RUTH KELLY: ALL teachers who apply for a job must undergo a Criminal Records Bureau check. As an athletics coach, I must have a CRB check done for each group/authority that I work for, and if I don't I am not allowed to take that post.

I can only assume that sex offenders are a special case or that the system does not work, in which case Ruth Kelly needs to do something to sort it out.

How can anyone have any confidence in a system that allows a situation like this to occur? It makes a mockery of all the training that is done on child protection by teachers and coaches and all the child protection policies that schools, clubs and organisations are forced to put in due to government policies, which are obviously failing. I personally have spent a lot of time attending courses and my club has expended a lot of time and money to fulfil our obligations on this policy. Have we wasted our time?

We expect our children to be respected by those who teach them and we expect government policies to be adhered to.

If this does not happen the system has failed and must be changed, quickly, and not become bogged down in petty bureauocracy before it lets our children down, again. - Robin Rutherford, Darlington.

HOW many other registered paedophiles and sex offenders have been given clearance by Education Secretary Ruth Kelly?

If the answer is more than zero then Ms Kelly should either resign or be sacked from her position for possible child endangerment, because it is clear that neither Ms Kelly or her department have learnt anything from the Soham murders. - CT Riley, Spennymoor.

IS it not time Tony Blair really took the time to take stock of the people he has put into very important jobs in the Government?

Should Ruth Kelly not be taken out or have people forgotten the two little girls who were killed by the man employed in their school. - Charles Wilson, Darlington.

TV KNIFE REPORT

I AM disappointed that you chose to report unchallenged salesman Khalile Maqsood's claim he asked for identification while being filmed by BBC's Inside Out selling a knife to a 14-year-old boy (Echo, Jan 10).

It is a pity your reporters did not check this claim with the BBC. We would have provided categorical proof that at no stage during the entire exchange did Mr Maqsood ask for identification or the age of the boy in question. The whole incident is recorded on tape as viewers of Monday night's programme will have seen.

It is a disquieting lapse that your reporter did not call the BBC for a response to this story, but I welcome the opportunity to put the record straight. - Jacqui Hodgson, Editor, Factual Programmes, BBC.

PET IDOL

MAY I thank everyone who voted for my handsome Yorkshire Terrier Skippy, who took second place in your Pet Idol competition just before Christmas and I congratulate the dog who won. He too was very handsome.

Skippy received £100 of pet foods and accessories, as the result of his win and we are very proud to say that we have donated all he won to the Animal Rescue Centre at Bishop Auckland to help them. Many thanks. - Zena Gill and Skippy, Bishop Auckland.

EU REBATE

JUST before Christmas you still published HAS letters criticising Tony Blair for allowing part of the UK rebate of our annual fee to the European Union to be diminished in the future budget of the EU.

The writers generally ignored the fact that our well-to-do country hardly deserved a handout of that sort any more than 21 years of assistance.

UKIP, of course, added its voice to support blind selfishness among readers, but did Tony Blair really sell British interests down the river? Gavin Davies, an economist writing in The Guardian on December 22, sees the EU rebate as a 'mere budgetary footnote'. We are after all only talking about one per cent of Britain's gross domestic product.

The overall European budget was increased from 1.03 per cent of GDP to 1.045 per cent, a tiny change, in the recent discussions. The Prime Minister conceded one fifth of the Thatcher rebate over seven years. This will increase the average UK annual bill from 0.39 per cent of our GDP to 0.47 per cent of our GDP under the new deal. The difference is 0.08 per cent of GDP.

In the words of Gavin Davies, who is responsible for the mathematics, this is 'slim pickings' for our xenophobic friends. - E Whittaker, Richmond.

PUNISHMENT

THOSE who propose broadening the definition of 'diminished responsibility' in criminal prosecutions are missing the point.

The important issue is not blameworthiness and punishment, nor is there any realistic prospect of rehabilitation or deterrence.

The question is one of disposal. What do we do with those whom we cannot sensibly allow to roam our communities because they are too destructive as perpetrators and as role models?

I have no wish for them to be kept in concrete boxes with a bucket in the corner. I would be happy for them to live in exile in closed towns where they can live as fulfilled a life as is practicable.

I would be happier for the towns to be sited where they can be established and maintained most cost-effectively, perhaps in the Ukraine or Bangladesh.

What I don't want is for some deluded old fool applying irrelevant intellectualisations to put these people back on our streets. - John Riseley, Harrogate.

REGIONAL FORCES

THE Government, in its manic pursuit of regionalisation (at the behest of the European Union) is now trying to amalgamate police forces into large "regional forces".

Nothing could be more alienating, undemocratic and inefficient. Policing is a community based service and when cross regional serious crimes are committed different forces have always acted together. But the larger the force the less democratic accountability and the less financial control.

Finally, of course, we were never asked whether we wanted our existing police authorities to be abolished. At least in the case of the North East Regional Assembly we were given an apparent democratic right to say no before they went ahead anyway.

In the push for regionalisation Blair is steamrollering the whole country into regional police, fire, planning, etc. He has become so arrogant he now does what he likes, even without the farce of an irrelevant referendum.

How very like Blair's Eurofederalist friends in Brussels who have been resoundingly defeated on the European Constitution and are implementing it anyway. What a wonderful democratic world we live in. What on earth did we fight two world wars for? - Rodney Atkinson, Stocksfield, Northumberland.