BASED on one programme featuring the grand total of two economists, L Spiteri (You Say, Saturday, November 8) absolves the euro of any blame for Germany's economic woes.

Well, here are a few more figures.

Ninety-five - the percentage of Germans who disagree with Mr Spiteri and his economists and do blame the euro for their troubles (source: New York Times survey).

Ten thousand - price rises in Germany during the nine months to February, 2002 alone (source: IFAV Consumer Research).

One hundred and eighty-five C&A shops in Germany now taking Deutschmarks again due to consumer demand.

Then there is the £35.8bn worth of public sector cuts that the German Government has said it will have to make by 2006 to meet the euro's Stability Pact.

As if that weren't bad enough, potentially even more damaging is the deep public discontent in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe) over the real cost of joining the euro, which will have goodness knows what consequences further down the line.

This mad experiment is already causing more problems than it was ever going to solve.

JULIAN THAKE,

Worcester.

SO Michael Howard is the new Conservative Party Leader. It was reported that he was chosen unopposed and he will unite the party by leading it from the centre. Now, where have I heard that before?

I wonder what happened to the Conservative rank and file - they were not very happy about having a new party leader chosen for them, instead of elected by them.

Of course I do sympathise with them. After all, it was the same Conservative Party of Michael Howard, who in the 1980s legislated for unions to ballot their rank and file members before taking industrial action.

L SPITERI, Worcester.