THE single mother issue, as raised by Merv Bain (HAS, March 9), is a disgrace as is the PlayStation generation who sit in their parents’ homes in their mid-twenties and avoid work at all costs.

Life on benefits is now a viable and all too common career choice for too many people and our answer under Labour seems to be to bring in more people from Eastern Europe.

I was brought up on free dinners and lived in a council house and both of these were stigmatised to the point where it was a “motivation” to better oneself.

There were certainly no mobile phones or satellite TV – luxuries out of our reach.

I have always had a tremendous work ethic, however, and have done all sorts of terrible jobs in the past and while studying for my future.

Now, approaching 40, a Labour voter for the past three elections, I have had a profound awakening. This country cannot afford the level of scrounging that seems to be spreading like a cancer.

Labour thinks it will milk me, as a middle class cash cow, for more and more taxes, but guess what? I spent the previous five years working overseas and could quite easily move myself and my tax revenue elsewhere again. Enough is enough.

Lee Crosby, Tudhoe, near Spennymoor, Co Durham.

I SHARE the public anger over the perceived failure of the police and criminal justice system in their duty of care in regards to murderers Peter Chapman and Jon Venables.

It has always been my opinion that the police seem more concerned with ticking the right diversity boxes and following up alleged “hate crimes” than kicking in doors and feeling collars.

Some Chief Constables appear to be more interested in how many ethnic minorities, homosexuals and woman they employ than solving crime.

Fixation on the failed diversity experiment has led us here.

I remember a piece in a left-leaning broadsheet newspaper, headlined “Paedophiles are people too”, which carried this quote: “Paedophilia is an intractable sexual orientation; like heterosexuality or homosexuality it cannot be trained out of a person.”

If the liberals accept it cannot be cured then those convicted should be removed from society at the first instance. There should be no tick boxes on protecting women or children.

I am also opposed to pre-pubescent children being subjected to the advertising, magazines and television with sexual or adult content they are now. Does that make me a prude, human or a horrible right-whiner?

Des More, Darlington