SMOKING

ANOTHER year, and another No Smoking Day. Once again we are told that one (or is it five?) million smokers will attempt to give up.

In our experience No Smoking Day plays very little part in people's decision to stop smoking. Quite the opposite. According to one, 'There's something about the moralistic tone of the no-smoking campaigns that makes a lot of us want to reach for our fags in defiance. I don't like being hectored, lectured or treated like a naughty child for having a habit, the risks of which 1 am well aware.'

Some No Smoking Day initiatives seem less about helping smokers to quit and more about regulating their behaviour, hence the suggestion that the day be used to launch smokefree policies in shopping centres or at work.

No one would mind if No Smoking Day was genuinely once a year but under this Government every day is no smoking day. The result is a divisive anti-smoker culture that cannot be healthy in civilised, tolerant society. - Simon Clark, Director, Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), London.

COUNCIL SERVICES

THE Labour controlled Sedgefield Borough Council has set a 12.5 per cent council tax increase for 2002-03. When added to the 6.8 per cent for 2001/2 it means that in two years Sedgefield Borough Council has increased its element of council tax by a staggering 19.3 per cent, this during a period of low inflation and pay awards.

I consider that all council taxes should be in line with inflation.

Sedgefield Borough also increased rents by £1.75 per week, over 47 weeks. This means that a Band B council tenant will pay an extra £3.60 per week due to excessive council tax and rent rises at a time when many householders have lost their jobs and are operating on a reduced budget.

A Band D council tax payer in Spennymoor will pay £1,216.44 on the overall bill or £23.39 per week at a time when Spennymoor is not receiving a fair share of the capital spending. - Kevin Thompson, Liberal Democrat candidate, Middlestone Ward, Sedgefield Borough Council.

UNDER the Cabinet system, I did not have a vote on whether Spennymoor should have had a temporary ice rink at Christmas. There is only one Spennymoor councillor out of 11, on the Sedgefield Borough Cabinet who has a vote. Is this New Labour's idea of local democracy?

I have read the detailed report on Spennymoor Ice Rink and the Christmas Market Stalls. The final cost was £53,329 with a net cost to Sedgefield Borough Council Tax payers of £28,891.

There was no mention of 25,000 visitors in the report as previously claimed and most towns had an increase in their Christmas trade, without having an ice rink!

I would have liked this money to go towards the grant scheme that I asked Sedgefield Borough to implement, to improve the Spennymoor shop fronts! This will make Spennymoor shopping area a more attractive place for shoppers and could attract potential retailers into the town!

The Christmas market stalls were too congested and under used. We need to have better planning for future events! I would support a summer specialised market in Spennymoor, with sponsorship and a more modest outlay. - Lib Dem Councillor Ben Ord, Spennymoor Ward.

MIDDLE EAST

HOW long will the ridiculous kill-kill continue in Israel? There must be extremists on both sides who think they can force the other to go away, which will not happen.

Can they not agree to live separately, even in walled cities, adjacent to each other? Is this just a case of that's my land, no it's mine, or is it world overcrowding to blame or religious intolerance? Perhaps there is no easy answer. - F. Atkinson, Shincliffe.

JUSTICE SYSTEM

HOME Secretary David Blunkett has yet again let the country down with his weakness, this time by backing Lord Chief Justice Woolf's order to jail as few criminals as possible because the prisons are overflowing.

We could make a few extra places by bringing back capital punishment for murderers and paedophiles, and putting the fear of a tough regime into others who make life miserable for the decent people of Britain. - Trevor Agnew, Darlington.

ROYAL FAMILY

WHAT a lot of furore over the fact that the Earl and Countess of Wessex have given up their careers in order to support the Queen in her Golden Jubilee year. As Her Majesty is paying them out of her personal finances, it shouldn't be anyone's business but hers.

What parent wouldn't like to have their children working in their family business with them and I am sure they would pay them the highest wage they could.

It's time we stopped knocking the Royal family and begin celebrating 50 years of great service to the country, through hell and high water, by the Queen.

Heaven forbid that we should become a republic and end up with a President Blair, because he is behaving as if he already has the title. - Geoff Howe, Darlington.

ANIMAL WELFARE

MAY I ask your readers to protest against the resumption of live animal exports which threaten to begin again now that the foot-and-mouth epidemic seems to be over?

It is reported that many farmers are now willing to return to ferrying their animals on very long journeys to Spain, Italy, France and other EU, countries. The suffering endured on these two or three day long truck journeys, often without water, in the heat of summer can only be imagined; animals become dehydrated, exhausted and stressed, many of them dead before reaching their destination.

Once there, still alive they are killed in abattoirs using cruel and illegal slaughter methods. As a nation of animal lovers, we must strive to end this vile and reprehensible trade. - NE Hannant, Gilesgate, Durham.