Letters

IT IS now time for the Darlington FC chairman, George Reynolds, to swallow his pride and admit that he is to blame for the team's current league position.

He has appointed a total novice as manager and has given him no money to spend on players, despite promising the earth when he first bought the club.

To get out of the third division we will have to spend money. However, so far this season all that George has done is cut costs and, as a result, much of this season's team aren't fit to lace Marco Gabbiadini's boots.

As a manager, Gary Bennett simply does not have the tactical knowledge or contacts within the game to bring Darlington success. To be brutally honest, he is a poor substitute for David Hodgson.

Darlington fans such as myself want to see progress on the field rather than off it. What is the use of building a huge new stadium if the team simply is not worth watching? - Richard McCart, Tollerton, near York.

EUROPE

WHAT planet is David Pascoe (HAS, Nov 9) living on? Surely our most insidious enemy is the US; our most dangerous politicians are those who are trying to re-run the Second World War and trying to undermine the euro as the dupes or active catspaws of the Wall Street financiers.

Yes, Mr Pascoe, I have seen US military cemetaries in England and I am both shocked and grateful at the huge sacrifice made by US families for Europe to become free. But why should we be toadies and abject satellites to the dubious "US way of life" over 50 years afterwards? My own list of "indesirable imports" from the US includes born-again evangelists, dangerous "early-warning" systems on the Yorkshire Moors, dinosaur mid-west senators, American chat-shows, GM crops, the "morals" of Hollywood and unrestrained motoring and capitalism. But what political party has got the courage to resist such subversion and to work for a modern Europe and UK with its own openhearted individuality? - E Turnbull, Gosforth.

MICHAEL Heseltine recently claimed that 35,000 jobs have been lost this year because Britain is not in the euro. In fact, employment has risen by 165,000 in this period.

Since the launch of the euro, 638,000 jobs have been created in the UK and unemployment has fallen by over a quarter of a million. Britain now has the lowest unemployment since 1979 but Euroland's unemployment is nearly double the rate in Britain. The pound has been a relatively stable currency.

The truth is that the euro has plunged in value and Mr Heseltine wants Britain to plunge with it. Had we joined the euro at its launch, we would have suffered a job-destroying inflationary boom.

Manufacturing exporters to Euroland are indeed facing problems because of the euro's collapse. But only this week the Chancellor predicted that manufacturing will grow by between two and 2.25 per cent next year. An artificial devaluation that would wreck the stability of our economy would help no one.

Mr Heseltine's claims that the euro would mean cheaper mortgages, lower prices and more inward investment are nonsense. Britain's long-term interest rates are now lower than Germany's, and mortgages on the continent are generally no cheaper than in Britain. Prices are rising faster in Euroland than here, not least because of the devaluation of their currency.

We continue to get far more inward investment than any other country in the EU, largely because of economic advantages such as lower taxation; advantages that would be destroyed in an economic union with Euroland. Current stability cannot be the only goal of economic policy. Ten years ago, not least thanks to Mr Heseltine, Britain joined the ERM. In that currency experiment 100,000 businesses were bankrupted, 1.75 million homes were thrown into negative equity and unemployment doubled. He was wrong then and he is wrong now. - John Elliott, Chairman, Business for Sterling North East.

WIND POWER

MR Woodward, in claiming that building wind farms is a bad thing (HAS, Nov 6), chooses an unfortunate analogy when describing it as fiddling while Rome burns; a more waterlogged theme would have been apt given the flooding throughout the UK, which he accurately points out as being attributable to global warming.

Deriding the contribution that renewable technologies like wind power can make to damping the fires of global warming is surely an equally Nero-like gesture.

The reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions is a serious step towards combating climate change; renewable technologies are some of the ways of doing this, together with energy efficiency and similar initiatives. The question "are you doing your bit" serves as a reminder that we all have to make a contribution; and electricity generated from the wind certainly does, and cheaply too. Why else would half the Government's target for renewable energy in 2010 (five per cent) be anticipated to come from wind power?

The Prime Minister's "green gesture" of additional funding for offshore wind and energy crops demonstrates that saving the environment can also be good business sense - and what could be more sensible than investing in all our futures? - Alison Hill, British Wind Energy Association.

FUEL PROTESTS

WHO do these fuel protestors think they are, liking themselves to the Jarrow marchers of 1936? It's an insult to the marchers and the people of Jarrow.

Their protest was about unemployment and poverty, children going barefoot. Parents wondering where the next meal was coming from, looking for scraps of coal to light a fire in a home that was often unfit to live in. Are these some of the things the fuel protestors think they are akin to? I think not.

I lived in Stanley village near Crook. We had rough times also, as ten and 11-year-old schoolchildren. But maybe we were the lucky ones, lots of friendly neighbours and shopkeepers who never let you down. Maybe we had a lot to be thankful for. - Jack Amos, Willington.