I DID enjoy Ken Holden's letter (LET, January 13). Instead of wasting vast sums of money on superfluous wars such as Iraq, Switzerland is building two 40-mile long rail tunnels to keep heavy freight off the roads.

Meanwhile, Transport Secretary Alistair Darling has cancelled six tramway routes in Liverpool and Manchester and yet by some divine miracle has found a larger sum of money to widen the M6 in Cheshire, only for the traffic to seize up even more by the time it reaches south Lancashire.

A friend of mine who lived for four years in two of Switzerland's largest cities, says that his three children were safe to go out on their own at any time. Why do we not enjoy that peace and freedom in our own towns and cities?

Our shrewd voting system in no way reflects the votes cast at general elections and until the House of Lords is fully replaced by a democratically elected upper chamber and the common is proportionally elected, it ill-behoves us to pontificate to other countries on how to run a democracy.

Have people in North West England been alienated from regional devolution because: (1) We were offered much weaker powers than those granted to Scotland? or (2) Has the threat of yet more unnecessary boundary changes turned people off?

I think that if it improves our quality of life it must be worth going for.

TOM CULBERT, Knowsley Road West, Blackburn.