THE HIPPARCOS DISTANCES OF OPEN CLUSTERS AND THEIR IMPLICATION ON THELOCAL VARIATIONS OF THE DELTA-Y DELTA-Z RATIO/

Arguments are collected to demonstrate that recent Hipparcos results o n the distances of open clusters are in agreement with previous estima tes in the Russian literature which have pointed to a shorter distance scale. Evidence of the absence of a universal correlation between Hel ium and metal abundances is given. It is suggested that violations of this correlation may explain the apparent contradictions between the r elative positions of the main sequences of open clusters found from th e Hipparcos distances.