TRANSPORT: THE Government is now considering transport spending priorities ahead of its July Comprehensive Spending Review, and finalising its vision for the next decade in the review of the ten-year Transport Plan.

The UK's road network has suffered from years of under-investment and, as such, it is vital that planned improvements are delivered as soon as possible. We are the fourth largest economy in the world and yet seem unable to afford to build ourselves a few extra feet of road to ease acute congestion, which wastes time and money that all of us end up paying for.

A coalition has been formed by the AA Motoring Trust, British Chambers of Commerce, Confederation of British Industry, Freight Transport Association, RAC Foundation and the Road Haulage Association to achieve more roads spending.

Of course, firstly we must ensure that we have better management of our roads network in order to get the most out of it. However, better management can never provide a substitute for building extra capacity, particularly on industry's key trade routes: the M1, M4, M6, M25 and M60/62. Now is the time to commit funds to widen these key stretches of road.

The 2004 Comprehensive Spending Review must allocate £4.2bn over the next three years to deliver the long overdue improvements to these roads that are in the Government's current Targeted Programme of Improvements (TPI). A further £8.2bn of widening on these routes will be needed by 2010 and this should be at the heart of the new ten-year Transport Plan.

With £38bn collected in tax from road users each year, the investment proposed over the next ten years for the strategic road network could be financed from the proceeds of just six months of road taxation.

An extra lane just 12 feet wide will relieve the congestion on our motorways and save billions of pounds and billions of wasted man hours. - Malcolm Bingham, Regional Policy Manager, Freight Transport Association.

CRIME

I AM writing to urge support for the Help the Aged campaign against bogus callers, rogue traders and distraction burglars, by asking MPs to sign a Parliamentary motion.

Help the Aged has been working with Gordon Marsden MP, who has recently presented a Bill to Parliament calling for a ban on doorstep selling of property repairs from unsolicited callers. We know that selling property repairs is one of the main 'fronts' used by rogue traders, bogus callers and distraction burglars, and that criminals are targeting older people across the country, charging outrageous prices for shoddy work or no work at all.

Work done as part of the Help the Aged SeniorSafety campaign, showed that around 400,000 vulnerable older people are targeted each year by bogus callers in Britain and we know that older people are particularly likely to fall victim to this type of crime. We offer advice and information and can provide SeniorLink units in older people's homes which they can use to call for support and advice when people knock on their door.

A total ban on all doorstep selling for property repairs will be the only sure way to protect older people from rogue traders and distraction burglars.

I appeal to your readers to take action now, to contact their local MP asking them to back Gordon Marsden's Bill, and sign up to Early Day Motion 219 from Paul Truswell MP. - Lysa Ralph, National Senior Safety Manager, Help the Aged.

EUROPE

I FOUND Hugh Pender's arguments on voting in the forthcoming Euopean elections amusing.

He seems anxious to persuade us we should put our trust in our European neighbours and, at the same time, advising us we should not trust our own Government.

As someone who has had the benefit of working across Europe for 20 years, I know I want a British government to govern Britain and not hand over our democracy to those who don't care.

Only the Conservatives have demonstrated they will stand up and be counted and put the people of our nation first. - Charles Johnson, Darlington.

IRAQ

THERE is increasing evidence that the abuses at Abu Ghraib are also occurring within other American camps, abuses which may have been approved by Donald Rumsfeld and based on similar methods used at American camps within Afghanistan.

Many may recall that, prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld was among those within the Bush administration who declared a vision for the next millennium in which the world would be changed for the benefit of America; in which America would not be bound by international law, human and civil rights conventions, peace and weapons limitation treaties, allowing America to develop new weapons of mass destruction; in which America claims the right to launch pre-emptive strikes against anyone it likes; in which America's armed forces will become the world's police force, enforcing not international law but America's will.

Almost all of the above has already happened, so are the abuses of those detained by America a strategy gone wrong, 21st century morality or the reality of this self-proclaimed world's police force within President Bush's new world vision? - CT Riley, Spennymoor.

DENTAL TREATMENT

OUR NHS and state schools system give us free services available to all, or there are privately financed services for those who choose them and can afford to pay.

Not so if you need a dentist. Privately financed dentists are available to all, but a free national service is only available to a lucky few of those, who find the expensive private charges too much for them.

In the 1930s, when our economy was only a fraction of what it is now, free dental clinics were available for all school children.

Surely, it is not beyond us now to provide free clinics offering the full range of dental care for those who are excluded by private practice.

Our political representatives should give us the choice whilst they still can - totally free NHS dental clinics for those presently excluded from the private sector and private dental services to compete for what is left. - George Appleby, Clifton.