Letters from The Northern Echo

PROSTITUTION

YET another city (this time Edinburgh) has introduced an official tolerance zone for prostitutes, which means that they will be kept away from residential areas. They will be safer as police will check on the area but not arrest or harass them.

Their clients will now be anonymous and any used drug needles and condoms will not be found by children.

How does this compare with the Middlesbrough police so- called "clear up" which has been going on for over a hundred years. Fining the male customers has meant the break-up of marriages, men leaving the district or changing jobs or resigning from their jobs. Innocent wives and children have been scorned in their neighbourhood and at school and jeered because of their father's misdemeanor.

Prostitution can never be stopped either by law or any other means. There will always be men who will pay for sex and there will always be women who will provide it for money. - E Reynolds, Wheatley Hill.

EUROPE

THE European Commission is trying to get Britain to ratify Article 3 of the Valetta Convention which would make metal detectors illegal.

Britain is the only country which obeys European laws. The rest sign but ignore the legislation.

Now it is time for Britain to make European laws. We don't like bullfighting in Spain, nor do we like the shooting of songbirds by the French, Italians, Maltese and Greeks. Migrating British songbirds landing in Malta and other Mediterranean islands are blasted out of the sky with shotguns.

Let us put a stop to this insanity with British-produced European legislation. - Raymond Selkirk, Chester-le-Street.

LONDON MARATHON

WHY not fulfill a lifetime's ambition by running in the April 2002 Flora London Marathon for Mencap, the UK's leading learning disability charity?

Mencap will provide you with all the training, advice and support you'll need and you'll have the added incentive of knowing you're raising funds for an excellent cause.

Mencap has guaranteed places in the 2002 Flora London Marathon. You can secure your place on the start line with the Mencap Team by calling 0845 9777 779 for an information pack and application form. - Nick Hancock, Mencap.

TELEPHONES

HOW often have you encountered "if you have a star button press now, all our operators are busy, you are now fifth in the queue"?

One benefit we will all enjoy in the coming recession is that, thankfully, the ever-so-helpful computerised services will, if my economics are correct, almost disappear.

While we will not see the return of button A and button B, at the very least we should in due course be able to talk to someone that can speak. What language they can speak is open, of course, to speculation and also the information they will provide us will need verification.

Happy days are here again, just after Christmas, I believe. - J Barron, Darlington.

CONSERVATIVE PARTY

THE Conservative Party has a momentous decision to make over the next few weeks. The Party which captured the hearts and minds of the electorate during the 80s and 90s only to see these voters move to other parties needs to decide whether it wants to become a single issue euro obsessed faction or return to its rightful place as the most dynamic and forward thinking inclusive party in Britain.

We need to ask whether we are voting for a leader who simply reinforces our own prejudices or a leader who will encompass all the wishes and aspirations of the vast majority of the British people on the issues which matter on a daily basis?

As a Euro sceptic I know that the decision to enter into a single currency will be made in a free vote by the British people. I know that the euro is a big issue for many members of the party in the region but those same people need to be able to tell the woman whose child is attending a failing inner city school that Europe is more important than her child's education; they need to be able to tell the man who can't get a hip replacement that Europe is more important than his pain and tell the family living in fear on a drug-ridden council estate that Europe is more important than fighting crime.

I can't do that and I don't believe any committed Conservatives could either.

As Conservatives we have a duty to the party but more importantly to the British people who have been let down by this Labour Government. I hope that we exercise that duty with common sense and elect Ken Clarke. - Coun Wayne Daley, Vice Chair, Conservative Party, Tyne and Wear/ Northumberland.