YP Letters: Fracking councillors will pay electoral price

SIR Bernard Ingham’s arrogant and insensitive article on fracking shows he doesn’t know what he’s talking about (The Yorkshire Post, June 1).

The 19th century Industrial Revolution created employment. The conversion of the Vale of Pickering into a gas field will create few local jobs and destroy the agricultural, equestrian and tourism economies on which Ryedale depends.

Fracking has never been carried out safely or without harming the environment, and has been banned in many countries. Yet he expects the Environment Agency, which has failed to prevent flooding throughout the UK, will regulate fracking here better than agencies in other countries.

From: Edward Grainger, Nunthorpe, North Yorkshire.

THE good people of Ryedale have good reason to be aggrieved about the decision of North Yorkshire County Council to permit the first stages of fracking close to the village of Kirby Misperton. To ignore the high volume of written and verbal representations of objection was nothing short of scandalous.

The Ryedale public can indeed make those Conservative councillors pay at the next election. This, after all, is all part of our democratic rights.

From: Joyce Gudgeon, Little Ouseburn, York.

WHY are the people of Kirby Misperton so surprised that North Yorkshire County Council voted for fracking? Most people on the council at Northallerton are Tories. They are only obeying their masters in Whitehall. Most of them will be expecting a “gong”. All the people have to remember is where to put their X next local elections.

From: Christine Boxall, York.

TO impose fracking upon the already overstrained resources of the UK would be morally and environmentally unjustifiable. So many sound reasons why this uniquely invasive industry should not be allowed a foothold here have been patiently and fully set out in recent years.

From: Ann Wills, London.

FRACKING may be more acceptable in large countries which have huge areas of uninhabited land such as the US, but Britain is small and densely populated. Even in America, residents have taken out private prosecutions because their water has been polluted by fracking.

Exhibition of diversity

From: Keith Handley, Scotland Way, Horsforth, Leeds.

I ENJOYED reading Jayne Dowle’s article on Bradford’s Great Exhibition of the North (The Yorkshire Post, June 2).

I find it worrying, however, that the bid is apparently being led by four white people, albeit women. In a city where the ethnic population is now approaching 30 per cent, I find it truly astonishing that no non-white people are involved in the bid.

From: James Murphy, Rawdon, Leeds.

INSTEAD of wasting money on a Great Exhibition for the North in Bradford, how about putting the money into the city’s media museum? That would make far more sense.

We condemn illegal traps

From: Robert Benson, Chairman, Moorland Association, Penrith.

FOLLOWING your story “Police pledge review of pole trapping sentencing” (The Yorkshire Post, June 3), we would like to emphasise that the Moorland Association agrees with the RSPB and others expressing disgust about the use of illegally set traps on posts.

This behaviour could result in the indiscriminate capture of wildlife and prolonged suffering. It was rightly outlawed in 1904 and there is no place for it in 21st Century moorland management.

There are perfectly good legal and targeted predator control measures available to protect ground nesting birds at this time of year, not least through the licensing system.

The owner of the estate where this gamekeeper worked is a member of the Moorland Association.

He has made it clear that neither he, nor his head gamekeeper, knew anything of this illegal and totally unacceptable activity by a junior employee.

The employee who set the traps has been suspended and, as a result of having accepted a police caution for his actions, now carries a criminal record and has had firearms removed.

Picketing at Orgreave

From: Bob Simons, Rowborn Drive, Oughtibridge, Sheffield.

ON the morning of June 18, 1984, an estimated 10,000 miners and assorted hangers-on descended on the coking plant at Orgreave and were, according to the report by Chris Bond (The Yorkshire Post, June 2) “determined to stop several lorry loads of coke leaving for the steelworks”.

Presumably a picket within the constraints of the law wasn’t high on their agenda that day, then?

True heroes

From: Mike Bytheway, Oakwood.

I WAS pleased to read of the support for the heroes who took part in the Battle of Jutland (The Yorkshire Post, June 1).

Last week I received a pamphlet entitled “Local Heroes” which turned out to be a mail-shot from British Gas/Centrica advertising the services of local plumbers. I was a plumber myself for over 25 years and not a hero in any sense of the word. This leaflet seems to me an insult to the real heroes mentioned in this newspaper, and should be withdrawn.