01/12/2005

Most are eased or shot out of employment well before that, with little hope of further gainful employment.

The present Government will, nevertheless, eagerly welcome the opportunity to dangle the meagre state pension even further away from those who, having paid their taxes for most of their lives, will hopefully die before troubling the Treasury coffers.

That the post war "baby boomers" are now nearing retirement age should come as no surprise to the Oxbridge educated bright sparks who staff the think-tanks of the Government. One can only speculate that their plans to fund the retirement of this group of people came at the bottom of the to-do list, possibly after the Millennium Dome and other such money spinners.

Public money can, however, always be found to fund illegal wars, enhance politicians' own index linked pensions, commission computer systems which cost billions and don't work and spend millions on military aircraft which are either of the wrong specification or are out of date before they fly. The list of bungles is long and costly.

Incompetent governance, not spite, is at the source of the problem.

If the taxpayers' money which has been wasted by this Government on ill-judged policies and initiatives, instead had made available to fund the old, educate children, help the sick and prevent crime, we would be living in Utopia by now. - Chris Greenwell, Aycliffe Village.

SADDAM HUSSEIN

AMERICA and her allies must be hoping that it will not be necessary to bring further charges against Saddam Hussein if he is found guilty of the 1982 killings in Dujail, otherwise the true extent of Western complicity in his later atrocities will become apparent.

Following the Iranian revolution and America's subsequent humiliation, Iraq was encouraged to attack Iran. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait increased their oil outputs, contributing the revenues to Saddam's war chest, while Western countries provided weaponry.

The horrific attack on Halabja in the closing stages of the Iran-Iraq war was intended to take out the Iranian troops stationed there, as well as their Kurdish collaborators, but the Iranians had already left. Outrage in the West was woefully belated - the Iraqis had been using chemical weapons against the Iranians for at least five years with barely a murmur of protest.

The Shia uprising of 1991, so brutally suppressed by Saddam, was originally encouraged by the West, but support was withdrawn as the spectre of an Iranian-style Islamic republic loomed.

Saddam is without doubt a ruthless, bloodthirsty megalomaniac, but he has also been a pawn in a much wider game. Justice will not be done unless his sponsors and accomplices are also called to account - and they include Western politicians, intelligence agents and arms dealers. - Pete Winstanley, Durham.

PASSIVE SMOKING

WHAT on earth is Joan Lawler of Newton Ayliffe talking about? (HAS, Nov 28).

In the last 12 months less than 100 people have been killed by terrorists in the UK.

In the same period, 114,000 have died as a result of smoking and 12,000 because of passive smoking.

I don't know anyone who has been killed by a bomb. However, three people I know have died of lung cancer, two of whom were under the age of 40.

And speaking as someone who missed the Piccadilly line tube bomb in London last July by less than ten minutes, I think the health lobby have got their priorities exactly right.

Passive smoking kills. I fully support a comprehensive ban on smoking in public places. - Elizabeth Adams, London.

I AM writing in response to Joan Lawler's letter to correct the writer's observations on the effects of second hand smoke.

Lawler suggests that some tests have revealed a weakness in the passive smoking theory; however, if she were to consult our website, she would find clear medical evidence that contests her argument.

She fails to appreciate the dangerous effects of second hand smoke. Non-smokers are exposed to more than 4,000 chemicals, which emanate from a smoking cigarette.

About 85 per cent of the smoke in a smoke-filled room is a result of side-stream smoke; this is the smoke from the burning tip of the cigarette. This contains some 60 known or suspected carcinogens and has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the USA as a class A carcinogen along with asbestos and arsenic.

Those exposed to second hand smoke are 25 per cent more likely to contract heart disease and lung cancer; therefore it is not surprising that every year 35 people in the North-East alone die after being exposed to this in the workplace.

Most at risk are workers in the hospitality industry who are exposed to more second hand smoke than any other worker.

Fresh, the Campaign for a Smoke Free North East, is not an anti-smoker organisation and acknowledges that people can make up their own minds.

But, we are campaigning to save the lives of workers in the North-East who currently have no choice about their exposure to what up to now has been, like asbestos was in the past, a hidden killer.

The message is clear - second hand smoke kills. For more information visit www.freshne.com. - Ailsa Rutter, Director, Fresh - Smoke Free North East

ACADEMIES

AFTER the North-East's decisive rejection of a regional assembly the Government has returned to the destruction of local democracy.

Its plans for secondary education would enfeeble or destroy local education authorities, taking from parents the opportunities they now enjoy of influencing and informing locally elected councillors, committee members, education directors and their staffs of advisory inspectors.

Pretentiously named "academies" sponsored by tender-hearted altruistic businessmen and others, are to work with the remote Ofsted in their cloud cuckoo land of league tables and an obsession with the National Curriculum.

The true aim of education should be for the individual to reach his or her potential; not to provide qualifications for a labour force the requirements of which change with the barometer of national trade.

Age, aptitude and ability should always be prime considerations. Disciplinary powers were taken from schools, and then from parents who are now to be responsible for the pupils' delinquencies, thus reversing the scriptural "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon children".

Head teachers, renamed "school leaders" by the Department for Education, no longer have time to teach, keeping a finger on the pulse of the school. Their admin has grown while the LEA's has lessened.

Many unanimous local planning decisions have been reversed by the office of the Deputy Prime Minister, so it is all the more ironic that Mr Prescott himself should oppose what Blair would have us accept, to his mantra of regulation, regulation, regulation. - Denis Towlard, Thornaby-on-Tees.

School Closure Debate

TRUE DEMOCRACY: I HAVE read with dismay the hundreds of letters and comments in The Northern Echo over many months in respect of education in Darlington.

Lack of awareness and weak remedial action over some years have been the major contributors to the present situation in our town.

Political idealism and correctness have further damaged the opportunities for our children to be well educated.

We now have a council floundering in a morass of their making, unable to restore confidence in either parents or the senior teaching staff of our schools. In any commercial business such managers would have long gone.

They are making decisions and retracting decisions, consulting but not listening and, when it gets tough, hiding behind the skirts of the new chief executive.

The only way out of this mess is open and transparent debate, warts and all, with the education of our children being the sole driving force.

As a minority group councillor, I am continually frustrated by procedures and practice that prevent such a debate.

I support, therefore, those local parent organisations who force issues into the open and more power to their elbow, there is true democracy. - Councillor Charles Johnson, Conservative Group, Darlington Borough Council

CONGRATULATIONS

I SHOULD like to congratulate Share on the successful outcome of their campaign to save Hurworth School and rural education.

The campaign to let the people decide on the future of High Row is not yet won. The director of development has indicated that the council will not accept any recommendation of the Local Government Ombudsman which could include a public meeting and referendum.

It is said "the law grinds exceeding slow but it grinds exceeding small". The director of development believes that the council has authority to pave over a carriageway. Unless the law has been changed I am sure that the borough solicitor will advise him otherwise. - John W Antill, Darlington.

CYNICAL

I FIND it quite incredible that any member of Darlington Borough Council (Coun Copeland) should have the audacity to call Share arrogant in their campaign to keep Hurworth school open.

It is the council, in their arrogant and cynical manner who have chosen to ignore the wishes of parents, teachers and residents whose communities Hurworth school serves.

Nobody in Share has opposed any opportunity for investment in Darlington schools. It is simply that Hurworth's success must not be endangered by removing it from its rural location.

As far as misleading information is concerned, the presentation put on about academies by the council at the Dolphin Centre (and "information" boards in the schools) last week takes the biscuit.

Any responsible council proposing a major change in state education would put all the information in the public domain, positive and negative.

So where does it tell parents that they are only entitled to one representative on the board of governors? (or directors as they prefer to be called).

Where does it say that the sponsor has overall control of that board? Where does it say that the performance of academies is at best mixed?

This "information" put out by Darlington Borough Council it no more than a sales pitch for academies, and we can assure them that we are not buying it - Carolynne Marshall, Hurworth.

NOT THE RIGHT WAY

ONCE again, Councillor Copeland has written to your paper regarding the closure of Hurworth and Eastbourne Schools.

She writes as the chair of Eastbourne school governors, and is in full support of the closures and the building of and academy on an industrial site.

Of course, she is in full support because she is also a Labour councillor in full support of the Labour cabinet who want the closures to proceed, and therefore her views are not independent. This should be clearly stated in her correspondence.

I understand the desire for Eastbourne to gain new buildings and a better school, but closing Hurworth in order to achieve this is not the right way, nor the only option. Perhaps the council should be asked how they allowed Eastbourne School to get into such a state in the first place? - Stephen Kyle, Hurworth.