I AM somewhat alarmed by the new "zero tolerance" approach to crime fighting that has received so much publicity.

We already live in the most oppressively over-policed regime in Western Europe and I fear for all our freedoms when our lords and masters in the establishment are so enthusiastic to use the police in this way.

I think intolerance will be the operative word, as anyone using the roads will tell you. The politicians are determined to reduce car use and are using the police to make driving as unpleasant as possible to try and force people to use public transport, whether they want to or not.

Perhaps a better idea would be zero tolerance towards the causes of crime.

How about zero tolerance towards the outrageously unfair system of wealth creation and distribution in this country which sees seven per cent of the population owning 84 per cent of the wealth and millions of people forced to live in poverty without the resources or chances to escape their fate? Let's have zero tolerance for the use of deliberately high permanent unemployment as a means of subjugating all sections of society; for the ownership of vast amounts of land by a relative few who prevent public access so people have nowhere to go for recreation and who keep the price of land so high that the cost of new houses is beyond the means of a large percentage of people, who are forced to live in run-down urban areas and turn to crime as their only serious career option.

What we really need is zero tolerance to the whole system as it exists in this septic isle.

PAUL ATHERTON, Wythburn Avenue, Blackburn.

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