FIREWORKS: THE Guide Dogs for the Blind Association appeals to readers to sign our Regulate Fireworks Now petition, which calls for an end to the disruption and distress caused to guide dogs and their owners by fireworks.

Every year, New Year celebrations force guide dogs and other working dogs to retire after being traumatised by the irresponsible use of fireworks. Others have to be sedated, and some even retrained, leaving their owners without mobility for weeks at a time.

Guide Dogs receives regular reports on the damage and disruption caused to guide dog partnerships and over recent years, as the use of fireworks has become more widespread, the problem has escalated.

We are calling for the licensing of firework retailers and organisers of public fireworks displays; limitation of noise levels; and the specifying of a limited number of dates in the public calendar around which fireworks can be sold. Outside of these times, sales to the public would not be permitted. Sudden loud noises can distress guide and other assistance dogs to such a degree that they are unable to continue working. This means the end of the extraordinary partnership that has taken many months and years to develop. With the lifetime cost of training, feeding, insuring and providing veterinary care running at £35,000 for each guide dog, the cost to the charity of retiring dogs part way through their working lives is enormous.

Please support our campaign. We don't want to ruin people's fun, but we don't want people's lives ruined either. - Geraldine Peacock, Chief Executive, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, Reading.

DAVID Blake, fireworks specialist of Firepower, York, states that modern day rockets and crackers are deliberately made to explode with a bang (Echo, Dec 9).

They certainly do! The sudden, very loud series of explosions can be very unnerving for someone who is not watching the display and therefore has no warning as to when the next volley will occur.

Mr Blake says it is a bit churlish to complain about the noise. This may be true, to a certain extent, when we're talking about November 5 or New Year, as has now become traditional.

Where the harm creeps in is when people hold private fireworks displays at other times to celebrate some special occasion. People have every right to complain when their sleep is shattered, elderly people are frightened and animals terrified by the sudden, very loud bangs echoing round the streets late at night.

In today's climate of terrorist threats, creating such scares is irresponsible. Letting off noisy fireworks may be fun for those doing it, but it brings no pleasure to the neighbours. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

EUROPE

I NOTE with interest the figures given by your correspondent (HAS, Dec 19) on the costs and expected advantages of admitting ten new countries to the European Union.

His optimism is chiefly over the increased size of the market. It is the increased rate of returns argument relating to expansion, and we all know that with that law there is a stage where diminishing returns sets in.

He does not address the increased size of the budget, apart from drawing attention to the ceiling in percentage terms of the total gross national product as approved by the European Parliament.

I think that your correspondent obscures the fact Britain's contribution to the budget will increase substantially. There will be subsidies to regions in the accession states which will be judged more in need of help than any in this country. Furthermore, if the Common Agricultural Policy payments remain as generous as they have been a great deal of money will go to sustain Polish agriculture.

The macro-economic gains are speculation, and forecasts can be wrong, no matter how many international investigations have been carried out. - Geoffrey Bulmer, Billingham.

LORD OF THE RINGS

HAVING just watched The Two Towers, the second film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I would like to register my complaint against Peter Jackson, the director of the film (and I note his name appeared under the headings of screenplay and producer so he is three-times at fault).

OK, so the film is very well put together and the animation of Gollum is out of this world.

However, I resent the implication that it is actually based on the book by JRR Tolkien. The names of the characters and places might be the same, but there all similarity ends.

I really despair of what Peter Jackson will do with The Return of the King. It makes me wonder whether he actually read the book for himself. - Richard J Counter, Great Ayton.

METRIC MARTYRS

NEIL Herron (HAS, Dec 17) persists in flogging the dead horse of imperial measure. Maybe he has not noticed it but the whole world has gone metric and we have to do business with it.

In my own field of survey, imperial measurement ended with the invention of electronic distance measurement and the computer. Gunter's chain of 66 feet is quite dead apart from in the game of cricket.

Electronic distance measurement would hardly be possible using imperial measure unless you decimalise the system and said, for example, 303.75ft. But then you have gone part way to metric anyhow. - Willis Collinson, Durham City.