The UK's glass industry is centred on Yorkshire and employs several thousand people in this region. It is therefore very important to the local economy. Indeed, Yorkshire is still a major centre for many other manufacturing industries.

Turmoil in the financial markets is a worry to us all, but events of the past few months must surely now lead to a root and branch reappraisal of the importance to the national and local economies of good old- fashioned manufacturing.

For too long, we have been regarded – unfairly – by government in London and Brussels as being a "smoke stack relic from the past" which is better off being off-shored to the emerging economies. This view may have had some validity when the financial services and retail sectors were growing and creating jobs.

What needs to be understood is that one of the major reasons so many manufacturing jobs have been lost over recent years is that government, through its actions (or inaction in the case of energy policy), is itself responsible for creating the conditions which are increasingly making UK manufacturing uncompetitive with the rest of the world.
The glass industry, in common with many others, faces escalating and increasingly uncompetitive energy prices, which are also feeding through into raw material costs.

Defra has set a totally unrealistic target for the glass industry in the next phase of our Climate Change Agreement – so high that it could jeopardise our 80 per cent discount and that would cost the sector £12m a year in additional tax.

We also face the prospect of auctioning for allowances under phase 111 of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme with a potential annual cost of £100m by 2020.

Additionally the "pass through" costs of achieving the UK's Renewables Obligation targets will be felt most by industries such as glass.
In addition, the rates of corporation tax in the UK remain high by international standards.

The Government recently produced a strategy document for UK manufacturing. There are no references in it as to how it intends to address the very real issues outlined above.

The glass industry produces the products that will be essential if we are to achieve our national Climate Change Targets – solar glazing, insulation, lighting, solar panels, wind turbine blades and genuinely recyclable packaging.

We need to put in place a series of measures to ensure that these sectors not only remain active in the UK but are allowed to grow without further penalty. It is to be hoped that Doncaster MP Ed Miliband's appointment as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and Peter Mandelson's reappearance will lead to a more proactive defence of Yorkshire and UK manufacturing.

From: Terry Palmer, South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley.

I BET New Labour never imagined it would suddenly own a couple of banks, with a few more high street names likely to be added to their portfolio.

After all, New Labour in its first10 years or so privatised anything it could flog to generate cash. Then we have the Tory Shadow Chancellor, "Squeaky" George Osborne, friend of the City spivs , now humiliating himself by posing, all of a sudden, as the now scourge of these City slickers in a desperate attempt to keep up with public opinion. Prime Minister Gordon Brown now needs to get some regulations into the City including condemning, curbing and taxing the obscene bonuses paid to these spivs who think nothing of spending money on a whim what many families have to live on for a year or more.
From: David Collins, Westfield Drive, Skelmanthorpe.

AT present, we all seem to be panicking about a worldwide financial crisis as though it were one problem. However there are a number of different elements: lending, currency, commodities, stock markets, etc.
All have one cause – greed. Compounded by the fact that the players pass from one market to another without noticing, because all they are doing is gambling; in what it doesn't matter as they are all figures on a screen. At present, we have the potential for worldwide action given that banks are incapable of getting themselves out of the current mess without governmental action. However, I have no confidence that anything will happen as those most likely to lose out have huge influence on governments worldwide.

At present, the international systems operate so quickly, based on software packages, that no- one controls it and no one thinks about what is actually happening. A reduction in the volume of transactions, and in the speed at which they happen, would be an advantage, providing a breathing space and time for thought.

From: Howard Knight, Lyons Street, Sheffield.

IS the John Redwood who writes about Bradford & Bingley (Yorkshire Post, October 6) the same John Redwood who only last year said that "the cost of financial regulation far-outweighed the benefits", and "there is no need to regulate mortgages because the lender, not the customer, takes the risk" in support of his proposals to David Cameron to slash the regulatory regime for banks and building societies, remove controls on money-laundering and demote international and European-wide regulation?

Surely recent events have confirmed the need for tighter international and European-wide financial regulation rather than the opposite?
If the banks and building societies – including Bradford & Bingley – couldn't understand and manage the risks attached to various financial instruments, how does he expect individual customers, with small funds which they wish to invest safely and securely, to manage it?

From: JW Buckley, Aketon, Pontefract.

I HAVE been mulling over part of an article by Richard Wellings of the Institute of Economic Affairs (Yorkshire Post, September 18): "The banking sector is already very heavily regulated. In the United States, strict rules that forced banks to lend to risky borrowers in the sub-prime market, helped cause the current problems. And regulations also incentivised bankers to create the complex financial instruments that are now proving so difficult to unravel."

In other words, the cause of the credit crunch is government action, which explains his further comments: "The UK is fortunate to possess well-developed financial markets. Providing government can avoid the temptation to over-regulate, these markets will continue to provide the best solutions for the current banking crises."

So, government manipulation of the banking sector has created the mess; and provided government can learn from it, and not meddle further, then there is hope for us all.

The omens are not good, for page two of the same edition of the Yorkshire Post contains an article which says: "Leading politicians yesterday called for greater regulation of the British financial sector..."

Politicians are consistent and predictable. No matter what happens, if regulations have failed, it is never because of an excess of regulation, but because of a lack of regulation.
Despite protestations to the contrary, no-one has learned anything.