HERE is a new way to end the arguments about the Durham City Lord Londonderry hoss statue.

Why not pull it down, melt the metal and turn it into a commemorative plaque to remember all the boys and men who have died in County Durham pits in the past 400 years?

There is only one problem. There would not be enough metal and a memorial large enough to get all the lads’ names on who died in the mines due to the greedy, wicked, uncaring, selfish methods of the self-styled aristocracy that Lord Londonderry represented.

Gilbert Jordan, Sherburn Village, Durham.