The credit crunch we are being told is tightening its grip and money could be very much harder to get for a very long time to come.

Hartlepool is a small town very much like hundreds of small towns across the country. It is trying hard to make its way, if it knows which way it wants to go. It is there I believe it has a problem.

Heavy industry or tourism? Manufacturing or tourism?

It is said that you should not put all your eggs in one basket, but sometimes you need to put more in one than in any other to prosper. Expand, build homes anywhere, everywhere. It's what is bringing in the money.

Middle Warren half done, a building site. Marina three-quarters done, a building site for 20 years. Cleveland Road/Greenland Road wants to be a housing, shop, restaurant, building site. C.J.C West View an up-market housing site.

Meanwhile, hundreds of good homes stand empty, as they have now for months, waiting to become more building sites to build new homes. Powlett Road an example.

This with hundreds of people waiting for homes to live in now, some in hostels for a very long time, running out of hope.

So what of all these housing sites now the bubble has burst? What, if anything, is happening to finish what has been started?

The only two things we do know are going to happen in Hartlepool over the next few years are one week of tourism and I think chaos when the Tall Ships come in, then we will be back to not enough, with not enough to bring them back.

The other, years of ship breaking, toxic waste and landfill when the ships come in.

Where we are now is nowhere land. We need that man with a plan, A man with a vision.

I don't believe we can go on piecemeal as we are now. We are either tourism focused or industry focused. We are not big enough to be both.

The town needs to concentrate its efforts on bringing in money to build a tourist-based industry with a clear plan of where it wants to be with that plan in ten years.

Or it needs to concentrate its efforts in bringing in light and heavy industry to feed the town's future.

Without one or the other of these objectives, we will neither be one thing nor the other, being not very good at either.

John Marshall,
St Helen's Street,
Hartlepool.