FIRE DISPUTE: THE only time the public are made aware of the dispute between the firefighters and their employers is when there is strike action or the threat of it.

What would make everyone look up and support pay and conditions that would attract men and women to the emergency services is for them to leave in large numbers and get other jobs. If I were one of them I would be inclined to do that.

As a member of the public who benefits from their work I hope that they soldier on.

I do not think that they should resume strike action because I am not convinced that it is the best way forward for them.

Public support is capricious, and the dispute could go on a long time, and they would be the losers through loss of pay. There must be another way for them.

John Prescott can afford to stall for ever.

I think that they should organise an education campaign on the work they do, and how many lives they routinely save, plus an education campaign on the need for the fire service, in collaboration with the other emergency services, to deal with an emergency brought about by terrorist action.

They need to demonstrate in every way possible why they believe that the modernisation proposed does not address the real issues but is meant to get their service on the cheap.

On pay, there should be an appraisal of the different costs of living throughout the country. I suspect that the pay offered would be a fair deal for workers in most parts of the country but too low for workers in London.

We need a lot of transparency about it so that all reasonable people could agree on what a fair settlement would be. - Geoffrey Bulmer, Billingham.

DAVID SHAYLER

STAN Walinets (HAS, Mar 7) is right to castigate The Northern Echo for describing David Shayler as a 'renegade spy'. He may also be right in his assertions about the doubtful pedigree of the Official Secrets Act.

However, his description of Shayler as an honest man and a patriot is risible. Despite his protests to the contrary and a claim that he was acting in the public interest, Shayler was found guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act and selling classified information to The Mail On Sunday.

For this crime he received a fairly lenient sentence. Can I remind Mr Walinets that Shayler signed the Official Secrets Act. No one forced him to do so and when it became clear that he would be charged with offences he spent months in Paris trying to avoid deportation.

David Shayler has failed to demonstrate that he has ever acted in the public interest. - Peter Wilkinson, Stainton, Barnard Castle.

ASYLUM SEEKERS

IF Adrian Bell (HAS, Mar 7) is concerned about the number of asylum seekers perhaps he should look at the facts. Britain takes very few refugees - the countries with most refugees in the world are Pakistan, Iran and Tanzania.

Most asylum seekers are fleeing from Iraq, Zimbabwe, Somalia and Afghanistan, places either ruled by a despot or in a state of near civil war, where people can be tortured or killed because of their politics, religion or race.

Is it any wonder that these people want to seek safety in a place like Britain?

If we really want to reduce the number of asylum seekers, the answer isn't to be brutal to people fleeing for their lives - it is to make a real effort to stop the terrifying abuses these people are fleeing from.

How many are fleeing from regimes equipped with British made weapons? It is the dictators and civil wars most asylum seekers are fleeing from that we should be condemning, not asylum seekers. - Paul Leake, Gilesgate, Durham.

REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

I WAS surprised to see (Echo, Mar 3) a press release from the self-appointed and so-called North East Assembly, setting out the results of the Government soundings exercise on whether or not to hold a referendum on setting up a North-East Regional Assembly (elected).

The last day that response forms for this soundings exercise could be accepted was March 3, this was of course the day of the publishing of the press release.

How the North-East Assembly can claim overwhelming support for a referendum before all responses have been counted leads me to believe that the people of the North-East are being subjected to yet another of the spurious claims that will no doubt continue until the regional power seekers finally accept that the people of the North-East do not want to live in what will become an insignificant European region of little importance governed from Strasbourg and Brussels. - B Knowes, Darlington.

WAR AGAINST IRAQ

PETER Mullen continues (Echo, Mar 4) to rave on about the need to go to war against the Iraqi people. His philosophy can be summed up in the phrase: "Our atrocities in war are blessed by God, and therefore justified, their atrocities in war are evil and therefore unjustified."

Coming from a priest who is supposed to have studied the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, his comments fill me with both sadness and loathing. I look forward to the day when he is no longer employed by your newspaper. - Rev John Stephenson, Sunderland.