SECONDARY SCHOOLS

THE open letter from the seven secondary school headteachers in Darlington (Echo, Mar 13) brings to our attention a very serious situation which is developing day by day.

The question of Government under-funding of local authorities is increasingly affecting the ability of those authorities to deliver the services which they are obliged to provide, and none of those services is more important than education.

Darlington's schools have improved dramatically in the years since we became a unitary authority, but lack of resources is likely to slow this improvement.

The Lifelong Learning Scrutiny Committee recently considered the pros and cons of being a small education authority and there were many opinions that small is good if it can be more personal and approachable.

All of the pros had to be qualified by the need for adequate funding and it is very clear from what the seven head teachers say that the funding granted to us is inadequate.

The officers in the education authority are doing all that they can with what they have got, but their efforts and the efforts of the teachers and everybody else concerned with education are severely hampered by this Government's attitude and approach. - Coun Roderick Burtt, Darlington Borough Council.

SMOKING

SIMON Clark has a perfect right to smoke if he wishes (HAS, Mar 14). He also has the right to go to the toilet, but not in public places where it offends other people.

Why shouldn't we have smoke-free shopping centres and work places? I too have rights. One of them being to breathe clean, fresh air. - Yvonne Benn, Bedale.

WELL done Margaret Speight for having set such a fine example in how to give up smoking (Echo, Mar 12). Through the publicity she has received about her new kitchen, paid for by money which would otherwise have been wasted on cigarettes, she has demonstrated how someone can overcome even the strongest craving for the foul weed.

Thank you Margaret for the encouragement your story will give to other addicts. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

MAYORAL ELECTION

READING the complaints from local people about lack of confidence in policing and local government, the first change should be the voting system to allow proportional representation, then to have a strong, independently-elected mayor so that the person in charge is not bound to any party programme.

Hopefully, the run-up to the election of a mayor will be fought fairly and squarely. - N Hodgson, Middlesbrough.

TRAFFIC OFFENCES

CAN someone explain to me how the police can alter the law? They have said they will not prosecute drivers unless they exceed 42mph in a 30mph zone, or 90mph in a 70mph zone. So the speed limits have been lifted.

I am a driver myself and really think the problem lies with drivers rather than the police. Most motoring law is routinely broken without any qualms. - J Barraclough, Newton Aycliffe.

IT does annoy me that when, out driving, I'm blinded from a car with more lights on than a Christmas tree.

Can anyone explain why people persist in driving around with fog lamps on? Are they not up on the law regarding lights, not educated on the Highway Code or do they just like to be noticed? - Tony Larkins, Bishop Auckland.

ONE wonders just what percentage of their time the police spend on motorists. If stopped and asked for their car insurance and MOT certificate, most drivers will say that they don't keep them in the car in case the car was stolen and the documents with it, so they are at home. Police will then give a notice for the car owner to take these documents to a police station and there the policeman on duty will copy all the details.

Speeding motorists also consume police time and can be fined. Is it not time for the road system to be monitored by a different organisation as it is in some other countries and allow the police to concentrate on catching criminals, etc, who cause more misery than motorists?

After all, we have thousands of miles of railways which quite efficiently are controlled by Railway Police. Post war the police controlled traffic near schools during school times and now the lollipop ladies do that job very well. - E Reynolds, Wheatley Hill.

METAL DETECTION

FOR the past two years, with the assistance of your letters column, I have been trying to raise public awareness of the importance of the hobby of metal detecting.

Recently, a field owned by the Diocese of Ripon Cathedral, the last unspoiled field in the city centre, was developed and a new school built on it.

Prior to the contractors moving in, a quite expensive archaeological survey was carried out at public expense on the land and, despite the fact that an important hoard of Saxon coins had been found in the last century in woodland bordering the field, the archaeologists decided there was nothing to indicate ancient use of the land.

Building worked then commenced. During the work, the Dean of Ripon arranged for the top soil that had been removed to be searched with a metal detector, resulting in two Saxon coins being recovered and handed over to the Church authorities.

The present whereabouts of the hoard of coins found in the last century by archaeologists is unknown, and so the only Saxon coins available for research that are known to have come from the ancient Saxon seat of St Wilfrid are available because of the good work of metal detectorists.

I urge all local archaeological trusts to give more consideration to metal detectorists when carrying out surveys. This service will come free of charge, thereby further obliterating their reluctance to build bridges between our hobby and themselves. - Norman Smith, Newton Aycliffe.