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A strange world that promises a bleak future
From: Peter Asquith-Cowen, First Lane, Anlaby, near Beverley.
REGARDING your report "Fury over 326,000 for defiant B&B boss" (Yorkshire Post, November 19), I find it amazing that the British public doesn't protest more, like the French do.
We have a crazy scenario where publicans are still
having to pay the same taxes despite loss of income; one
is even prepared to go to jail
as she sees this as a gross example of injustice (Radio 4, November 20). We have certain BBC presenters paid obscene salaries for using lewd language.
We have – the most iniquitous of all – the failed chief executive of Bradford & Bingley receiving a huge annual salary that
most of us can only dream of, while thousands face an uncertain, bleak future, and yet he is set to receive a massive 326,000 bonus for achieving nothing.
Pensioners live in fear of rocketing fuel prices, and may receive a small, gratuitous 10 Christmas bonus.
One-third of houses face repossession and yet there
is a woefully inadequate supply of council/rented accommodation.
Rachman-like companies have used tactics to persuade gullible and misinformed people how to cope with this and the banks in the first
place encouraged people to get into debt.
There is no wonder the high street is witnessing little in
the way of pre-Christmas shopping.
The home-owning paradise as conceived by Margaret Thatcher is falling into tatters and the privatised utilities have caused more misery through greed and avarice.
Is there any wonder that people are looking to the past, to a so-called golden age, when people were happy with a little.
Perhaps the building societies that have remained mutual may fare better during these hard times, but the lot of Joe Public is grim.
The Government seems to have no real solid plans to get out of this mess.
I wonder what Christmas will be like next year?
Why Charles is a picture of contentment
From: Phyllis Capstick, Hellifield, Skipton.
EVERY picture tells a story and the pictures in the press of Prince Charles on his 60th birthday show, beyond any doubt, how happy and contented he has become since his marriage to Camilla (Yorkshire Post, November 15).
The difference in his demeanour, between now and how he used to be, is
truly amazing.
Diana didn't think he would make a good king; and the way he was, maybe not. Time and Camilla have changed all that ,and I hope they can have many more happy years together.
Carers want action and a real improvement in services
From: Malcolm Naylor, Grange View,
Otley.
I HAVE just returned from
a meeting launching the Health Authority/Leeds Council Carers' Charter and saddened that this was just another public relations exercise full of esoteric promises they can easily wriggle out of.
This was reinforced when the executive member for social care, Peter Harrand, posed for his photo opportunity while angry carers were squashed into an overcrowded room.
Carers don't want a charter. They want real improvements, like home care services without means testing, respite care on a regular basis and more than the measly 48 per week carers' allowance paid whether they are pensioners or not. A charter is only words. We want action.
The Government will do anything but spend money. Instead of setting up a National Care Service funded from income tax, the cost is put on means tested charges and council tax.
Why should carers trust a Conservative/Liberal Council that broke its promise to abolish the means tested charges for home care it inherited from Labour?
Carers are right to be cynical. Care is only provided if "affordable" while billions are thrown to bail out bankers' greed. The problem is that care doesn't show a profit and that is an anathema to capitalists.
Care in this country is ranked poorer than in the former Soviet state of Estonia but health executives are rewarded with 38 per cent pay increases while children, the disabled and elderly die of neglect and carers suffer nervous breakdowns.
Please give carers your support and ask councillors and MPs to help.
On returning home after this meeting, there was a letter addressed to my wife, who died two months ago. And, yes. It was from our "caring" NHS.This show is strictly TV nonsense
From: Brian Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.
THREE cheers for John Sergeant for exposing the naffness of yet another BBC production.
I'm not sure which is giving me the greater pleasure, the experts' outrage at the success of the likeable TV journalist or the anger of the viewers who have been daft enough to subscribe to Strictly Come Dancing.
We have come to expect the tabloid press to fill their front pages with trivial rubbish but when some of the national broadsheets lead with this story and it is given prominence on radio and TV news it speaks of a nation gone crazy.
I didn't care much for its precursor Come Dancing but at least that show was about ballroom dancing and not about publicity-seeking celebrities.
I can't think of a personality, not even George Galloway, who has not been diminished, in my view, by appearing on reality TV and, let's face it, that's what Strictly is.
From: Janet Berry, Hambleton, North Yorkshire.
I AM sorry but I just cannot relate to the furore created by John Sergeant's decision to leave Strictly Come Dancing.
I did not find him remotely entertaining, just rather embarrassing. I actually felt uncomfortable watching him stomping about with a rather disdainful patronising expression on his face as if it was all a little beneath him. I felt so sorry for his superb partner who absolutely danced her socks off to try to cover the inadequacy of John.
Yes, I admire him tremendously as a political journalist but, alas, he has no skill as a dancer. It was the best possible decision to leave, in fact, with hindsight it would have been better for him not to have taken part, but many people love the underdog. I do not and prefer to watch people who can actually dance.
From: R Birchall, Doncaster Road, Darfield, Barnsley.
FOLLOWING the departure of John Sergeant from Strictly Come Dancing, may I suggest that an even greater improvement could be made by replacing Bruce Forsyth as compere to the show. If anyone is past his sell by date then it is this man.
From: Terry Palmer, South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley.
WHY all the surprise at John Sergeant's resignation from the BBC's dancing competition? After all, the answer lies in the programme's title, Strictly Come Dancing. And John, however much he is liked, just cannot dance.
Naked opportunism
From: Maureen Hunt, Seckar Lane, Woolley,
near Wakefield.
MOST of the recent production of Cabaret at the Leeds Grand theatre was excellent. What a pity it was marred by some unnecessary vulgarity and
the appearance of a totally naked man (full frontal) who ran on to the stage, had no relevance to the plot and was as out of place
as a streaker on a football pitch.
Cabaret was set in Berlin in 1930-31 when, according to the programme, "Berlin became a world where moral parameters were considered redundant and also a prime subject for mockery".
It was "an age of permissiveness" with no censorship and no closing hours, where cocaine had become fashionable.
It sounds disturbingly familiar, doesn't it?
By the end of the show, the decadent society had been swept away and
replaced by the monstrous Nazi regime.
Those destined for the concentration camps were shown naked and vulnerable. The scene was beautifully staged, sensitive, poignant and unforgettable – one of those rare and brilliant theatrical experiences.
What a contrast to the intrusive and purposeless nudist in the first act.
Warden with no kindness
From: Pauline Gadsby
Peet, Beech Street,
Bingley.
WHERE has common sense or human kindness gone in this country? I am an old disabled woman, needing a walking frame to get about.
Yesterday, in Harrogate, my friend dropped me off near a shop and went to park the car.
I bought what I needed in the shop and my friend said: "Just walk round the corner and I'll pick you up."
After a few minutes, she arrived and was about to pull up in the layby – not blocking the traffic in any way – when a 30ish female traffic warden appeared and said "You can't stop there."
I remonstrated, saying my friend was picking me up – she could see that I was disabled. "I'll book her if she stops there" came the reply.
So I then had to cross a very busy road and hobble to a side road where my friend took me and my frame into the car, the whole exercise taking less than a minute.
What possible excuse has that woman to behave in this way? Methinks "a little power corrupts."
Are these people not trained at all?
Osborne's role in opposition
From: JW Buckley, Throstle Cottage, Aketon, Pontefract.
AN MP says he has a duty to tell voters the truth – Shadow Chancellor George Osborne on the economy, (Yorkshire Post, November 17). The only question is: "Can we believe him?" Experience teaches
us that this is usually not
the case.
Refreshing as it is to hear these words, Mr Osborne
would be more accurate if he said: "It is my job to oppose."
For he is, after all, a member of the Opposition, and it is his job to oppose what the Government proposes.
From: Nick Martinek, Briarlyn Road, Huddersfield.
I SEE that Gordon "no more boom and bust" Brown, our less than esteemed Prime Minister, wants us to believe two impossible things before breakfast. First, that he is entirely innocent of blame for the economic mess we are in. And second, that George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor, is such a respected and powerful politician that he has, in one speech, ruined the pound.
Garden toll
of the hawks
From: RW Perkin, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds.
I HEARTILY agree with Paul Richardson (Yorkshire Post, November 15) that sparrow hawks need culling.
We used to have 15 white fan tailed pigeons but the sparrow hawks moved in and decimated them. We would find a pile of feathers on the front drive, a heap on the lawn, until there were only three.
He then turned to the small birds which we feed under our verandah. We used to have a BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) ringer who put his nets up in the garden.
He would catch 25-30 small birds in an afternoon, these got to two and he does not bring his nets anymore.
It is time the RSPB got their heads out of the sand and gave up blaming farmers and even cats and culled sparrow hawks – easier said than done, as they are so fast.
Public pay increases
From: Tim Mickleburgh, Littlefield Lane, Grimsby.
IN his diatribe against public sector workers (Yorkshire Post , November 19), Bernard Ingham forgets that such a category includes teachers, doctors, nurses, firemen, policemen, library staff and many others with a salary less than 20,000. Is he really saying that they should be worse off by not having any form of pay increase?
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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