YP Letters: Decision time looms for fracking well

WITHIN the next few weeks, the councillors on the Planning Committee for North Yorkshire will meet to decide whether or not to approve the application to frack in Kirby Misperton.

I am horrified at this prospect. If the councillors say yes to this application, it will set a precedent to allow thousands of wells all over North Yorkshire.

Our beautiful, tranquil and rural landscape will be completely changed.

People’s health and wellbeing will be undermined by the noise and light 24/7 of the setting up of the wells and the heavy HGVs which will overload the local infrastructure.

The potential risk of water and air pollution by toxic spillage and chemical contamination is too great. Any monitoring will most likely highlight problems once it is too late.

Can we afford to compromise the future health of our children and the healthy environment for our wildlife?Tourism and agriculture provide most of the jobs in Ryedale. Both of which are highly likely to be adversely affected by fracking in this area.

Piling on the pressure

From: Adrian F Sunman, South Collingham, Newark.

MELODY Redman (The Yorkshire Post, April 6) is right to highlight the pressures the NHS is under.

There are many and varied reasons for these pressures including, but not limited to, unchecked immigration, an ageing population and a common but misguided belief that modern medicine has a fix for everything.

She neglects to mention that the strain under which the NHS operates is exacerbated by junior doctors taking pointless industrial action over a new contract which will cut their hours of work and increase their basic pay by an amount which is beyond the wildest dreams of most workers.

Questions of trust

From: David T Craggs, Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire.

REGARDING the Prime Minister’s financial affairs and the cries of “resign” from opposition MPs, the quote “let he without guilt cast the first stone” springs to mind.

Jeremy Corbyn claimed that “the Prime Minister had lost the trust of the British people” (The Yorkshire Post, April 9).

Well. Mr Corbyn, my loss of trust goes back to the expenses scandal and now includes all those in Parliament, regardless of political allegiance. Expenses will still be being claimed for garden duck houses and a box of matches to light the barbecue. MPs are lucky in that they can still claim legally for almost anything on their expenses account, unlike those of us on PAYE or who are retired who cannot claim as much as a penny for our expenses. And if we could, wouldn’t we do so?

Of course we would. It all comes under that expression... it’s only human nature.

That reminds me. I must claim my £200 marriage allowance. It will go towards our winter fuel bill. Oh to have two or three wives.

From: Hilary Andrews, Leeds.

CAN anyone tell me why it’s in the public interest to know Justin Welby is the illegitimate son of the last of Winston Churchill’s private secretaries?

From: GJC Reid, Whitby.

THE pious hypocrisy being uttered on the PM’s financial arrangements amuse me. I’m sure most of us, if we had the funds, would be doing it!

Home from hospital

From: John Springer, Ivy Bank Close, Ingbirthworth, Sheffield.

THE hospital transport service operates minibus-style transport mainly during office hours.

Crippled by arthritis and living on my own, I was taken to hospital in 2008 after having suffered my third long-lasting nose bleed in as many weeks.

The hospital discharged me at 9pm.

Patient transport services were not available. There was no public transport from Halifax to Denby, near Penistone. I was 25 miles from home and wearing borrowed pyjamas. My blood-soaked clothes were in a hospital bag. The staff sent me home in a taxi. Cheaper than letting me block a bed.

Just more scare tactics

From: Hugh Rogers, Messingham Road, Ashby.

BY leaving the monstrous bureaucracy of the EU we are not, as Simon Wessely suggests “cutting ourselves off from our biggest market” (The Yorkshire Post, April 8).

Does he really believe that, for example, German carmakers, French wine producers and Spanish cabbage growers 
would allow such a thing to happen?

We would maintain good trade relations with all our customers, as over the generations, we have with the rest of the world – and they with us.

As for any effect upon healthcare, the truth is that the majority of overseas doctors and nurses come from outside the EU anyway.

There have been reciprocal emergency health agreements inside and outside Europe for years.

I fear the good professor is using the by now familiar scare tactics so beloved by those who for various reasons, want to bind us into perpetual European servitude.