Wednesday letters: Time to make most of Brexit opportunities

From: Paul Morgan, Canberra View, Barton-Upon-Humber.

Which ever way you voted, the reality now is that Brexit will happen, regardless of irrelevant noises off.

What the region and the country now needs are dynamic business leaders who are prepared to accept this reality in a positive manner, and start looking forward to the different opportunities that it will mean.

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For example you frequently report that farmers cannot compete with products imported from the EU.

Where are the farmers’ leaders looking to take advantage of the potential for home-based farmers to take advantage if these now become more expensive, and less available??

It is less than a month since the referendum and already more than 20 countries have approached the Government wanting to put trade deals in place for post-Brexit, of which at least 12 are major economies.

They have either been unable to negotiate a trade deal with the EU, or are frustrated by the endless red tape that dealing with the EU brings, and see a deal with the UK as access to what was a sizeable chunk of the EU market without these problems.

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The will be just as many opportunities outside the EU as inside. There will be short term pain while we transition.

To take advantage of these we need dynamic business leaders who are prepared to look forward and seek these out, not the ones we appear to have at the moment, who seem to spend most of their time with their heads in their hands bemoaning their lot. If they are unable to move forward positively, they should be replaced.

I am reminded of two sayings: “Don’t bring me your problems, bring me your solutions”, and “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”.

From: Sandra Ogden, Rayner Road, Brighouse.

The referendum was divisive but now we need to be united and work together. There are several problems the referendum showed. Areas with high unemployment voted Leave, as did those that are economically depressed and have high immigrant populations.

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We need to provide better education and skills training. We need to stop politicising education, make sure children are literate and numerate when they leave school.

We are desperately short of scientists, mathematicians amd skilled factory workers.

It is time to invest in people and new industries and to stop paying the “fat cats” exorbitant bonuses.

We need to help “Neets”, those 18 to 24-year-olds who are in neither education nor employment, and persuade “the can’t work, won’t work brigade” that they should.

From: David Collins, Scissett.

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I am a little confused as to why there should be talk of jobs moving from London to Frankfurt. After all, surely there is no difference in trading before and after Brexit. We have never been a member of the eurozone so the euro was always a foreign currency and must have been traded alongside sterling.

It sounds like an excuse to move to areas where excessive salaries are not seen as a social evil.

From: Nick Glynne, Leeds Road, Huddersfield.

Theresa May said that, following the referendum, her job is to ensure the will of the people is respected and ensure Brexit will happen. As an unelected Prime Minister, will she also ensure the will of the people is respected and call an early election?

Library cuts are a failure

From: Martin Vaughan, Stannington Road, Sheffield.

The current policy on libraries in Sheffield has clearly put people off visiting, with visits to the branch libraries in our city at an all-time low since the staff were sacked.

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This means that vulnerable people such as the elderly, isolated and mentally-ill among others are not engaging with a service that could enhance and even change their lives in so many positive ways.

Destaffing libraries also produced a small saving compared to some of the more non-essential items the council could have cut.

What we need from Sheffield City Council is an acknowledgement that current library policy has failed, and a plan to restaff ibraries using savings from aforementioned non-essentials, the cutting of which would have no real effect on normal people.

Other side of Orgreave

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

I see that the film and television producer Tony Garnett is pushing for an enquiry into the conflict at Orgreave during the miners’ strike (The Yorkshire Post, July 7).

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He wants a full investigation into the actions of the police and their leaders, regarding the brutality they used there.

I have no problem with that, provided the same thorough investigation also covers the brutality of Arthur Scargill’s flying pickets and those who kicked and beat the officers trying to allow lorries to pass peacefully.

And what about the miners who physically blocked the road and terrified the drivers with threats of retaliation?

Nuclear deterrent needs a backup plan for Faslane base

From: John Riseley, Harcourt Drive, Harrogate

The viability of our Trident force as an independent nuclear deterrent depends not only upon it being able to respond rapidly, but also upon our sustaining that capability. This means having base facilities which we can protect.

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Given the vulnerability of such facilities to long-range missile attack we need to bring them under the umbrella of the nuclear deterrent itself.

That is to say we need a credible threat of massive retaliation for a strike against our nuclear facilities.

This works most plausibly on a like-for-like basis; massive destruction for massive destruction.

No doubt those living close to Faslane consider the potential collateral damage to themselves to be massive.

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But paradoxically the Achilles heel of our system may be that the loss of life arising from a precision strike there would not be on a par with the scale of devastation we may need to threaten in order to forestall it.

We could receive a single warhead strike which leaves our nuclear capability intact but set to gradually degrade and lapse over the following several months.

Can we convincingly present ourselves as willing, at some point in that interval, to deliver an apocalyptic blow which in turn will unleash a matching blow against ourselves?

To protect our capability and to protect Faslane we need backup base facilities and we need them distributed in such a way that they cannot be taken out without destroying much of the country.

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We need to be able to turn our nuclear boats around in places like London.

From: Martin Fletcher, Flanders Court, Thorpe Hesley.

I have no real idea if Trident is a good or bad thing although I favour a deterrent for our island, but I am fed up with hearing complaints from political leaders in Scotland. Their parliament and people benefit from our taxpayers’ money.

There is an easy answer to Ms Sturgeon and company. If you do not want Trident near you we will move our bases to Southampton and Portsmouth and our aircraft that protect your skies back to a base in England. And if you want to stay in the EU and vote out of the UK then fine. But the EU will not protect your seas and skies.

There is a lot of bleating in the SNP but I doubt the 3,000-plus people employed at and around the bases will be too pleased.

Below par audience for TV golf thanks to greed

From: R Williams, Roundhay, Leeds.

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HOW typical that the first year of non-terrestrial television coverage of the Open golf championship should witness one of the finest finales in the tournament’s 145-year history.

Henrik Stenson’s astonishing final round of 63 and his epic Sunday battle with Phil Mickelson was witnessed by a fraction of the audience it deserved, thanks to the sport’s governing body’s greed in selling the rights to Sky.

Figures from the first day of the tournament showed a drop of 80 per in viewing numbers compared to those seen when it was shown on the BBC. There were nightly highlights on BBC2 but any golf fan worth their salt would have known the state of play by this point, robbing the footage of the suspense and excitement that sport thrives upon and making the show hardly worth bothering with.

How thoroughly depressing that a golfing masterclass which could have inspired countless youngsters to take up the game instead slipped by almost unnoticed thanks to its absence from the screens of the vast majority of British households.

It would be nice to think the R&A will qui