WOMEN DRIVERS: I HAVE often pondered about letter writer Mr Reynolds of Wheatley Hill.

He is dead against smoking and yet favours prostitution. So I came to thinking this was a role he believes women should be in.

But I was amazed to read his letter about women drivers (HAS, Nov 26).

They only drive their kids to school so that is the reason they don't have as many accidents as men, he says, and are supposedly cheaper to insure.

You silly man. Look around you, women are driving as their job, also drive to their job and even dare to drive to the supermarkets on the big roads!

Not to mention days out with their families. So as I ponder yet again, it is obvious Mr Reynolds thinks a woman's place is in the bedroom - oops sorry I meant home. - Name and address supplied.

TOWN PARKING

J RACE had a complaint to make at the car parking shambles in Bishop Auckland and has now opted to shop nearby in Newton Aycliffe, where parking is free (HAS, Nov 14).

J Race should try out the car parking madness in Darlington town centre, where we are forced to pay ludicrous amounts of pennies just to shop in town for a couple of hours.

Only then would he realise that parking your car in central Bishop Auckland is not too bad at all.

The situation is even worse in Darlington at the Memorial Hospital, where outpatients and staff try to outdo one another with car manoeuvres in the car park. I never knew that we had so many driving stuntmen and women in town.

Trying to park here is just like a scene from the Dukes of Hazzard.

The only decent way to turn up for an appointment at the hospital, would be to be dropped via a parachute from a rented aircraft from our local airport. - Christopher Wardell, Darlington.

PENSIONS ROW

JUST as we were spun lies about weapons of mass destruction now is the web of deception over the so-called state pension "time bomb".

We are being told that we are all living longer, that there are too few workers contributing taxes and the country will go bust unless we force the workers of this country to work for many more years.

The facts tell a rather different story. The number of pensioners is rising but only at the rate of one per cent a year and the proportion of workers contributing to the Exchequer has not diminished. This is because family size continues to fall, more women with children are working full-time and there is the contribution of young migrant workers from abroad. Therefore the so called dependency ratio, which measures the number of dependants compared to the number of workers contributing taxes, has barely changed and is unlikely to do so over the next 50 years.

Secondly, if the pension age is raised to 65 then this will halve the average pension entitlement of the male, manual working class. Whereas the average life expectancy of a man has increased to about 80 for middle class men, life expectancy for working class males has barely increased, to only 69 years.

By contrast, most working class males started contributing taxes at 16. And four out of ten unskilled and semi-skilled male workers never get a pension because they die before reaching the state retirement age.

In addition, pensioners are not social parasites but retired workers who contribute massively to the economy.

Pensioners make a massive indirect contribution to the economy, for example by providing free baby sitting services so that their sons and daughters can both work.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown may be personal rivals but there is not one iota of difference between them over political fundamentals. No doubt neither of them will be working as a labourer on a building site when they are 66 years of age. - John Gilmore, RESPECT (The Unity Coalition)

JUNGLE GRUMBLE

HAS The Northern Echo lost its way?

For years I have chosen to read the Echo as it lives up to its billing as a newspaper.

Not for the Echo irrelevant stories as an excuse to stick a photo of Royalty on the front page. No incessant non-news items about non-celebrities.

So what is this daily episode of Jennings' Jungle Watch all about?

It is an insult to the long hard-won credentials of a good newspaper. If I want to read this I'll buy the Sun. - Howard Rocke, Dipton, Co. Durham.

THANK YOU

ON behalf of the education charity, the Campaign for Learning, I would like to thank everyone who took part locally in our national Family Learning Week.

Community venues, including libraries, schools, shopping centres, museums and parks, ran some amazingly fun and creative events to capture families' imagination locally and all over the country. Grandparents, children, mums and dads took time out of their busy lives to enjoy learning and discovering together, trying their hand at everything from digging for potatoes, through flower arranging, aboriginal dancing and DJing to pizza making.

It was all of their effort and energy that helped make this year's campaign one of the biggest and best yet, with 3,500 events registered nationally.

For anyone who didn't get to an event this year, the campaign's website www.familylearningweek.com has a section dedicated to families with advice and guidance in supporting your family's learning for health benefits, career opportunities, school achievement or just for fun.

A Guide to Family Fun with step-by-step activities to enjoy at home and advice on effective learning, is available free online or by calling 0870 3500 2345. - Linda Siegel, Chief Executive of the Campaign for Learning.

WRONG PLACE

I READ in The Northern Echo an advertisement under Contract and Tenders, that Longfield School has invited tenders from caterers for their school dinners.

I was very alarmed to read that out of the 910 pupils, only 240 remain in school at lunchtime. This means that nearly 74 per cent - 670 pupils - leave the school.

This surely only adds fuel to the fire that putting a new school at the top of Yarm Road is the wrong move, especially as it has been announced this week that the Torrington's site is to become a retail site.

Can you imagine having 74 per cent of the children wandering about the area on a lunchtime?

This is just a disaster and a crisis about to happen. Does the council want to be responsible for the outcome of this stupid move?

The temptation for the children will be far too high and will generate a whole new ball game of problems in the area.

For goodness sake keep the area as it is intended, as an employment development area, as quoted in the new planning policies for Darlington Borough. - Julie Jones, Hurworth, Darlington.