QUEEN MOTHER

I WAS saddened to hear of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother's passing. My heart goes out to Her Majesty The Queen, losing her sister as well as her mother in such a short time.

She was an extraordinary lady, who balanced duty alongside her love of life, and that is the way many will remember her.

A few years ago I had the honour of conveying HM The Queen Mother's message to The Hastings International Poetry Festival. She was always interested in what was going on and appreciated being informed of what happened and took an interest in all that she did.

Whatever you personally think about the royal family, The Queen Mother and The Queen have served the nation and people without faltering in their duty and have earned respect and admiration both at home and abroad.

God bless you Ma'am and thank you for what you put back into many lives and for the years of service you gave to the nation and its people. - Bryan J Allen, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

MARTYRS

WILLIS Collinson really should not answer Peter Mullen's rubbish with rubbish of his own. To say that "Christians of Protestant and Catholic faiths... kept Hitler in power" (HAS, Feb 29) is a travesty of the facts and a slur on the many Christian martyrs of the Nazi period.

Opposition began long before the war, with the Declaration of Barmen in 1934.

Pastor Paul Schneider was arrested several times from 1937 for his statements against Nazi paganism, and was executed in July 1939.

He was one of the first among many priests, clergy, and ordinary church members, who were executed for their stance against Nazism.

In 1944, the leaders of the bomb plot against Hitler were Christians. The most famous of all the martyrs is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who returned from the safety of America at the outbreak of war to be with his people, and paid for it with his life just weeks before the war ended.

It is a matter of history that the Nazi "German Christian Faith Movement" duped many ordinary church people into believing that Hitler was a Messiah-figure, but there were many who did not bow the knee, and paid with their lives for standing against the Nazi evil. - The Rev Tony Buglass, Superintendent Minister, Pickering Methodist Circuit, N Yorks.

ROAD TOLLS

CHARLES Crawford, of Churchill Insurance, (Echo, Mar 18) fears that interference with the motorists' entitlement to road use, via imposition of road tolls, would filter through a reduced economy from car user tourists. Fair comment!

Councillor Crathorne, leader of Durham City Council, sees no such conflict and proclaims that such imposition is mainly to stop people from "misusing the road". The inference being that the general motoring public are road abusers.

Having paid thousands for chosen transport, the pleasure of insuring, taxing and fuelling it, they do not expect a moral lecture by his authority in terms of setting it down upon some of his appalling road surfaces; for which they pay dearly.

Finding themselves in congestion is merely an inevitable fact of modern life, for which neither he, nor they, have an adequate answer; raising spurious taxes only inciting bad feeling.

Mr Churchill's envisioning of economic backlash is reasoned comment. - C Simons, Bishop Auckland.

PARENTING

THE latest demand for action, not words, on bad parents (Echo, Mar 25) is very timely.

The minority of feckless parents, as Education Secretary Estelle Morris calls them, is becoming larger. The real danger is they will soon become the majority.

Putting an end to the spiral of violence and poor discipline needs to begin in the home, then teachers can indeed be put back on the pedestal, respected and obeyed by their pupils.

The real way of improving standards of literacy and all subjects is to enable the teachers to teach. If 90 per cent of their time is taken battling for discipline in the classroom, nothing can be learned and the well-behaved pupils are robbed of their education.

Yes, by all means, clamp down hard and use parenting orders; that's what they were designed for. Let us have some firm action before things get any worse. - EA Moralee, Billingham.

LAW AND ORDER

I READ your article (Echo, Mar 26) about people defending themselves in their own homes.

I cannot see why people cannot, but sadly there are too many dogooders who put the burglars' safety first.

These scum ruin lives by attacking the old and infirm, and it is divine justice that now and then they pick the wrong house.

The householder should be able to defend themselves without fear of prosecution from a criminal, who should not have been there in the first place.

These are times of armed burglaries, when people never know what numbers or weapons they are up against, and that is why the law should be changed so an Englishman can once again call his home his castle. - I White, Darlington.