I AM writing to echo the sentiments of your recent correspondents on the subject of Leeds Bradford airport. (Yorkshire Post, May 2).

In the last five years, my wife and I have travelled through 43 different airports in every major continent across the world.

Without reservation, we place Leeds Bradford among the worst four we travel through (along with Newark, New York; Los Angeles and London Heathrow). What do these four have in common? A surly indifference to the needs of the passenger, lousy, expensive food and a security regime to rival the Stazi at its worst.

The management and staff at LBA should embark one of their aircraft and fly en masse to Changi, Singapore to see how an airport should
be run and, hopefully, learn some useful lessons that will make our local airport a pleasure to fly through once more.

Meanwhile, I shall use Manchester which, for a Yorkshireman, is akin to supporting Lancashire at cricket.

From: JG Freeman, Rigton Hill, North Rigton, North Yorkshire.

I WRITE in support of the excellent letter from S Franks (Yorkshire Post, April 29) regarding Leeds Bradford airport's "security arrangements" and the impression it gives to visitors, let alone the inconvenience to customers. The excuse of Government regulations (one wonders what they actually say) which are unlikely to ever go away begs the question as to what the Leeds Bradford owners/operators are proposing to do about the problem long term.

What about concrete blocks at the entrances to airport buildings?

We deserve, at least, an acceptable explanation from the airport bosses. Let's be hearing it!


Tell us the true dangers of mobile phones

From: S Graham, Dewsbury Road, Wakefield.

HOPEFULLY, the scientists looking at whether mobile phones damage your health (Yorkshire Post, April 30) can come up with some definitive answers.

At the moment, the debate is like a pantomime with people on the one hand saying they think mobile phones and the associated masts cause cancer and the industry shouting back: "Oh no, they don't."

Whatever the results of the study, it is unlikely people will give up their phones but if there are dangers then we could at least take measures to reduce the risk.


Britain would pay price for propping up the euro

From: Nick Martinek, Briarlyn Road, Huddersfield.

NORMALLY, Europhiles – in the UK at least – try to hide the full extent of EU control over us. So what prompted James Bovington's admission: "Britain is still obliged by treaty to follow an... EU financial policy" (Yorkshire Post, April 30)?

Why he was intimating that, since we are already partly under the EU's financial thumb, we might as well go the whole hog and join the ERM (again) and the euro.

I can see that going down like a lead balloon.

And where he gets the
notion that UK interest rates have not been "radically different" from those of the eurozone, I don't know.
But obviously not from the
real world.

Nor is it remotely true, as he suggests, that individual European nations have "a seat at the currency top table". Far from it. The complaints by Italy and France, in particular, are about their lack of control over the euro.

The existence of the euro
may enable the EU Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, to state that the EU has "the dimension of empire", but the last thing the UK should be doing is advancing the EU "empire" by propping up the flawed euro at our own expense.

From: Dr DR Cooper, Belmont Park Avenue, Maidenhead, Berkshire.

I WOULD agree with everything in the letter from David Wright ("We are losing our sovereignty to unelected rulers", Yorkshire Post, May 1), except the idea that British sovereignty is being "dissolved away".

Speaking in the Commons on February 27, Europe Minister Jim Murphy quoted the Diceyan doctrine that Parliament "has the right to make or unmake any law whatever", adding that "the UK Parliament is and remains sovereign. That is not affected one millimetre or one inch by the Lisbon treaty".

Curiously, though, having asserted the continuing sovereignty of Parliament and the supremacy of its laws, he then went straight on to assert the primacy of EU law over British laws. And a few days later he voted against New Clause 9, an amendment designed to affirm and defend the legal supremacy of Parliament against attack by Declaration 17 attached to the Lisbon treaty.

That may seem deeply paradoxical, but the explanation is simple. British sovereignty remains intact and unimpaired, but rather than exercising that sovereignty, most British MPs now prefer to kow-tow to the EU.


National effort won war

From: D Downs, Mountbatten Avenue, Sandal, Wakefield.

WHY should the Second World War efforts of the "Bevan Boys" (many of whom could only be employed as surface workers) and the women's "Land Army" be elevated above the professional miners and people employed in mining ancillary supply services who were denied the option of joining the Armed Forces together with the women
who worked in the armament and other vital heavy engineering factories?

Singling out the Bevan Boys and the Land Army's efforts is totally unwarranted when, in effect, it was the national effort that contributed to the winning of the war.

Time to end
name calling

From: B Davis, Otley Road, Leeds.

DAVID Cameron could do nothing but admit that he has failed to take the "punch and judy" out of politics given his recent behaviour at Prime Minister's Questions (Yorkshire Post, April 30).

His defence is that people expect robust exchanges on these occasions. Certainly people want Gordon Brown holding to account, but does that really require Mr Cameron to call the PM a "loser". Politicians should leave the name-calling to the playground. Mr Cameron does not need to call Mr Brown names for everyone to realise that he is not doing his job properly.

Starling capture

From: Emma MacDonald, Natural England, Leeds.

I READ with interest Chris Benfield's article "Why you really shouldn't watch the birdie" (Yorkshire Post, April 30). Chris said that the starlings were captured under licence from English Nature. Readers should be aware that Natural England now supplies these sorts
of licences.

English Nature, the Countryside Agency and the Rural Development Service joined to form this new organisation back in
October 2006.

Medal words

From: AJ Stacpoole, Ampleforth.

YOUR article on Zara Phillips (Yorkshire Post, April 30) ended
by saying: "Last year she collected an MBE from the Queen for..."

In fact, she was appointed a Member of the British Empire and so received the due medal. May I say "collected" sounds just too casual.