I SAW a copy of your newspaper (LET, March 10) in which a number was displayed, misleading your readers into believing that there were 297 days to go to the new millennium.

This is, of course, arrant nonsense. As the year twenty hundred (2000) is a leap year, 366 days must be added to your figures in order to present the truth.

At present, the earth is almost one quarter of the way around its 1999th orbit round the sun since Jesus Christ was born, after which one more remains, earth's 2000th, before two millennnia of the Christian era have elapsed.

There is no doubt now that the vast majority of the world's population have been brainwashed by big business, aided and abetted by the news media, into believing that the advent of the year 2000 will mark the transit from one century to the next and from one millennium to the next.

I am aware, too, that I am not alone, by any means, in trying to stick out for the truth.

If we could go back exactly 2000 years from the present date, we would find ourselves living in March of the year 2BC.

My greatest sadness is that the Christian churches have not had the guts to stand out against big business in this matter.

It is not just a matter of simple arithmetic, it is principally a Christian matter.

Our spineless bishops, in Rome and Canterbury, as well as elsewhere, have not, to my knowledge, uttered a single word of protest against those propagating wrong information about the length of time that Christianity has been preached.

I feel that we have been badly let down and I can only feel utter contempt towards them.

RICHARD JOHNSON, Leaverholme Close, Cliviger, Burnley.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.