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ID cards will not bring safety and security
From: David Quarrie, Lynden Way, Acomb, York. THE cost to the UK taxpayers for the proposed identity cards will be £4bn, and each card will cost those over 16 £35. This money would be far more cost effectively spent on more police, more surveillance and better intelligence gathering.
We also need improved international cooperation and exchange of news.
The problem as regards fraud, terrorism, asylum seekers, illegal immigration is not one of identity. The authorities know who these people are, but they cannot catch them, or if caught do not deter them, sentence and convict them, deport them or put them in secure confinement.
ID cards did not prevent the attacks on September 11, in Madrid, Bali, Kenya or Istanbul. Any such scheme is useless as a voluntary one, it must be compulsory, and even then the bad people will have all the best forged documentation.
I am not in principle against ID cards – it is just that they will not be effective in achieving what Home Secretary David Blunkett and most of us want – safety and security.
From: AV Midgley, Meadow Close, Hampsthwaite, Harrogate.
IN 1939 we were issued with identity cards – immediately.
No data bases or computers then. No biometric plastic cards with facial scans, iris scans and finger prints – which may become a reality in three years.
Estimate cost 3.1bn! Yours in disbelief.
Medical staff praised for saving daughter
From: Maureen and Allan Hewitt, Church Lane, Wighill, Tadcaster.
IT IS every parent's nightmare to be informed that their child has been involved in a horrific road accident. This was the message we received two weeks ago. Had it not been for the sheer professionalism and expertise of the emergency services we may have had a sorry tale to tell; as it was, however, these wonderful people took care of our daughter and she is now doing fine.
She was taken to the Accident and Emergency department of York District Hospital where the most sincere and understanding staff continued this care. When we arrived at the hospital, we as parents were shown the utmost compassion and understanding from all staff from reception to discharge and were kept informed and involved the whole time.
Making
a stand
From: D Jervis, Hunmanby Hall, Filey.
HERE we go again with the wringing of hands and the searching of consciences, debating if the forthcoming tour to Zimbabwe by our cricket team should be cancelled or undertaken.
Having read the excellent article by Richard Hopwood and the leading letter by Gavin Glasby (April 24), I agree with many of the points they raise. If the International Cricket Council prefer to bury their heads in the sand, if the Government continues its duplicitous policies, the England and Wales Cricket Board is fearful of financial penalties and the International Olympic Committee can be influenced by the African vote that may end our hopes of staging the 2012 Olympics, then who is going to take a stand against a loathsome regime which persecutes the majority of its people, black and white?
I anticipate that it will eventually come down to each English cricketer having to decide whether to tour or not. On previous occasions, we all felt this to be unfair but this time I really hope that the players will decide.
Farce of cash for staying on
From: Dr Paul Charlson, Westfield Park, Brough, Nr Hull.
THE Government has set an arbitrary target for the number of people entering higher education, the likely result being a significant number of graduates with expensive and largely useless degrees.
In order to help reach this target a scheme of paying students of parents earning less than 30,000 to stay on at school is to be introduced. There will be a number of students with genuine hardship who will be encouraged to stay on because of this.
However, I suspect it will encourage others who are not motivated to learn to continue into the sixth form. This will have an adverse effect on those students eager to achieve. The whole situation is descending into farce, raising expectations of some students beyond their capabilities and wasting their money.
Woolly
minded
From: John Riseley, Harcourt Drive, Harrogate.
MANY people will find it heart-warming that one in six Shetland Islanders signed a petition calling for a Burmese family to be allowed to stay. I am not among them. I find it woolly-minded and morally bankrupt to try to help one family through a hole in the fence while maintaining that fence to keep millions of other families out. The issue can never be just one family.
Those who signed the petition should be regarded as having volunteered their island as a site for the refugee centres that no one else wants.
Save the building
From: Colin S Jeffrey, East Mount Road, York.
I SEE nothing particularly surprising in Terry's of York chocolate factory being shut and operations being relocated abroad by its owners Kraft Foods.
Reaction describing the news as "devastating" are over the top. Terry's won't close down for at least 15 months. Unemployment isn't high and alternative jobs are available. Terry's workers need to make sure they get every penny they are entitled to in redundancy settlement payments – and then move on.
It's beyond me how anyone can be sentimental about working in a factory for years. However, I would like to see the building itself, overlooking Knavesmire, survive.
Accepting guidance
From: RGR Smith, Northgate, Cottingham, Nr Hull.
THE Ten Commandments seem to worry our secularists. Why? It is in the breaking of these rules that our troubles start and, yes we do frequently break them, but rules we must have, to sustain a cohesive culture, nation, or even a club for that matter, and the Commandments have worked well enough for 2,000 years.
A God-guided democracy, a democracy with all its faults and pitfalls, misjudgments of humanity, is the only real and lasting answer to our troubles. A rocky road sometimes but its direction is true and steady and shines out beyond all other creeds.
P
ersistent
belief
From: AJ Stacpoole, Ampleforth Abbey, York.
YOU ask (page 7, April 27) what do we think about secular philosophies being taught in RE classes: it is the latest example of the world's religions being overtaken by tolerance, by uncritical acceptance, by no focused beliefs and no consistent pattern of doctrine. It is said: "To believe anything and everything is to believe nothing."
But Christianity, Britain's persistent belief since Pope Gregory sent Augustine's monks in 597, has a clarity of claim quite different and utterly clear. Let us turn here only to Peter's resurrection addresses in Acts 2-4. He proclaimed: "All who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." He explained: "Exalted at God's right hand Jesus received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit – so that all you now perceive flows from him." He established this: "Jesus is the stone rejected, now become the corner-stone: in all the world no other name has been granted to mankind by which we can be saved."
Peter enlarged the point: "We are witnesses to all this, we and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him." He exalted Jesus as leader and saviour.
Tidying up claim over EU constitution is the same old fairy story
From: R Ross, Brantingham Close, Cottingham, Nr Hull.
I WAS truly amazed to read Richard Corbett's letter (April 26) repeating that old fairy story that the EU constitution is nothing more than a "tidying up exercise".
Leaders of many European countries and many senior European politicians have stated that the constitution is seen as the cornerstone of a new "federal states of Europe". It is only here in the UK that the Government has attempted to disguise this as something which it is not.
If the proposal is for a federal state, fine. But at least let the Government be honest about it, and not pretend that it is something different.
I have no wish to see the UK withdraw from the EU but I have no faith in the proposed constitution. I know that other people may hold different views, and I accept their right to do so. I will willingly listen to any rational arguments which they may put forward in support of their beliefs.
What I cannot stand is the arrogant attitude of the pro-Europeans toward anyone who does not share their view. They seem to prefer ridicule rather than reason to promote their case, and view the general public as having an IQ less than that of a delinquent butterfly.
Even now, we have British politicians (of both parties) stating in public that the referendum should not have been called because the public is not intelligent enough to make a decision. What they mean is we might vote No.
It will be interesting to see if we have to vote again, should we "get it wrong" the first time. They did in the referendum in Ireland.
Oh, can I also lay to rest that other myth that the world will self-destruct if the country votes No.
Rest assured that this will not be the case.The rules are quite clear, if any country votes against the constitution then the document fails and we simply go back to where we were before.
Privileged childhood
From: Dorothea Desforges, Ferry Road, South Cave,
Nr Hull.
I READ with interest the
article (April 24) on wartime evacuees.
At six-years of age, I was
evacuated from a noisy, inner-city terrace house in Hull to
a remote wheat farm in Canada where in five remarkable
and extraordinary years, I encountered skunks, wolves, gophers and marauding
raccoons. Also Indians, Chinese, Mounties and a hermit called Beard.
No toys, no comics, no playmates, no running water, no electricity, no toilets, no holidays and no money.
Experts today would be unanimous in labellingme under-
privileged and having, as your article headlined "a lost childhood".
Underprivileged, me? No, the experts have it all wrong. I consider myself to have been a very privileged child indeed.
In fact, the space, beauty and solitude of the Canadian wheatlands affected me for the rest of my life.
Rough roads
From: Walter Behrend,
Fern Point Scarcroft,
Leeds.
SOME of the roads, streets and lanes in north Leeds remind me of the ones in Eastern Europe in the 1960s.
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor remind us frequently that our economy is the soundest in Europe.
May I, on behalf of the motorists in this country – as I am sure that Leeds conditions apply also to other parts of the country – request the authorities to take drastic actions and let the motorist feel that he/she drives in a relatively prosperous country.
Last and certainly not least, this would obviously improve safety as well. How many people drive in the middle of the road to avoid potholes?
Waste of time
From: Peter Hole,
Green Lane, Northowram, Halifax.
I AM appalled that some 20 Yorkshire Labour MPs, including my own, should be wasting yet more Parliamentary time calling for a totally unjustifiable ban on hunting.
With the nation's transport system in chaos, with the National Health Service crying out for sympathetic attention, with the crisis in Iraq taxing all our consciences, surely these people could find something positive to do?
A ban on hunting will not
save the life of a single fox. Indeed, as in Scotland, where
a misguided ban has already been implemented, more
foxes will be killed in ways which cause much greater
suffering.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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