I HAVE just read the article on the think-tank Policy Exchange. The authors patronise the people of Sunderland and insult their intelligence.

They seem to assume that people need to be told they can relocate to other parts of the country to find new opportunities. I am sure people are aware of their options!

However, even the city's most passionate supporters must be aware that the state of Wearside is less than ideal. The city is perceived by visitors as dirty and run-down. We only have to look at the difficulty SAFC seem to have in attracting footballers away from clubs in the south, to realise people without an affinity to the area see it for perhaps what it is – a city without designer shops, upmarket hotels, first-class restaurants, an attractive riverside/bridge, clean streets and outstanding floral displays.

What is often lost on the visitor is the rich history, wonderful warm- hearted people and huge potential of the city.

But unless the council becomes even more innovative Sunderland will always struggle to compete with our more affluent neighbouring city Newcastle. It is further north than Sunderland, but is renowned as the place to visit for a city break.

Coun Paul Watson talks of an economic rebirth and disputes the content of the report. If this is the case, I implore the council to invest in a more visionary approach.

They may even have to ward off an invasion of southerners!
M Cook,
Cleadon Village

We can be better
THE think tank is right. What future do our young have in Sunderland? I am Sunderland born and bred, but I left to seek a career. I was lucky to find employment with a national company and returned to Sunderland on London wages.

The best of both worlds.

Unless we create work that is wealth creating we are lost. Work in retail shops, telephone centres is doomed unless it supports a local wealth creating industry.

I often wonder if we need creative thinking? Take the docks, forget shipping. Could the docks revitalise a tourist Industry. Think water sports, a wind generator to heat the water, a roof, away we go. Every water sport we know and invent more, we could have a first in an international water attraction.

Support services, hotels, food, training and many, many more. Come on Sunderland we are better, much better than they think.
Malcolm Conlon

Hidden agenda
THE recent report from a right-wing think tank would suggest that a future Conservative Government would see the solution to economic investment in starving the North East of much-needed industrial investment and encouraging a shift to a prosperous south east.

I am not surprised by the report, in as much as it resembles the kind of thinking we saw in the 1980s when the Thatcher Government butchered traditional industries in places like Sunderland and on Tyneside and Teesside.

I can hear the cries of Nissan and other less sustained industries coming to the North East. There is no doubting Nissan has been a great success and a credit to those agencies who worked together in bringing such a development.

That is a formula that worked and can continue to work. So why has some academic, who hasn't even had the courtesy to visit the city, based his judgment on working from a list of statistics to determine that Sunderland is only good for exporting labour?

Sunderland has much to offer, as does the region. Communities that have been caught in many struggles with countless campaigns to save traditional industries such as coalmining, shipbuilding and engineering. Yet that spirit transferred to working to bring new industries. We have even seen the revitalisation of Sunderland football club with Niall Quinn and the Drumaville Consortium. So, not a negative or backward step!

I think there is a hidden agenda. Reportedly David Cameron has backed this report and if this is true, it would suggest that the north-south divide lies at the centre of Conservative policy. As for the question of moving Sunderland – well not likely man!
Bernie Walsh,
Browning Hill,
Coxhoe

Warm and friendly
I ADD my support to Wearside's rejection of the Policy Exchange barm tank – sorry, think tank. As an Irish family we lived in the south east and found it to be cold, hard, unfriendly and severely lacking in social cohesion.

In the eight years-plus we have lived in Sunderland it has been warm, friendly, family-minded and community-orientated. Being Irish we feel right at home here in a way we never did down south.

As Wearside Industrial Chaplain I have always experienced a passion for the historic industrial past yet with an enthusiasm for the challenging commercial future and a particular desire for investment in young people.

The city is also the first in decades to create its own Minster Church, a place at the heart of our community hosting not only a faith community but a university, industrial, civic and arts mission with a cohesion that Oxford would envy.

Maybe Grand Central and National Express should offer cut-price one-way tickets to southerners who probably deep down envy our lifestyle.
Rev Stephen Hazlett, Industrial Chaplain, Sunderland Minster