THE delicious, fresh-daily pork pies from my favoured supplier (I'll call him Bill) have gone up from 80p to 90p. Having done my training in the motor industry, where clever Japanese people showed me how to resist inflation, I tried to get an itemised bill of materials, labour and overhead that might justify such an increase – and failed.

"It's the market," said Bill. So, on principle, I reduced my normal purchase from two pies to one. Bill then said that, if all his customers did this, he would go out of business and the four people who work for him would lose their jobs.

I, of course, would still be able to get a pie – but from the supermarket up the road: at £1.20, with a giant carbon footprint. No extra jobs would be created by Bill's demise, and with competition reduced, prices would further inflate. Bill suggested that, rather than reduce my buy, I should, in fact, increase it: if all his customers bought three pies, he said, he would be able to improve his manufacturing economics, better control his costs, and maybe prices could actually be reduced. And he might employ extra people, too.

As a life-long good Socialist, I'm not sure what to do. I can't afford to pay 90p for a pie, but I am ever mindful of Gordon's dictat on the effects of excessive consumption on inflation – and I probably couldn't manage three pies, even if they were 70p each. I did wonder if I should buy three pies, thereby doing my bit to control inflation, but send the extra one to Downing Street to forward to someone needy? Alternatively, I could give up being a Socialist and become an economist.


Sizing up the secrets of success in the garment trade

From: Miss A Clough, Whiteley's of Bridlington, Promenade,
Bridlington.

I READ with pleasure the letter from Mrs Linda Sheridan of York (Yorkshire Post, July 14). It was so nice to realise I was not old. Mrs Sheridan forgot to mention that some "modern" dress fabrics have had another incarnation in the '60s as kitchen curtain designs.

They didn't last long as they were so ugly. One of my reps, now alas with the angels, told me his heart sank if, when he opened his new season sample range, the colours were yellow and orange. He knew it
would be a bad season! Blues are the
happy colours.

I own and run a shop – Whiteley's – and the most frequently heard remark is, "What lovely dresses – where do M&S etc look?" Most women of the "golden oldie" generation are 5ft to 5ft 5in tall, and size 14-20. They are normal. We should not have survived for 107 years if we had not noticed this fact.


Rail operator must prove it can run services

From: Malcolm Lambert, Frogmire Close, Knaresborough.

AS a keen user of public transport, I am among those that would be happy to see a direct Harrogate to London rail service. Sadly, it was disappointing to read that various rail operators are having a public falling out over who should operate trains on the East Coast Main Line ("Rail firms united in opposition to rival's services", Yorkshire Post, July 11).

Regular rail users, myself included, place reliability at a premium. I was therefore rather astounded that Ian Yeowart, the managing director of Grand Central, has the affront to criticise both Hull Trains and National Express, given the unreliability of Grand Central's own services.

As your political correspondent Tom Smithard points out, Grand Central's "open access" services from Sunderland and York to London have been notoriously unreliable and services are often cancelled, causing delays to other operators. Given the congestion that exists on the East Coast line, the last thing needed is an operator that brings massive potential for disruption.

I have watched this whole process unfurl on the Office of Rail Regulation's website. In correspondence published on that site, Mr Yeowart accuses Hull Trains of, in essence, jumping on the Grand Central bandwagon – aping its plans. Grand Central, if you'll pardon the pun, is getting ideas above its station and Mr Yeowart's stance that Grand Central are entitled to operate services on the line ahead of the competition is rich coming from a man who once accused GNER of thinking that the rail network was theirs.

I dread to think what will happen if Grand Central's Bradford to London services are given the go-ahead – the repercussions for the line could see many hours spent waiting on the platform. And, I hasten to add, the need for services from Harrogate to the capital is much greater given that a large percentage of Bradford's population is located in the Airedale and Wharfedale valleys and therefore any journey to London naturally flows geographically via Leeds not Bradford. There is also a greater likelihood of traffic flowing in the opposite direction to Harrogate, given that it is a major destination for tourism, conferences and exhibitions.

Less time spent criticising others and more time devoted to increasing customer satisfaction would benefit Grand Central and, ultimately, passengers. The MD of Hull Trains is right – Grand Central should not be allowed to operate any more services until they can demonstrate unequivocally their ability to deliver their advertised services to customers.