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There must be real action to alleviate flooding threat
From: John Richmond, Harrogate Road, Ripon, North Yorkshire. YOUR front page report (Yorkshire Post, January 1) on the Environment Agency's latest ploy to combat flooding will give cold comfort to those people who were flooded out of their homes in June 2007.
How many more daft ideas is this government agency going to throw up before real action is taken?
While only a minority of residents in Ripon were severely flooded last June (about 100 properties), these same householders were flooded in 2001 when the Environment Agency accepted that their early warning system had been totally inadequate, with sandbags only appearing from the local authority after the houses were five feet in flood water from the River Skell and the River Laver.
After 2001, the Agency carried out a feasibility study of the
area concerned, a report was published with a plan for a floodplain in the lower reaches of the River Laver.
Then came June 2007. Once again the warning system failed miserably.
Even though vast quantities of rain fell in three days, records of which are available, it did not need rocket science to predict severe flooding, that is if someone was taking note of daily rainfall readings taken by water authorities, individual records and even, one might anticipate, the Environment Agency.
So why now come up with yet another crackpot idea of working with Defra and the Met Office to bring in radar when surely the daily rainfall information, even from small localised areas, could be fed into an overall central Yorkshire grid or even computer, thereby creating a pattern of rainfall and, with the use of a good Ordnance Survey Map reader, could pick out which streams, especially from moorland areas, would be affected by surface flood water.
In view of the major flood damage to Hull and South Yorkshire, dust will be gathering on the flood plan for Ripon, but please I would implore Mark Tinnion, the flood defence manager for Yorkshire, to lay aside any further hare-brained schemes and look to simpler solutions, hopefully before another flood disaster.
Are foxes really so different from us?
From: William Snowden, Butterbowl Gardens, Leeds.
IN a recent article (Yorkshire Post, December 28), Bill Carmichael declared himself to be indifferent to the suffering inflicted on wild animals by those who hunt, and kill, for pleasure. That is his prerogative, just as it is my prerogative to regard such people with contempt.
I prefer to believe, however, that for every cruel person, there are 10 who are kind and compassionate. Some of my friends suggest that I am "a romantic". Perhaps. But better that than a cynic.
Some years ago, I came upon what I presumed to be a tragic scene: cars parked, hazard lights flashing, and people gathered at the roadside. The victim was not human, but animal: a fox, huddled and panting beside a low wall. I pulled over.
"Have you called the RSPCA?" I asked. They had. I walked towards the fox.
"We've been told not to go near it because it might bite," they warned.
"It certainly might," I replied. "But don't worry, I'm a volunteer ranger."
"Oh," observed a young man. "That's even better than the RSPCA."
I wasn't too sure about that. RSPCA inspectors have lots of tackle which can catch and suppress injured animals. He was a handsome dog fox, and in a distressed state. He tried valiantly to climb the wall, but each time he fell back. His back legs were paralysed. I managed to calm him by covering him with a car rug. He showed no aggression towards me. He was a noble beast.
It was then that I saw them, the other foxes: a vixen (his mate?) stood on a bank, watching; a juvenile vixen (their daughter?) stood in a lane, watching. They were wary, fearful, yet they stayed to watch over him, one last time.
I was not wrong: for them, it was a tragic scene.
That incident tells you a lot about animals: their instincts, their relationships and family bonds. They are not so very different to the human animal, are they, Mr Carmichael?
From: RC Dales, Church View, Brompton, Northallerton, North Yorkshire.
BILL Carmichael's column is always worth reading, especially when he is trenchant, but he lost credibility after writing about fox hunting when he referred to fishing among "other cruel pastimes".
If there are readers who think fishing is "cruel" both they and Bill Carmichael need to be informed that (a) there is scientific evidence that fish are so constructed that they cannot experience the human sensation we call pain and (b) anglers have known this for ages, from the behaviour of fish when hooked.
It really is high time that the media stopped encouraging the peculiar people who try to ban country sports. Get tough on drivers who break the law
From: Allan Ramsay, Radcliffe Moor Road, Radcliffe.
IF a requirement of Gordon Brown's plans to reform the NHS is that everybody has to do their bit to improve their health and ultimately the nation's health, then that surely means reform of road traffic laws also – much tougher penalties for law-breaking drivers who not only cause death, injury and a whole lot of upset for all concerned, but upset the balance of the transport system and the environment, too.
With tens of thousands of road casualties every year, and the health and well-being of those who love them, and have to deal with them and support them being adversely affected as well (by drugs, alcohol perhaps), it has to be a major health problem that needs special attention.
And if the so-called healthy activity of cycling is to be taken up to improve health, and indeed improve the environment and reduce congestion, shouldn't cyclists, as much as anyone, deserve a better deal – more respect and protection? And what about some financial incentive similar to that attached to low emission cars? Cyclists who raise money for the likes of cancer and heart disease surely earn it.
Wind is not the answer
From: Tony Middleton, Little Wood Lane, Thorpe Salvin, Worksop.
IT is not planning constraints that are holding back domestic wind turbines (Yorkshire Post, January 5). It is their dire economics, the noise and visual impact on neighbours and the effects of a large, dynamically unbalanced rotating mass on unsuited domestic buildings that make them unattractive other than to the most zealous climate change crusaders.
There is no prospect of any of these issues being affordably resolved in the foreseeable future. Also, the notion that offshore wind turbines will be sited out of sight of land is more than a little fanciful. There are at least two reasons this will not happen; one is that the Government has not ruled that it should be so and the other is the significant cost of construction in deep water, plus the cost and efficiency losses resulting from the transmission of power over longer distances.
Nevertheless, it is infinitely preferable that large wind turbines should be placed offshore, even if it is only a mile or so, rather than onshore within a few hundred yards of people's homes.
No matter how little it may be the liking of many, the survival of this country's economy and the maintenance of a decent quality of life for its population depends entirely on the immediate fast track development of core generating capacity driven by nuclear and clean coal technology.
Question of divisions
From: John Holland, Lindeth Road, Silverdale, Carnforth.
IT is obvious to those who have seen the development of Islamic ghettos in many of our northern towns and cities that the Bishop of Rochester is raising serious questions about the fragmentation of our culture and society (Yorkshire Post, January 7).
The Christian tradition is under attack from militant secularists and islamists. To go into an area where English appears not to be the first language and where most women now wear the hijab is to enter another and alien culture. How would these people be treated by their community if they should wish to become Christian?
Two points come out of the reaction to the bishop's comments, apart from noting the silly knee-jerk reaction from all political parties.
Firstly, that those Muslims who call for the bishop's sacking show their total lack of understanding and knowledge of the Church of England, where bishops are free agents to speak as they see fit, not limited by multi-cultural PC.
Secondly, that the reported reaction of Lambeth Palace distancing the Archbishop from joining the debate shows all that is wrong with the leadership of the Church of England.
We won't benefit from the euro or EU democracy
From: Gordon Lawrence, Stumperlowe View, Sheffield.
I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with the critical correspondence that followed the article by Edward Pearce, which supported the euro and defended the so-called democratic structure of the European Union (Yorkshire Post, December 14).
This was accompanied by a vitriolic attack on Eurosceptics classifying them as xenophobes and abominators of all things foreign. His strategy, it seems, is to discredit his opponents before attacking their views.
I found his economic analysis of the euro and exchange rates particularly feeble. In an attempt to counter one of the standard and most cogent arguments against the European currency, namely, Britain's disastrous encounter with the ERM, culminating in Black Wednesday, he accuses the Tory government of going in at the wrong rate, and having gone in at the wrong rate, not devaluing later to correct that rate.
Edward Pearce seems blind to the fact that if we go in at the wrong exchange rate with the euro there is no escape, no mechanism to correct matters. It's as fossilised as a dinosaur's footprint: we lose all control and are unable even to determine our own interest rates.
To join the euro at the optimal rate would be almost a shot in the dark and even if we achieved that magical parameter, since economies are not static, but develop and are subjected to structural change, the optimal rate itself moves.
Furthermore, above a certain magnitude, the larger the currency area, the more difficult it is to achieve the elusive economic harmony which all governments pursue.
As far as Mr Pearce's attempts to portray the EU as a fully democratic institution, how can a centralised government passing laws over the realm of 300 million heterogeneous peoples, consisting of 25 nations, operate an efficient, just and fair regime answerable to the individual?
Europhiles cite the USA, but there we have one language and a common history where institutions have grown organically for well over
200 years.
Scargill's prophecy
From: JW Smith, Sutton on Sea.
FOLLOWING your comment "Fuel fears" (Yorkshire Post, January 5), I am reminded of some things I have heard before. Chronic failure to plan for the future, Britain increasingly dependent on imports and beholden to international conglomerates and the need to develop clean-coal technology.
Love him or hate him, Arthur Scargill accurately forecast this would happen. I never agreed with the way he managed his union, but things might have been different if Mrs Thatcher had only listened to him.
Unhappy mix
From: P Cassidy, Holbeck Lane, Leeds.
"THE Great Migrant Explosion" (Yorkshire Post, January 5) reminds me of a reader's letter from South Africa some 40 years ago, which read: "Don't import a problem you don't have into the UK." Well, we have, and I am afraid we're going to have to live with it. It's rather sad, but despite what the do-gooders of this world say, social England doesn't work. Particularly if religion is involved.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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