10/10/05

You won't be surprised, and nor was I, that as Chief Whip she is in favour of them.

What I was surprised by, and impressed by, was the quality and considered nature of her personal reply. I still disagree fundamentally with her arguments, but two cheers for Hilary Armstrong for taking up the debate and not taking her constituents for granted.

However, when the Government's own information commissioner can warn that his "anxiety is that we don't sleepwalk into a surveillance society", we should all be worried.

I urge your readers to write to their MPs about this matter now. It will be a whole lot easier to defend the freedoms we have now than it will be to force a government to give them back once they've taken them away. - Owen Temple, Consett.

FUEL PRICES

MH Grieveson's comments on rising fuel prices and Mr Brown's ridiculously high duties on it (HAS, Sept 23) makes a good point when he says much more rapid progress should be made to use alternatives to the dwindling supplies of oil.

However, his plea that Britain should be in on the ground floor of such development is being sadly neglected as other nations do indeed steal a significant march on us.

Despite all the empty rhetoric on saving the world from climate change, our Government refuses to give the support given by other countries to develop environmentally friendly sources of energy from farm crops like oil seed rape, wheat and biomass for production of bio-diesel, ethanol, heat and power.

UK farmers have the capability to grow crops which would contribute significantly to reducing CO2 emissions and also provide a lifeline for their future which production for traditional uses is barely able to do. - John Heslop, Gainford.

WAYNE ROONEY

YOUR Comment column was devoted entirely to a discussion of the appalling behaviour of the footballer, Wayne Rooney.

He and other professional footballers like him grace, sorry, disgrace the game but nothing really happens to them despite the condemnation and criticism of their actions. Professional football can no longer be compared to cricket or rugby because it, unlike them, is not a game. It is a business that thrives on money, greed, cheating, aggression, disrespect for authority and the gullible supporters.

The support for and the obsession with professional football have not increased by accident. Football now makes vast amounts of money for a whole range of people and this has resulted in a systematic and incessant process of brainwashing, made possible by the media in all its forms.

You only have to look at fat men with football shirts stretched over their grotesque beer bellies and little children bewildered at having to wear full football strips costing a small fortune to realise that there is a force operating that is other than a simple interest in the fortunes of the local team.

Small children cannot begin to understand the concept of support for a team, yet parents buy them season tickets and bring them back home near midnight after evening matches. What is the value of that to a six-year-old who would have been better employed in child-like things in the warmth and comfort of their home?

Instead, they are treated to displays of aggression, hatred, foul language and the like from hordes of adults whose distorted attitudes to football have destroyed what was once a wonderful game. - D Brearley, Middlesbrough.

PARKING CONTROLS

JAMES Dunn worries that pay and display parking controls on Western Hill in the north end of Durham City will create displaced parking in nearby Fieldhouse Lane (HAS, Sept 21).

This is unlikely to be the case. In fact, we expect parking problems for residents in the Western Hill area to reduce.

Our current parking control strategy aims to reduce commuter parking in Durham City centre when the park and ride scheme is available.

The introduction of pay and display on-street parking with a relatively high hourly charge will result in commuters avoiding parking charges by using the park and ride scheme.

This will free up more parking space for residents. Residents of Western Hill living in the controlled zone will be entitled to permits to park in Western Hill (Albert Street) and in Princess Street and North Road.

Mr Dunn's concern that more residents will be displaced into Fieldhouse Lane is unlikely to materialise as the opportunity to park in Albert Street or neighbouring streets will substantially increase. - Councillor Sonny Douthwaite, Chairman, Highways Committee Durham County Council.

GORDON BROWN

FOR some years now many trade union leaders have been hoping and waiting for Tony Blair to resign and Gordon Brown to take over.

If any of them had real illusions that Brown was going to be different from Blair then it is clear from Brown's speech at the Labour Conference that there will be no change.

Not only did he endorse everything that New Labour had done in the past, but he promised a Thatcherite future with even more attacks on everything working people have fought for.

The future under Brown means the complete privatisation of the NHS, the creation of hundreds of selective schools called academies, support for mass sacking of low paid trade unionists and more and more bloodshed in Iraq.

In addition, he even tried to con us with a promise of a share-owning democracy, just as Margaret Thatcher did.

I suppose cleaners earning less than £5 per hour working for private contractors are going to give up on groceries, fuel and rent so that they can become mini capitalists by owning a few miserly shares in BP.

Sadly, it is not a joke but a political tragedy. Surely it is high time the trade union movement dumped the Labour Party and created a new socialist party from scratch. - John Gilmore, Bishop Auckland.

EURO SPECIALIST

I COULD not believe my eyes whilst reading The Northern Echo on September 28 to discover a job advert from One NorthEast entitled "European Policy Specialist Advisor" paying a salary of £27,642 to £34,552.

Its job description revolved around the task of "working with regional partners to develop the regional European strategy and action plan". Had the vote for a regional assembly gone in the favour of the pro-Europeans, I could understand this job's existence.

But as we British patriots won the day and ditched the assembly convincingly, and answer only to the UK government at Westminster and the Queen, we have every right to be disgusted that money is still being squandered by publicly funded unelected quangos. This money would be far better spent on a nurse or police officer, or compulsory redundancy payments to the remaining One NorthEast employees as it is dissolved from existence. - Mark Anderson, Middleton St George.