FOR 175 years the Castle Eden Brewery has been one of the region's industrial gems.

In recent years, when small breweries were being closed across the country, Castle Eden defied all the odds to stay in business.

It will be sad, therefore, to see such a vital piece of our heritage demolished to make way for a housing development.

But its demise has always been in the offing as part of the huge upheaval under way in Britain's brewery and pub market.

The prospect of the merger with Camerons is perhaps the best option we could hope for.

In our sadness for the passing of Castle Eden, we must not overlook the real threat of closure that has been hanging over the Camerons Brewery in Hartlepool for some considerable time.

The closure of the Lion Brewery would have been a devastating blow coming so soon after the shutdown of the Vaux Brewery in Sunderland.

In bringing together under one roof the famous brewing names of Camerons and Nimmo's, the new business should be able to seek out a ready-made customer base in the North-East.

For the first time in a generation Camerons will be a strictly North-East enterprise, run by North-East people for North-East customers, and not merely a small part in a larger corporate organisation. That can only be good news.

And the deal automatically opens up new pub outlets for the Castle Eden brands.

Sacrificing Castle Eden to save Camerons, painful as it may appear, may turn out to be a sound course of action, and an opportunity for a North-East brewer to compete successfully with national and international rivals.

A step too far

ON the day The Northern Echo reveals how a lollipop lady in Middlesbrough may be withdrawn because of appalling abuse by a minority of youngsters, Tony Blair unveils his "carrot-and-stick" approach to youth offending.

We agree with the stick - making young offenders pay back the community by cleaning up graffiti and repairing damage caused by vandalism.

But the carrot is surely a step too far. If we have to resort to blatant bribery to make youngsters behave, we must have totally lost the plot.