THE BBC: THE Editor of The Northern Echo has more faith than I in the plans of the BBC to transfer some of its empire to the North and thus give its customers a wider viewpoint than the South-East (Echo, Dec 7).

History shows that power is never bestowed upon the regions by the capital - it has to be extracted.

The failed attempts at the regional assembly are a good example - lots of hot air but no extra money and no independence to spend it.

The human resources department of the BBC employs 1,000 people alone - more than the total staff of Channel 4. The BBC is therefore a powerful beast and vigorously resists change whilst also professing to champion it.

The departments at the level of those which order the paper clips and toilet rolls for the mammoth that the BBC has become will be the ones that get transferred to Manchester. The BBC mandarins will firmly resist any attempts at being winkled out from the comforts of London to the frozen North and will succeed in their efforts.

So, to use the Editor's example, we will still see announcements from the bridges of the M25 bemoaning the end of civilisation as we know it if an inch of snow falls on Whitehall. Meanwhile, we Northerners may suffer drifts of the stuff up to our bedroom windows, unheard by the rest of the country.

The national media, including the BBC, is lazy and parochially metropolitan. I fancy that it will fight to stay that way. - Chris Greenwell, Aycliffe Village.

STOCKTON

STOCKTON, our beloved town, is, like Darlington, once more in the hands of "the consultants". We remember the 1969-1971 decimation of its 18th century heart. We remember the 1990s when the character of its 700-year-old market was destroyed by pedestrianisation.

If the council had listened to its citizens then we'd have still have a town which would attract thousands.

This is no pipe dream. Look to Shildon, a small town with pride in its past and a council to back that pride. It is now on the world map as a railway attraction, with thousands of visitors pouring in.

We in Stockton have pride in "the town that changed the world", but the council just listens to its consultants. Even its latest scheme says nothing of our rail and industrial past. Are they ashamed of our forefathers' efforts?

Without charging a consultant's fee, I offer the following suggestions:

1. Open the Globe as a Tees Valley theatre venue.

2. Pedestrianisation is a failure. Return to the Centre Row Market and make it once again the premier market of the North.

3. To attract visitors, launch "Stockton Pride": a series of buildings both Victorian brick and modern glass-and-steel along the riverside, with working locomotives and artefacts from Stockton's rich historic past. We've got a start with The Endeavour.

Let's build on our past, not tinker with it and continue destroying it. - R Harbron, Norton, Stockton-on-Tees.

POLLUTION

PERHAPS the correspondents who have called my comments on exhaust emissions from motor cars smug will have second thoughts if they read the latest report on global warming.

We all know that smoking kills, but so do the fumes emitted by motor cars. We now know that the car is responsible for causing at least 25 per cent of global warming. While smoking is killing people now, eventually the fumes from cars will contribute to destroying the planet and all who live on its surface. - Jim Rishworth, Darlington.

EUROPE

IT WAS interesting to see Fiona Hall MEP (HAS, Dec 9) welcoming the approval by the European Parliament of £6.25m for an "Information Policy Campaign" ahead of the referendum on the constitution.

Will it be the same attempt at propaganda that we witnessed in the North-East referendum? Will the "information" be biased in favour of the constitution? Of course it will.

The EU project has been driven by the political class with the exclusion of the people. The attempt to create an elected assembly was a small version of the same. But the people didn't fall for it.

I welcome the referendum and the debate because what will be laid bare will not be the minutiae of the constitution document but the lies, deceit and the betrayal of our own elected representatives over the past 30 years. A political class that was meant to be the custodians of our democracy has ceded it to a corrupt, profligate, unaccountable bureaucracy without our consent. This is the biggest political con trick ever.

The British electorate will reject all this political project entails.

The people will give the political class another kicking - and the percentage will be higher than in the North-East referendum.

The People's No Campaign will be launched officially in the New Year but meanwhile I'm off to try and get a bookies to take the bet. - Neil Herron, No Campaign, Sunderland.

MY letter (HAS, Nov 24) wondered whether the Eurosceptic New Frontier Foundation, which was behind the regional assembly No campaign, had created the ridiculous claim that the EU was intent on destroying Britain's independence.

G Swanson replied (HAS, Nov 29) saying she wanted a stop to the untrue stories fed to the public by pro-European groups like the European Movement saying, for instance, that our present membership status in the EU is compatible with national independence. This is not a story, it is a fact.

The new EU constitution emphasises that the EU is a union of independent nation states. The constitution says: "The union shall respect the national identities of the member states, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional."

Internationally, Great Britain is respected and treated as one of the four 'big' nations in the European Union, being in the centre of Europe and able to guide further positive developments in this unique group of 450 million people.

The new constitution for the enlarged EU of 25 members will not come into force before it is ratified and accepted by all member states. This may take until 2009. There is plenty of time to learn more about it and nobody needs to vote no out of ignorance or habit.

Organisations such as Britain in Europe and the European Movement can provide shortened versions of the constitution text. - David J Whittaker, Richmond.

LIB-DEMS

HOW much will it cost for the Liberal Democrats to scrap and replace the council tax system? How much will their free personal care for older people and fairer pensions etc (J Bell, HAS, Dec 6) cost? Let us see the figures. Talk is cheap. - K Bowes, Shildon.