Hear All Sides

THE NORTH-EAST

HUGH Pender's remarks about farmers having blind allegiance to the Tories (HAS, Aug 4) can be likened to the North-East's blind allegiance to the Labour Party.

I've been fortunate to have worked around the world and have also lived in other parts of Britain before returning to where I belong, County Durham.

Wherever I was, I preached about the best people in the world, as well as the best workforce. Only by moving away and looking from the outside do you see the problem.

The Tories gave us a chance to remove the shackles and prove ourselves and we did. Countless companies were brought in to replace the dying old industries. Why did previous Labour governments not do this? Can anyone name recent major industrial coups by Labour for the region?

Jobs brought or fully supported by the Tories are now being lost on a weekly basis.

We bleat on about Conservative areas having better schools, lower crime, better jobs, more prosperity etc. Well if we want that for our children, vote Tory. Blind allegiance means we remain England's poorest region. - Jim Tague, Bishop Auckland.

MINERS' PENSIONS

WITH reference to B Oram's letter (HAS, Aug 6), the new Labour Government is creaming off the profits of the mineworkers' pension fund in the most despicable way and getting away with it.

Some members just receive between £5 and £10 a month pension for working down a coal mine, plus suffering from the disease emphysema.

In the past year alone another £1bn has been earmarked for the Treasury. That adds up to £5bn so far. The pension fund was created to pay pensions to pitmen who gave their working lives to a hazardous industry that made the wheels of British industry turn.

The miners do not want a win-win situation, all they want is to strike a fair balance. - DT Murray, Coxhoe.

FAITH

IN reply to E Moralee's letter (HAS, July 31), yes I am very fortunate and I count my blessings every day that I no longer need blind faith or anyone else's belief system to bring me peace of mind about life after physical death.

I have taken the time to develop my own spiritual abilities that it talks about in Corinthians, so that I could seek and find my own knowledge and understanding of the invisible, to most people, dimensions of life. They are there, all you have to do is look and listen in the silence.

Secondly, I am fortunate to be a female, for the majority of men are burdened with the logical mind and are afraid of their female energies that would allow them to listen to their intuitive abilities. This is not their fault but how society has programmed them to be.

Fortunately, in this day and age, many are awakening to their own inner abilities. - Brenda Tingate, Darlington.

PATRIOTISM

THERE is nothing either narrow or xenophobic about that patriotism which says that our destiny as a nation ought to be in our own hands (R Ashby, HAS, Aug 3) for it would claim the same rights for any other nation. And to infer as he does, that you have to support the National Front if you oppose the Common Currency, is to reveal the desperation of his arguments.

No one in their right mind would claim that any British government is or was always right; but if it is wrong in what it enacts, the remedy is and should be in our hands, not that of an outside body like the European Court of Human Rights.

The greater its power to negate or correct Acts of Parliament, the less our votes are worth and the weaker our courts become.

If our ultimate Court of Appeal is outside these islands, we are no longer truly independent.

And if I am wrong in assuming that the European Bank will be the means by which interest rates will be "rationalised", and fresh classes of goods be VAT rated, then the claims of certain prominent European advocates of a common currency have led me astray. Mr Ashby says that we will vote to join the Common Currency when it is in our own and the country's best interests. Can the continuing transfer of power to outside agencies ever be in our best interests? - TJ Towers, Langley Park.

A ROSE

ACCORDING to the Bard, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but is the same true for me?

Not in the opinion of William Nicholson (HAS, July 17). He thinks that only a change in my politics - as well as my change of name - would leave me smelling of roses. I can assure William that I wouldn't change my credo for him were he the Pope and Sandra Bullock all rolled into one.

I would be the last person, of course, to tell the individual where to go. But I would suggest the planet Moon and maybe he could take Tony Blair with him. - A Jones, Bridlington.