SINGLE CURRENCY: AS opposition to the single currency increases so does the level of desperation of the pro-euro camp.

The latest comments of Peter Mandelson are a perfect example of the fact that panic mode has well and truly set in.

Mr Mandelson warns of "the political and economic costs of remaining outside the eurozone". As usual, empty, vacuous words bound up in spin, hype and scaremongering are used because the argument has been well and truly lost.

At no time will anyone in the pro-euro camp specify the supposed adverse consequences of Britain giving up control over its own economic affairs (the primary effect and the purpose of the single currency).

Instead, we are fed a steady diet of scare stories, prime example being Mr Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Nissan, who yet again pronounced that car production in Sunderland will be threatened if we don't join the euro, a view roundly rebutted by the CBI and the North-East Chamber of Commerce.

Make no mistake, acceptance of the single currency will not represent just a further stage in European political integration, it is the final stage.

The political and economic consequences of joining the single currency are well documented and freely admitted to by EU luminaries, at the same time being strenuously denied by Mandelson et al. - Dave Pascoe, Press Officer, UK Independence Party, Hartlepool Branch.

IN saying "Join the euro, or lose 1,500 jobs", (Echo, Apr 26) Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn, is using scare tactics to try and force British people, especially those in the North-East, into something they would bitterly regret ever afterwards.

Mr Ghosn is only thinking of his own firm and his own job. The euro may indeed be good for Nissan, if that is how its assets and business is arranged, but there are far more firms and individuals who would not benefit if we gave up the pound.

Worrying Nissan workers with warnings of doom and job losses, which he cannot know for certain will happen, is an underhand way of trying to swing things in his own chosen direction. Let us hope the workers of Sunderland have more sense than to fall for the trick. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

CAR PARKING

I DO not understand why the people who want to do their shopping by car are not allowed into the heart of the city of Durham.

Have the powers that be ever thought of the shoppers jumping on and off the buses carrying three or four carrier bags to allotted parking places on the outskirts of the city.

The tourists and the students may have more money to spend than the peasants in the rundown villages three or four miles away. Do not forget, we are there all the year. - WH Cameron, Brandon.

REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

WHERE devolution has been carried out in parts of the United Kingdom the consent of the people has been obtained. I am pleased that Scotland has got its Parliament and Wales has got its Assembly because it is what the people wanted. I hope that the politicians of Northern Ireland will come together to get their Assembly to work again. If we get a Northern Assembly it will be because a majority have voted for it. If the majority in the North do not want England to be divided they will vote against it.

I do not share the view that somehow England is being sold short. I identify myself as an individual, an Englishman, a British subject, a European citizen, and a small part of the human family. I welcome the fact that we live in a multi-racial and multi-cultural society. I adhere to no religion but welcome all of them.

What I regret is that we have some way to go to become a tolerant society. I note with sadness that those who come here and seek asylum from oppression are assumed to be bogus until some tribunal decides otherwise. I wish I could be sure that the Afghans forcibly deported were not going back to persecution. The Taliban are no longer in government in Kabul but the war lords still control most of the country.

We need to sort out our values in this country of ours. They need to have some consistency and charity about them. Until we do we give ammunition to the British National Party. - Geoffery Bulmer, Billingham.

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS

ONCE again, nobody has mentioned vivisection in the local council elections.

Not bad for a nation of animal lovers! How can the Government pull the wool over our eyes that we live in a decent society and all animal tests - even those which have no value in the understanding and treatment of disease - are right? I really do despair. Maybe people are unaware of just how brutal animal experimentation is. If only they knew. Knowledge is power. My heart goes out to the three million animals killed every year in British labs. They have gone to a better place. - Aled Jones, Bridlington.

ANIMAL SNARES

REGARDING the article (Echo, Apr 25) which reported a poor cat which had died a slow, horrific, agonising death after being caught by its back legs in an illegal snare set on top of a wall near Derwent Reservoir.

I hope it may make people more aware of the danger to animals in the countryside. All snares should be banned. They are all indiscriminate and very cruel.

As for whoever placed it there, pity someone doesn't do the same to them. - Brenda Scragg, Bishop Auckland.