It must first of all be remembered that the Vatican is an administrative organisation administering a worldwide church and as such can't operate on thin air.

It must also be remembered that it is in itself a State, but, unlike other countries that are supported through the compulsory taxation of their citizens, no one (and certainly not the "desperately poor" of Carmichael's article) is forced to pay a penny to the Church.

Those who do contribute do so because they choose to, just as they also choose how much they will give. He also needs to be better informed about the "Peter's Pence" fund which he implied funds the Holy See.

It is, in fact (and I quote) "a contribution to the Pope's vast apostolate of help and relief for the world's poor and suffering of all races and creeds" and, again, is a totally voluntary contribution taken up annually in churches around the world.

It is all too easy for people like Mr Carmichael to make cheap remarks about something they don't fully understand. While the Catholic Church (as a worldwide body) and the Vatican (as a State) have a great deal of potential "wealth" tied up in assets which have inevitably accumulated over time, such assets are not easily disposed of (perhaps cannot be in law) nor do they automatically translate into ready money.


Penny-pinching lack of vision in the Beeching era


From: John Roberts, St Johns, Wakefield.

IT was fascinating to watch Ian Hislop's entertaining and captivating look at the Beeching period of Britain's railways on BBC4 earlier this month.

Lord Beeching came across, particularly in the 1980s interview shown prior to Hislop's film, as a very cool customer indeed who had an answer for every question.

He brought to mind his 1980s equivalent from Mrs Thatcher's era: Ian McGregor, the "elderly imported American" who was invited in to oversee the decimation of our coal mining industry. Patriotic? I don't think so.

No doubt improvements in efficiency could be made on the railways, but at the end of the day the Beeching report was a triumph for the bean-counters, not for the country.

Anyone can tell you that closure is a surefire way of solving your problems – but it still didn't make the railways pay.

One surprising fact revealed was that Beeching did not approve of electrification on the grounds of "disruption", a somewhat odd, implausible reason for not making a new innovation. It seems to indicate that Beeching was sent to run down what was regarded as an anachronism.

Beeching should have been fighting the railways' corner in the political arena. In reality, his actions were a heaven-sent gift to the road lobby. To use a modern equivalent, it was all rather like putting
a rapacious logger in charge of a rainforest conservation. Their hearts wouldn't be quite in it.

The railways needed a creative, imaginative approach, not the crude economic mechanics of the bean-counter.

He wanted the railways to "build on their strengths" – or so he said. Trunk routes, in other words. Today, millions of tons thunder (or crawl) along our motorways and roads in thousands of hazardous lorries. What went wrong there, Lord Beeching?

There was also a great deal of needless (and heedless) waste at this time. The end of steam traction was a reckless and breathless carnage.

In 1957, there were 20,000 steam engines on BR: by January 1968, this had dropped to 300.

There were many sophisticated and powerful engines such as the 9F class (Evening star, etc) which had only been built in the late 1950s.

Many of these saw less than nine years of service, yet there was nothing to stop them being used, say, on certain routes well into the 1970s and beyond, to justify the expense of their building in the first place.

Automated coal-feeders could have been fitted and even conversion to other forms of fuel. Many new diesels had proved expensive and unreliable, so why not?

The Beeching Report chimed with the spirit of the era, like housing. Change for change's sake.

The Beeching Report was a testament to a terrible, penny-pinching lack of vision and foresight. We are still feeling the consequences.


A pronounced success story for the people of Hull

From: David Armstrong, Downe Street, Driffield.

IT is a pity that Marilyn Marsden of Bilton should take umbrage at the manager of
the Express by Holiday Inn's tongue in cheek translation of English to Hull (Yorkshire Post, October 9).

An imaginative narrative such as that prepared by manager Luc Perquin for the benefit of visitors to our city, should be regarded as a welcome change from the run of the mill hotel bedroom literature normally found in your average hotel bedside cabinet.

Marilyn Marsden should take pride in the Hull accent, as do Scousers, Geordies and Brummies.

Contrary to these dialects however, the Hull accent is relatively easy to pick up. All you have to do is substitute the letters A and O with the letters ER and you've got it.

Thus if a person from Hull is confronted with bad news, his automatic reaction is to say: "Er ner." In winter, the situation gets worse: "Er ner, there's sner on the rerd." When using the telephone communication system unique to the city, the procedure in Hull is known as making a fern curl.

A few weeks ago there was a traffic accident on one of the trunk roads near Hull, when a lorry carrying a load of tortoises ran into the back of a van delivering a cargo of terrapins to a local pet store. The road was blocked for some considerable time, while the carriageway was cleared of all the crustations scattered across the road. A spokesman for Humberside Police described the incident as "a turtle disaster".

Please, Marilyn Marsden, don't take life so seriously. Take pride in being "Hull" – particularly at this time when the city is enjoying such a renaissance.