Letters: This is about globalisation

So what makes the region's Tory MEP Martin Callanan single out Rothmans for his campaign to save jobs (D&S letters, Dec 8)? We think we know the answer - and it does not make pleasant reading.

The fact is that Mr Callanan's party is an enthusiastic supporter of globalisation.

In his 'deregulated' utopia, firms are encouraged to compete in a race to the bottom, where the only thing that counts is the price of production, with social and environmental costs cut to the bone. Result - the export of jobs to low wage economies, increased transport and pollution costs, and far less local democratic control over the economy everywhere. But you won't hear Mr Callanan and his friends banging on about that!

Rothmans is a bit different, though. The company's owner, British American Tobacco, wants to escape legislation that would ban manufacture and sale of high tar cigarettes within the European Union. BAT is very keen to expand sales of these more addictive cigarettes in the vast markets of the poor world.

As our own Green Party policy on drugs notes, there is an element of hypocrisy in the fact that whilst rich nations are waging campaigns against drug trafficking, they are simultaneously trying to swamp many poorer countries' markets with the products of their own tobacco industries.

Can we put two questions to Mr Callanan?

First, what would you think of a drug dealer who excused his behaviour by claiming that if he didn't do it, someone else would?

Second, how many jobs have already been lost because tobacco smuggling, in which BAT has taken steps to maintain its market share, makes so many small shops no longer viable and forces governments to raise tax by other means?

Perhaps Mr Callanan should extend his campaigning to reducing the impact of his party's 'free market' policies on the rest of the region, while trying to find a more worthwhile application for the Rothmans workers skills.

PETER GOODWIN

Teesside Green Party,

Green Howle Crescent,

Marske-by-Sea.

Waste of time

Sir, - Hasn't this government got anything better to do in parliament than to try and ban fox hunting?

In the last few weeks the British public has been subjected to absolute chaos on our railways and roads, flooding on a scale that has never been seen before, deprivation in our inner cities to which the murder of Damilola Taylor is sad testament, under investment in education and health and overspending to astronomic proportions on the Dome.

What other business would have been allowed to incur so much debt? Isn't it time this government addressed the "real issues," rather than trying to ban a country pursuit which over the generations has enhanced the beauty, fabric and well-being of our British countryside by providing woodland, copses, coverts and hedgerows, with the associated benefit to wildlife in general.

W R JESSOP

Cross Lanes,

Scruton,

Northallerton.

Why vote?

Sir, - With election gossip apt to become topical again we're sure to be lug-dundered by those who think voting a sacred duty.

I would ask any one of those high-ground moralists why I should exercise this "sacred duty". In the constituency where I am we have a safe seat incumbent who's invariably returned by a massive majority over his two competitors who share less than half the cast vote.

Instead of exercising the political strength that this gives him, on behalf of his constituents, he rests on his laurels and has, according to Hansard, one of the poorest records in the House; is seldom if ever, mentioned in the papers except with respect to his own private domestic affairs.

I can only deduce from this that he's elected on a "party" as opposed to a personal vote.

It also happens that I favour his party and want to see it elected with working majority but it should not mean that I have to vote for a useless entity like him.

I'm left to deduce that voting is for the unthinking and the rest have to abstain - at least in these conditions?

R LEWIS

ADDRESS WITHHELD BY AGREEMEN