YP Letters: Filthy towns not unique to Yorkshire

YOUR correspondent Mr Bowen (The Yorkshire Post, October 17) commented on our town of Doncaster being a ‘grot spot’. I have much sympathy with Mr Bowen’s views but, whereas he believes the town to be the filthiest in the whole of Yorkshire, I cannot agree.

I travel extensively throughout this country and overseas, and in so doing, my view is that the UK has one of the worst litter problems in Europe. My experience is that many of the towns throughout our land are actually equally as bad.

Councils should ensure that there are adequate numbers of litter bins, appropriately sited, and people dropping litter onto the street should be fined heavily. We could perhaps redeploy some of the band of traffic wardens to the task of catching litter louts.

With regard to boarded-up shops, this again is a common sight. Supermarkets sell so many things, then there are the out of town shopping areas with car parking, this competition makes high streets suffer, and over the years many speciality shops have been lost.

What has happened in Doncaster, and which I have seen in many other towns, is that new town centre developments (like Doncaster’s Frenchgate extension to the Interchange) mean other areas of the town being neglected.

The councils of towns need to get to grips with these run down areas and smarten them up and, if necessary, find alternative uses for properties. The longer they are left, the problem just grows.

Calais camp shambles

From: Paul Morley, Ribblesdale Estate, Long Preston, Skipton.

AM I missing something here? We are to pay the French for getting rid of the migrant camp in Calais?

Surely the camp only exists because the French have failed miserably in doing their job of processing migrants and asylum seekers? If they were dealt with properly, they would never get near Calais but be housed in immigration centres and then either given asylum in France or sent back either to where they came from, or the first safe country they got to, where they should have been processed.

It should be us billing the French for every migrant/asylum seeker who reaches the UK due to their incompetence.

From: Brian Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.

A RECENT BBC TV Question Time from Hartlepool left me disheartened. Panellist Ken Clarke was accused of never having done a day’s work in his life by a member of the studio audience. What prompted this personal attack? He had expressed his opinion that referendums were not a good idea.

An eloquent Polish lady who had lived in the UK for more than two decades, and was married to an Englishman, was jeered at and booed when she said she had been made to feel unwelcome since the referendum. If the Polish, of all people, are no longer welcome here then heaven help the rest.

A reader of The Yorkshire Post says he is prepared to pay more for foreign holidays and his petrol. Well, it’s all right for some, isn’t it? As a pensioner I won’t be much affected, either. Nor will my older son, who is chair of a science department at an American university but who flags up the £300m-plus a year funding provided by the EU for research. However, my younger son, whose job as a musician takes him regularly all over Europe, is very upset at the difficulties which may lie ahead.

From: John Craven, Baildon.

YOUR correspondent John Cole (The Yorkshire Post, October 25) does not give up. Here we go again with his “let’s not listen to the people let politicians decide” mantra on the EU. Brexit is upon you, like it or not.

Values are under attack

From: Louis Kasatkin, Pinderfields Road, Wakefield.

THE Appeal Court in Belfast has ruled that a local Christian-run business, Ashers Bakery, was wrong to refuse to decorate a cake with a pro-gay marriage message.

The Appeal Court ruling shows the extent of anti-Christian sentiment in our society and just how far the bedrock of Western civilisation has been marginalised over the decades by a relentless campaign of institutionalised political vilification and slander.

The sound we can all hear is that of the metropolitan elitist jackboots trampling down our historic liberty.

Sense and sentencing

From: Robin Ashley, Sheffield Road, South Anston, Sheffield.

YOU report (The Yorkshire Post, October 22) the sentence of a seemingly habitual lawless driver who killed two boys and maimed two others as seven-and-a-half years in jail, and yet the front page is given over to a fraudster who duped two apparently gullible women being sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail.

Can someone please advise how these huge discrepancies in sentencing of criminals occur again and again?

Timeless TV laughter

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

SAD news of the death of Jimmy Perry (The Yorkshire Post, October 24) but what a legacy! He overcame my Dad’s long-term resistance to having a TV set in the house.

One evening, on a visit to friends, he and mum saw an early episode of Dad’s Army. Two days later, Radio Rentals arrived with a half-ton box of valves, transformers and cathode ray tube. Dad was hooked, and his great-grandchildren now laugh at Captain Mainwaring and company’s timeless antics.

Thanks Jimmy.