COLUMNIST Peter Mullen's tirade against the nanny state (Echo, June 12) was fully justified.

However, far more pertinent were his final two sentences. Government has only two jobs it must do - to protect the people from external aggression and maintain internal law and order.

But we have, over the years, mistakenly allowed government to take over many other jobs it really should not be doing. The result is that everything it now does, it does badly, including those two essential jobs.

Until we learn from our mistake and curtail drastically what we let government do, we will continue to have poor public services, "nanny"

telling us how to live our lives, high and increasing lawlessness, and above all, an ever-growing proportion of our earnings extorted from us to pay for it all.

Derek Thornton, Stanley Crook, Co Durham.