WE are writing to ask all infant and primary schools in your area to join us and take part in "Little Feet, Big Feat"– a new schools initiative to raise funds for Marie Curie Cancer Care.
The charity is looking for 150,000 little pairs of feet to simultaneously "step into someone else's shoes" and take part in a 15-minute walk around the playground dressed up as the person they admire the most – a fictitious or real person, their favourite pop star or athlete, or perhaps their favourite kid's TV presenter (hopefully one of us!)
Pupils will join together in school playgrounds across the UK at 2.45pm on Friday, March 18, 2005.
If you think your school is up for the challenge then visit www.mariecurie.org.uk/daffodil for more information.
"Little Feet, Big Feat" is part of the Marie Curie Cancer Care Great Daffodil Appeal, supported by Yellow Pages. The Appeal, which runs throughout March, aims to raise funds to provide high quality nursing, totally free, to give terminally ill people the choice of dying at home supported by their families.
We really hope you'll take part.
Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood (Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow), BBC1

Mystery island
IN the midst of a great ocean of tower block and tin box structures, areas of our city today, lies a mysterious and isolated island, surrounded by a moving vastness and endless flight of stormy petrols and diesels accompanied by their sooty turns.
It is planted with old relics, the work of some near vanished great race, and its presence remains an enigma.
The city's own Easter Island and a last standing vestige of its most historical past civilisation, and today a much advised sail for crews of old Barbary Coasters.
The recommended voyage route is by the East Shore Ward, where a down sail at Look-Out-Hill Island will recall the exodus of inhabitants at a time when individual names of Cruickshanks, Teasdale and Bulmer stood on a prominence of chiefly proportion.
The upsail route to Mystery Island is Westward-Ho where the safe anchor-drop is marked by a bus shelter, opposite the long standing welcome light and house of Jacksons pub, a landing point for many an old Coaster and Palmers Battleship in the past.
A view on deck reveals the coastline of Dundas and Church Street North Island with its standing relics of a bygone age many with well-established flora growing in their joints.
A desire to visit the centre of the island requires the need to use an underpass, a chilly experience and likened to the entrance of a Pharaoh Tomb at the centre of which, gazing upwards, lies the centre of all footprints of a past, and is a concrete view.
A rise into Dundas Island and a gaze East reveals a tunnel vision of a thought, as to why owing to a known relevance to factual history, and its proximity to a worthy World Heritage Site, the vision was one of dereliction.
F Anderson,
Sunderland

Farewell John Howe
SO farewell then John Howe, Tuesday night's Echo won't be the same without you.
John's last column on Tuesday the 25th, about the ineptitude of the Grand Panjandrums on the council, should be required reading for every city resident over voting age.
In his one short piece he put it quite succinctly everything that's wrong with this once proud town (city) of ours.
Keep your pencil sharp and all the very best John in your new venture in Newcastle.
Tony Robinson,
Sunderland

Gordon for me
A LETTER to the people of Sunderland, in reply to some of the Tories who have had letters published lately.
I think Chancellor Brown has been the best man in the job for a long time. Inflation has never been so low for so long for years.
I remember 17 per cent on the mortgage when the Tories were in. Of course high interest rates only concern them with pots of money doing nowt.
No thanks, keep up the good work Chancellor Brown. We've never had it so good!
AJ Ramsey,
Sunderland

Elected to govern
PEOPLE elect governments to govern, not to cut back on the State and hand their inherited problems back to them.
In 1997 Labour inherited more of and worse problems than any Government in the past 100 years, which included an economy still reeling from the effects of the two most destructive recessions in history, but their solution wasn't to cut back on the State. Nonetheless, record unemployment was cured, interest rates and inflation were stabilised and poverty was greatly reduced.
Now we are informed that a Michael Howard-led Government would trace a path to a "laissez faire", small government, blind to the problems of ordinary people and reminiscent of their flirtation with the philosophy of American economist Milton Friedman, aka "monetarism", when a failed attempt to strangle inflation out of the economy, resulted in the destruction of the British coalfield, British shipbuilding and huge swathes of British heavy industry; leading to uncontrollable unemployment and poverty.
Despite all that, Howard's opposition still refuse to listen to all the experts that £35 billion of public spending cuts, would yet again, precipitate another unemployment bandwagon that even Mr Howard wouldn't jump on.
What happened to the honest government Howard promised us at their September conference?
Fred Brady,
Sunderland

Antibiotics in meat
IT comes as no great surprise that Government figures have shown that sales of growth-promoting antibiotics in animals raised for food rose by a third in 2003, despite industry promises to cut their use.
Our recent report, "Dishing the Dirt: The Secret History of Meat" uncovered how no fewer than 20 of the antibiotics used for the treatment of ill human beings in the UK are currently administered to farmed animals, while dozens more, virtually identical to human medications, are administered at a rate of over 1000kg per day. The transfer of antibiotic resistance from animals to human beings is now an established fact, but while our farming industry remains dependent on antibiotics, they will continue to be applied, regardless of the consequences.
However, as individuals we all have the power to bring about change: by refusing to buy produce from factory farms and by going vegetarian.
Justin Kerswell, Campaigner,
Viva! Vegetarians International Voice for Animals