I WAS most interested to read (Bury Times, Nov 5) about the magnificent event to be staged at the MEN Arena later this month.

More than 5,500 pupils from schools across the north of England are to take part in The Young World concert: Bury schools, too, will be included in this most praiseworthy effort.

It will be a masterpiece of organisation, allied to tremendous commitment from our kids and their parents and teachers. The whole region can be proud of them all.

And it is not only Manchester - it seems the sing-song is but one of a series running throughout the month of November. Similar concerts will take place in Sheffield, Dublin, Newcastle and Birmingham.

The children of the provinces will be given the opportunity to perform alongside professional conductors, musicians, and singers and all in the pursuit of funds for some worthwhile cause.

It makes fine reading and what a change it makes from the usual grim reports of burglaries, car thefts, arsons and muggings. What a ray of sunshine, what a smack in the face for the doom-and-gloom merchants. All is well with the world after all. As I continued to read the article, a deep frown left my brow and my blood pressure, which had been climbing steadily whilst reading the usual weekly misery, began to drop. A naive kind of smile crept across my face.

And then I realised there had been a "mugging" after all!

The proceeds from this series of children's regional concerts, performed and created by local children and paid for out of local pockets by local folk, will not end up with the children's hospitals of the provinces. No, it seems the money is destined to swell the coffers of London's glitzy, high-profile Great Ormond Street Hospital. How's that for breathtaking arrogance?

I detect shades of the Princess Di Memorial Fund - whatever happened to our share of that? And then there is the "People's Choice" Lottery funds guzzler, the Millennium Dome . . . I could go on!

It seems to me that the South East - and London in particular - feel that they have some God-given right to bleed the rest of the country white in order to keep up with the image of being the Great Mother of the Empire.

The sooner we follow the example of the Scots and the Welsh the better (I notice that Glasgow and Cardiff did not feature on the list of venues for these concerts).

If, like me, you think that the series of children's concerts is a wonderful idea, but that the proceeds should be used for the benefit of regional children's hospitals and not swallowed up by a swish London one, then I urge you to write to your MP on the subject.

T.N.T.

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