Letters

IT may excite the anti-smoking lobby but the news that a barmaid in Australia has been awarded damages for allegedly developing throat cancer from years of passive smoking is hardly the breakthrough it is claimed.

Australia itself placed the alleged dangers of passive smoking firmly in context when a report by the National Health and Medical Research Council, published in 1996, claimed that passive smoking caused ten deaths from lung cancer a year in a country with a population of 18 million people.

Other organisations that have failed to prove the argument include the American Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organisation, whose ten-year European study published in 1998 produced results that even WHO admitted were not statistically significant.

Breathing other people's tobacco smoke can be unpleasant but that alone cannot justify a ban on smoking in places such as bars and restaurants. The solution is not to persecute smokers or invent victims of passive smoking. Employers and proprietors must be encouraged to improve ventilation and provide smoking and non-smoking areas. They must then provide accurate information so that people can choose the type of environment they wish to work or socialise in. In that way everyone will benefit.

Most importantly, Britain must reject the type of litigious society exemplified by the United States and now, sadly, Australia.

I am sure the majority of people - smokers and tolerant non-smokers - would agree with that. - Simon Clark, Director, FOREST (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), London.

SLAVE LABOUR

I FIND it amazing that cocoa producers have to revert to slave labour because the price they receive for their product is so low they cannot afford to pay decent wages.

Years ago, we had first hand knowledge of youngsters toiling long hours in the sugar cane fields for just a pittance. Their teeth already reduced to stumps through constantly gnarling the cane while working, hoping to substitute their inadequate diet resulting from their inadequate income.

With the main ingredients at such a low price, why is chocolate so expensive in the shops? If the big chocolate firms, who always seem capable of making wealthy profits, manage to pay their workers a decent wage, they could also do something towards abolishing this slave labour. Chocolate would taste much the better for it. - D Punchard, Kirkbymoorside.

RACIAL HARMONY

NORMAN Hall's suggestion (HAS, May 10) that multiculturalism will divide this country forever and lead to civil war is quite ridiculous.

While incidents of racial violence and disharmony make the news, most people get along just fine with their friends and neighbours, regardless of colour or culture.

Multiculturalism is a fact, not a policy, and whenever attempts have been made to preserve ethnic purity or separate people according to the arbitrary and artificial notion of race, the result is invariably bloodshed.

The conflicts which Mr. Hall mentions (The Balkans, etc.) are not caused by multiculturalism, though racism is an important factor. We can tackle racism, but we can do nothing about cultural diversity, nor should we wish to.

As for the asylum debate, The Northern Echo's editorial (April 26) provides a good starting point: the system "should be humane to the individuals concerned, fair to both Britain and the asylum seekers, and its processes should be fast and efficient".

Deciding who can stay in Britain on the basis of race would be neither fair nor humane, and would be abhorrent to the majority of British people. - P Winstanley, Chester-le-Street.

POLITICAL BALANCE

I was surprised at the lack of balance in the articles on the North-East marginal seats (Echo, May 8).

The article on Hartlepool, in particular was appalling. The Liberal Democrat candidate is brushed off in one sentence, while the paper shows its true blue credentials by devoting paragraphs to over-hyping the Tory candidate.

A lot has happened since the last General Election. Not least the fact that the Liberal Democrats have more councillors elected on the borough council than the Conservatives and the council leader is a Liberal Democrat.

I do hope that when you get around to covering Redcar you will report the situation as it is now and do not ignore the fact that since the last General Election there are eleven Liberal Democrat councillors in the constituency and only four Conservatives. - Chris Abbott, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group, Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council.

DIRTY BEACH

IT came as some surprise to find that Seaton Carew is now regarded as a blue flag beach. Whoever came to this decision must have judged it on its water quality alone.

Gone are the days when sewage was washed up, and indeed the water is cleaner, but the beach is a different matter.

It is strewn with litter, broken glass, plastic bottles, and at each tide thousands of sanitary towels are washed up on the beach. Dog dirt is everywhere.

My advice is welcome to Seaton Carew but steer clear of the beach.- S Sharp, Seaton Carew.

SINGLE SEX SCHOOLS

WHAT a good article on single-sex schools (Echo May 7). Headmistress Helen Hamilton covers all the relevant points from an educational point of view, making her case strongly.

Of course boys and girls develop at different times and in different ways. They do indeed have different needs which call for the approach to their education to be made suitable for both sexes separately. Most girls do thrive in a single-sex environment and achieve far more than they would if they were constantly distracted from their studies by the perceived need to attract the boys all the time. Similarly, boys on their own need not feel the need to prove their manhood to impress the girls.

Schools have undergone so many changes recently that it may seem hard to suggest yet another, but introducing more single sex schools could well lead to the improved results other schemes have failed to produce. - EA Moralee, Billingham.