Hear all Sides

I AGREE with the writer's letter (HAS, Jan 25) about road works in Crook.

Numerous people have complained about the way the work to the water system in the town is being done.

I agree, this is an essential task, but the way the work is being carried out is seriously flawed and dangerous.

There are deep holes dug and left everywhere in Crook with just a barrier around them for months.

These are a magnet to youths who fling the barriers away into the path of traffic, already restricted to narrow lanes. It is extremely dangerous and inevitably an accident could easily happen.

The paths and roads are in a deplorable conditions, thick, slimy mud everywhere. I was under the impression it was the law that roads had to be cleaned up as work was done. Cars, buses, shoes etc cannot be kept clean and the mud is trampled into homes, spoiling carpets. Why do we have to have the work done like this?

What happened to teamwork? Surely teams could follow on, finishing a certain stretch before starting on a further stretch. - Name and address supplied.

LOVE STORIES

DO you have a dramatic Second World War love story to tell?

I am looking for people in their 80s, 90s and 100s to take part in a major television series about the British in love between 1939 and 1945. In the war the ever-present threat of death helped create an atmosphere of living for the present, encouraging the most dramatic love affairs. Perhaps your was a forbidden or a secret love?

Did you risk sex before marriage? Did you fall for the glamour of a GI, an officer or an RAF pilot? Maybe you had an affair with someone who was married.

Or did you fall in love with someone from another country?

If you have a moving personal wartime love story to tell, whatever it is, please contact me. - Lisa Lipman, Testamony Films, 12, Great George Street, Bristol BS1 5RH or telephone (0117) 925 8589.

VAN DRIVERS

I HAVE never heard of such an appalling waste of public money as the recent Government scheme to send drivers of delivery vans on courses in order to train them to be better drivers.

As the manager of the regional depot of one of the largest overnight delivery companies in the country, I suggest the Government walk into any depot and check the records of these drivers.

I have nine drivers of delivery vans, driving a minimum of 5,000 miles between them per week. Between them they have had no blameworthy accidents in the past three years, and together with them we are proud of their record.

People must wake up to the fact that drivers of delivery vans are not cowboys as depicted in the press, but are responsible, dedicated, skilled people, who are the safest drivers on the road.

One never reads of delivery drivers being filmed driving the wrong way down duel carriageways, or falling asleep at the wheel, causing their vehicles to career through fences and ending up in front of high speed passenger trains.

I say 99 per cent of road hold-ups caused through road traffic accidents are the fault of car drivers, and are very rarely the fault of delivery van drivers or lorry drivers. Also, when considering the amount of delivery van drivers on the road, a far fewer proportion of them are caught speeding in comparison to Joe Public in his car.

This money would be better spent on educating the public on how to park their cars in narrow spaces, resulting in supermarket car parks being far safer places. - Norman Smith, Newton Aycliffe.

WAR MEDALS

THE refusal to award a campaign medal to the crews of Bomber Command must rank as one of the most blatant travesties of military justice of all time (Echo, Jan 24).

The loss of 55,000 aircrew, 9,000 bombers, 23 VCs, 20,000 DFCs, 6,000 DFMs and bearing in mind all of Bomber Command aircrew were volunteers, this has been a cruel rebuff.

I was 19, and finished a tour of 31 trips between December 1943 and July 1944.

But I do not forget our ground crews, who serviced our aircraft day and night in all weathers.

You always saw us off and were there on our return, many thanks. I wish Alfred Gaddas, from Northallerton, every success for the Bevin Boys. - R Moore, Colburn.

MEMORY LANE

YOUR story 'Prestigious athletics meet comes to N-E' caught my eye (Echo, Jan 27).

When a pupil at Ryhope Grammar, 55 years ago, I won the Durham County half mile at Wolsingham.

There was virtually no coaching in those days, so that I was no great success at Southampton, but was awarded a standard medal.

By chance, my sister had been married the previous week and was honeymooning on the Isle of Wight. The pair travelled to the track on the Saturday but I had to tell them I'd been eliminated the previous day.

A Sunderland supporter since the war, I'm the one who comes to see you from time to time in order to congratulate you on your good, clear and interesting writing in The Northern Echo.

I've often written to Hear All Sides. The letters prompted a 90-plus lady to write. She had been taught briefly by my father.

My grandfather, who was her headmaster, had failed in his quest to persuade her parents to let her go to university as she was needed to bring in some funds at home. I never knew my grandfather but it was good to hear about him. - David Oliver, Sunderland.

BRITISHNESS

GORDON Brown invites us to invest emotionally in a new British national identity. That would be to hand a blank cheque to the Government who will redefine this nation on the hoof as they recklessly admit ever more migrants.

The new, synthetic nationalisms are no less lethal or repellent than the old ethnically based ones. The British state has spent the last half century systematically suppressing our old identity. Let us just accept that it has gone and needs no replacement.

Some profess to believe in a new nation distinguished by its inclusiveness. But such a brotherhood of different races and religions isn't a nation, it's a world. We are already part of it. It extends far beyond the writ of the British government and doesn't need its flag.

The modernisers point out that identity changes, but actually it changes very slowly. It would be wrong to expect the Saxons at Hastings to experience the day as offering exciting new possibilities for the British nation and interesting new arch shapes.

It might be sensible for a nation to have guests and associate members, whose descendants may one day be full members of a modified nation. Instead, we have had instant membership, instant rights to nominate new members and instant re-writing of the group definition.

Gordon Brown and his ilk have left us without a national identity. Let us embrace this simple status and not let him wrap it up in a flag, a day of fireworks and overeating, some sports competitions and an occasional small war. That would give an identity fit only for the partisan and feeble minded. - John Riseley, Harrogate.