

TONY BENN

I NOTICE that Tony Benn (Echo, Apr 18) is included on the miners' banner for Blackhall.

Barry Chambers, of the village banner committee, states that Tony Benn is a man who stood by the miners over the years.

I agree Tony Benn is a very entertaining man to listen to, but I suggest that history books are consulted to see who was Minister for Power in the 1960s when lots of collieries in the Durham coalfield were closed. - Name and address supplied.

RAF REUNION

SOME of my happiest years in the Royal Air Force were spent at Seletar, Singapore, one of the most colourful and historic of the RAF's overseas bases.

RAF Seletar closed in 1971, but is remembered with affection by members of the RAF Seletar Association. This was formed in 1997, the intention being to bring together any personnel who served, or were based, at Seletar in any capacity, service or civilian, including the families of those based there.

Should any readers wish to join with a view of renewing old friendships, please contact me. - D Taylor, 35 Lower Darnborough Street, Clementhorpe, York YO23 1AR.

BRIDGE REPAIRS

REGARDING the repairs presently being carried out to the Framwellgate and Elvet bridges in Durham City (Echo, Apr 12), you tell us that "steel cramps used in 1856 strengthening the West parapet were found to have rusted, causing greater damage than anticipated".

I suspect that if the cramps had really been made of steel they would have rusted long ago. Henry Bessemer came up with his idea of the converter which changed iron into steel oddly enough in 1856, but I doubt if he sent a sample for use in Durham.

Maybe the metal that rusted in Framwellgate Bridge was not steel but malleable iron, in which case you owe an apology to the Victorian civil engineers who carried out some remarkable feats in their time. - Willis Collinson, Durham City.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

NOTHING has changed when it comes to trying to get the truth from politicians.

In Afghanistan, our friends the Northern Alliance were seen on TV beating women.

Apparently, they are also the main obstacle to burning the poppy crop which ends on our streets as heroin. It seems the Taliban were on the verge of stopping the heroin exports to Europe.

The warlords, our new-found friends, are fighting each other for territory and are demanding huge sums to limit the heroin production.

We now know, not that President Bush has admitted it, that operation Annaconda failed to defeat the al-Qaida and Taliban fighters and now we are having a go at this very difficult situation.

In the Middle East, the Israelis have shown their contempt for human decency as they proceed to destroy Palestinian cities and villages under the pretext of looking for terrorists.

President Bush, in particular, thinks only Muslims are terrorists, thus exposing himself to the charge of double standards and hypocrisy, as if we did not know already.

Whatever sympathy Israel enjoyed from the rest of the world has now gone and the international community must now use sanctions to compel it to act in a civilised way.

Remove the oppression and you stop the suicide bombers. Create a state of Palestine and you deflate the militants. - Hugh Pender, Darlington.