Hear All Sides

DISABILITIES

ARTICLES highlighting disability issues to the public are always welcome.

However, it should be pointed out that the regular feature, Access All Areas, must not be looked on as a guide or that a town or attraction is accessible for all disabled people.

Phil Donegan writes well about his experiences but his experiences are based on his particular impairment.

Access problems for disabled people are a very complex issues and it should never be looked on that if something is accessible for one person, it will also be accessible for someone with similar impairments.

I would encourage Mr Donegan to continue with his articles but please, when asking if there is a town or attraction that someone would like you to try out for access, make it clear that he would be trying out access as an individual and not for disabled people in general. - Gordon Pybus, Chairman, Access Interest Group, Darlington Association on Disability.

LUPUS

SHARON Griffiths (Echo, Mar 19) remarks that Lupus seems to be one of the "in illnesses" at the moment. Well, about one per thousand of her readers are likely to have it. Few would willingly choose it.

Symptoms include wading-in-treacle fatigue, flu-like illness, skin rashes, hair-loss and internal organ involvement including pleurosy, kidney disease and brain inflamation.

Lupus is an incurable disease of the immune system, mainly found in adult women (though children and men can get it too).

It is more common than multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy, yet few have heard of it. The cause is unknown. Diagnosis is difficult, often taking many years after the first serious symptoms appear.

Lupus can be mild, frightening, disabling, and unfortunately it sometimes proves fatal. But it is always for life.

Lupus Awareness Week this year is from April 14-21. The North-East Lupus Group exists to offer support to sufferers and their families in the region. Lupus UK can be contacted on (01708) 731251. - Andy Taylor, Chairman, NE Lupus Group, Stokesley.

WINDFARM

A HUGE windfarm mooted for Teesside (Echo, Apr 3) will not compensate for Corus job losses. A large area of industrial land would become a jobs desert.

Short-term jobs in installation go to outside contractors and manufacturing jobs to Denmark. Windfarms run unattended with occasional maintenance visits. Extra electricity brings no jobs, since we already have gross surplus generation in the North-East.

Windfarms are not as green as they seem. Output is unreliable, off when the wind is too light or too strong, so it cannot replace other generation.

Wind power is tiny compared with conventional power stations, so it cannot significantly save on greenhouse gases. The suggested world's largest windfarm for Teesside would be only a 40th the capacity of the existing TPL station, and less than a 100th the output.

It would be a good brownfield site, except that the surplus power would need to go to the south, with significant energy losses in transit. That is where the windfarms should be, with research and development here, not vice versa. - Mike O'Carroll, Welbury, Northallerton.

REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

I AM not hopeful at the notion of regional government. It will be stuffed with the same mediocre politicians as local government. We have far too many politicians already.

The idea that regional government will stimulate investment is rubbish. It was a Conservative government that created the Regional Development Corporations because of the incompetence and dilatoriness of Labour-controlled local authorities.

The development that has taken place has been down to the RDAs because they were staffed by technical and professional people and not by political windbags, untrained and unqualified.

In any case, sustainable development takes place in spite of government, rather than because of it.

The first weeks of the Welsh and Scottish regional governments were devoted to what they were going to pay themselves.

What is required is thoroughly reformed local government, preferably without politicians at all. The EU wants to see regionalisation because it wants to destroy England which has always been a thorn in the sides of European despots.

We should remember that the EU is stuffed with failed national politicians with not only their snouts in the trough but their whole bodies, too.

What we do want is an English national government to govern England for the English and take us out of the corrupt and incompetent EU.

In spite of the machinations of successive British governments, we remain an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. - John Laurence, Sunderland.

COUNCIL TAX

THE arrival of the Darlington council tax bills for 2001 may have come as rather a shock for many residents.

Last year's rate of increase with the addition of an extra 12.5 per cent for this year, amounts to a hefty 20 per cent increase on the 1999 rate. This seems excessive, possibly unacceptable, to those on small incomes.

More similar increases in the pipeline could precipitate another poll tax situation with many unable or unwilling to pay.

To prevent this from happening, perhaps Darlington Council should ask the Government for bigger grants and also investigate possible ways of reducing expenditure. - FG Bishop, Darlington.

GENERAL ELECTION

COULD anyone explain what sort of Prime Minister we have that ensures the gutter press are told of delays in elections before Parliament or the people? - R Easton, Bishop Auckland.