Letters

Redcar and Cleveland Council is one away from being top of the highest council tax league but it surely must be top at wasting tax payers' money.

The Loftus Bank opening fiasco, believe me, is the tip of a very big iceberg. The Labour executive has agreed thousands of pounds to send Labour councillors to conferences and, if they had not been stopped, setting aside £2,500 for a buffet for about 100 people, most of whom could easily have got their own lunch.

The latest 'bun fight' paid at the taxpayers' expense was just a gimmick. As were the food hampers given with great largesse to the victims of the Skinningrove flooding. If the council had spent that money on cleaning up the beck in the first place, the devastated families would not have had to suffer what they did.

Labour's Redcar and Cleveland Council is very good at spending other peoples' money to get headlines but sadly lacking when it comes to giving people what they want. - Coun Barbara Harpham, Tory Group leader and Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, South Bank.

EMPTY RHETORIC

WHY does the Prime Minister think his conference speech is going to win him another term in office?

Because we have heard all the rhetoric time and time again during his reign of office. Another new presentation package cannot disguise the empty promises and the temptation of jam tomorrow but nothing at all today. The adage "tomorrow never comes" was surely devised for politics with its never ending promise of things just around that never reached corner.

A frightening aspect of North-Eastern politics is that those who do bother to vote are taken in time and time again by this empty rhetoric.

The poor health of residents and the use of the North-East as a safe seat haven are conveniently forgotten. - David T Colling, Bishop Auckland.

EURO VOTE

GOOD on the Danes in their recent referendum to steer clear of the euro. When - if ever - do we get to have the same democratic vote throughout the land?

Our current Government might not like it, especially with political jobs for the boys and girls to protect, but we do live in a democracy and ought be given more voting power such as the Danes have just enjoyed.

Whilst it is good to keep good trading links with Europe, and maintain good friendship with Euro business and people, living in each other's pockets can create frustration and ultimately lead to bitterness.

It isn't conducive to healthy relationships or democracy. We need our own space and air to breathe - Bethany Megan Robinson, Darlington.

SMOKING

THE suggestion by a team at Bristol University (Echo, Sept 29) that environmental tobacco smoke could damage a woman's ability to become pregnant is further evidence of the hysteria currently being generated by the Government's anti-smoking crusade.

Indeed, to read some of the headlines generated by this report you would think that getting pregnant is a major problem in society. In reality, the opposite is the case.

Of course, any decent person would sympathise with couples who want to conceive and are unable to, but blaming smokers is hardly credible.

There are many things that could affect a woman's ability to conceive so why blame tobacco smoke when the number of smokers has fallen so dramatically in the past 40 years? It doesn't make sense. - Simon Clark, Director, Forest, London.

JERUSALEM

I SUPPORT the right to demonstrate, even when I do not agree with the demonstrators' cause.

However, the singing of William Blake's poem 'Jerusalem' by the Countryside Alliance at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton was deeply offensive. Blake was totally opposed to slaughter of any kind and would not consent to this abuse of his poem to promote hunting. The only connection members of the Countryside Alliance have with England's green and pleasant land or dark satanic mills is that they own much of both. Self-interest is not what Blake's visionary poem is about. - Stella Robson, Heighington.

MARS ATTACK

JUST how many people are there who are appalled at the contents of some home videos.

A couple of weeks ago I saw Mars Attacks, which I feel was given far too low an age rating at 12. In the preview it showed some quite violent scenes, and a sex scene. This is totally unsuitable for the 12-year-olds whose minds are being polluted at a very impressionable age.

This is the main trouble, of course. There is hardly anything such as innocence these days.

I think the British Board of Film Censors needs to take a long hard look at some of its age ratings, as some of them are far too low. - Ken Jackson, Northallerton.

POLITICS

ISN'T it about time that we appreciated that all of the good things which have benefited ordinary working people (pensions, health, education, welfare) have come about as a result of the Liberal and Labour parties, and in the teeth of the inevitable and implacable opposition of the Conservative Party.

How sad that William Hague now pitches the appeal of the present Conservative Party to the basest and movement instincts in human nature and who, in an attempt to harvest the votes of the 'Laddish Tendency', is reduced to the laughable ploy of boasting about his copious beer consumption. - Robert Hammal, Richmond.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

I WASN'T surprised to learn of the - no doubt unwarranted - violence meted out by the nun, Marie Docherty, to those she purportedly cared for (Echo, Sept 29).

The only 'people' I can ever recollect receiving corporal punishment from when I was at Catholic schools in the 1960s and 1970s were nuns.

However, to be fair, I can never recollect the priests being violent.

For myself and my friends, religious indoctrination was punishment enough. I found far more spiritual enlightenment at Acklam pond in Middlesbrough. You learn from persuasion and example not from condescending expediency, nor threats of violent, aggression or equally unwarranted intimidation. But then most - inclusive of those in the church and authority - can't practise what they preach. - AP Kirk, Teesside.