17/0506

I have given written and oral evidence to the current inquiry into the future of regional government by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister committee. On its conclusions, I urge her to take early action on:

1. The Government's desirable aim of reducing regional inequalities will never be achieved under the present system of regional government.

2. In the North-East alone, there are well over 100 Government-appointed regional quangos, each with its own separate remit, policy and so on.

3. This fragmented system is extremely inefficient, wasteful and expensive. It is also profoundly undemocratic, distant and unresponsive to the people of the region.

4. If we could spend the money currently available more wisely and in a coordinated way, it would have much more effect.

5. Unless and until regional policy is brought under one umbrella organisation, the North-East will continue to fall further behind the rest of the UK.

6. As the public voted overwhelmingly against an elected regional assembly in November 2004, the only body with a democratic mandate which is fully representative of the whole of North-East civic and social life is the existing North East Assembly (NEA).

7. The simplest and easiest way to achieve this coordination would be for the NEA to be given the power to approve budgets and business plans of all the regional quangos (as in Scotland and Wales). - Councillor Chris Foote Wood, author of Land of the 100 Quangos, Bishop Auckland.

CORE VALUES

WOULD you trust Tony Blair to teach your children core values?

Teacher Tony:

"Now children, adultery's fine, the Bible's wrong (John Prescott);

"If you do something wrong, you'll still keep all your sweeties (John Prescott);

"You certainly won't be punished (Charles Clarke);

"Fighting for the wrong reason's good (Iraq);

"Free speech is wrong (Compass group);

"The rich shall inherit the world."

I have voted Labour in all but one General Election. No more! - John Lewis, Gainford.

QUITE rightly, the Government is considering introducing compulsory lessons on "core British values" for children in response to last July's suicide bomb attacks on London.

Education minister Bill Rammell said a six-month review would examine whether all 11 to 16-year-olds should be taught about issues such as freedom of speech, civic responsibility, and democracy and how historically they developed.

Of course, young British subjects should also be properly educated; indeed, so should our politicians.

There is an overwhelming case for the compulsory tests on British life which immigrants now have to pass before they can apply to become British, and not only for our school children. The same tests should be rigorously applied to our present and future politicians with a pass mark of 100 per cent. Failure, for our political class, not being an option. - Peter Troy, Sedgefield.

PENSIONS

OVER the next 50 years we face many possible adverse trends that could reduce living standards. These include population growth, global warming and depletion of resources.

On top of this there is the prospect that a rise in Third World incomes would mean higher prices for the goods we have become used to acquiring so cheaply. All this suggests that pay rates may fall relative to prices.

With the change of pension linkage from prices back to pay, pensioners may find that they have once again switched to a losing horse. - John Riseley, Harrogate.

COUNCIL TAX

IN response to Michael Fishwick (HAS, May 8) the Tories' record on council tax reform is hardly great considering the disastrous poll tax.

I am not surprised he agrees with Councillor David Cummings (HAS, May 3) as there is little difference between his party and Labour as they both want to perpetuate an unfair council tax where the least well-off pay a higher proportion of their income than those more affluent.

If the Lib Dems had formed a government we would have replaced council tax with a fairer local income tax and been able to give people a refund. - Councillor Bob Wynn, Portfolio Holder for Finance, Durham City Council.

FOREIGN CRIMINALS

PETE Winstanley (HAS, May 12) writing about the released foreign criminals has got his facts sadly wrong. The number who are violent and liable to re-offend is not 12 but, according to Home Secretary John Reid, it runs into hundreds.

That means several hundred muggings, etc, in prospect - several hundred of our fellow citizens of all creeds and ethnicities, no doubt, subjected to savage trauma.

Even if the numbers were small, one would be one too many, and that's the point: you have to treat each such case as an individual, avoiding the generalised, impersonal approach favoured by Mr Winstanley and the Government, which I regard as an insult to the victims. True, in his original letter (HAS, Apr 29) he did use terms such as "deplorable" and "tragic", but his overall tone was one of aloof nonchalance, and that is a wholly inappropriate attitude to adopt when discussing human suffering. - Tony Kelly, Crook.

DURHAM CITY

IT is ridiculous that Durham City is cited on national TV news as an example of road pricing. The half-mile narrow 15th Century road in question is particularly unsuited to heavy traffic, as the part near Durham Cathedral is too narrow for two-way traffic.

The bollard is to deter mean motorists from dropping passengers off to do a quick bit of shopping while their driver goes round the cathedral peninsula and then picks up the passenger without paying a parking fee. - Fred M Atkinson, Shincliffe, Durham.

NUCLEAR POWER

THERE are definite and well known problems to the commercial generation of nuclear power, cost and waste disposal to name but two.

However, don't forget that this little old Earth of ours is one almighty nuclear reactor itself.

Radiogenic heating by radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and potassium inside the Earth is responsible for more heat than that left behind when the Earth was formed.

The quantity is in the order of 20 million megawatts, so man's efforts to control a few megawatts on the Earth's surface is small by comparison.

I think that nuclear waste is best stored deep underground and that the cost of a new safe generation of nuclear power stations will be worth it for zero carbon dioxide emissions and to safeguard Britain's independent large scale power requirements.

By all means produce energy from renewables and improve energy efficiency, but most countries will need a hell of a lot more power than that alone. - Tim Glanvill, Danby Wiske, Northallerton.