Boris's burka view not hard to comprehend

Boris Johnson brings tea for the press to drink outside his house in Thame as controversy over his comments on burkas continued.

HAVE any of those who insist on criticising Boris Johnson ad nauseam for his views on the burka actually read the article in which he sets out these views? If so, they will see that, while he denounces the garment itself, he clearly defends the right of women to wear it.

A nuanced argument, certainly, but surely not one that is difficult to comprehend? Unless, of course, it is being wilfully misunderstood by those with an agenda to pursue against Mr Johnson, either for his views on Brexit or his Tory Party leadership ambitions.

Of far greater interest than the future of Boris Johnson, however, is the question of why the burka and niqab have, in recent years, become commonplace on the streets of Yorkshire’s towns and cities when – as Mr Johnson, backed by numerous Islamic scholars, have pointed out – there is no obvious authorisation for this in the Koran.

From: J Barraclough, Morley.

DESPITE having voted for the past 50 odd years, at no time was I offered a vote on whether I wanted Britain to be a multi-cultural society.

Twenty years ago, I don’t remember seeing anyone with their face covered, yet now it is becoming increasingly prevalent and they are even driving with, I would think, very restricted vision. My belief is that it is an insidious form of intimidation against the rest of the population by religious Muslim zealots to show their oppression and subjugation of women.

We are where we are and now have to accept that we are a multi-cultural society, but we don’t have to be a divided one and people walking about the streets of Britain with their faces covered is creating a ‘them and us’ situation. Why can’t the liberal-minded Muslims see this and sort it out within their communities?

Where was consultation?

From: Christine Hyde, Scarr End Lane, Dewsbury.

IN January 2013, I went to the public meeting in Ossett of NHS Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield Cluster Board (as it was then) to reveal the outline business case for the changes to Mid Yorkshire’s hospitals.

The plan was to lose service provision at Dewsbury Hospital. An NHS official said that the people of the area didn’t care who provided their health services, as long as they got them. I was shocked!

No one had asked me. Did you get the care closer to home? Now, NHS England is so called ‘consulting’ on stopping 17 procedures on the NHS, the first phase of considerably more cuts to come.

This is de facto privatisation, as people who need these operations will have to pay. Have you been asked if you agree to this? GPs and CCGs have no choice but to comply.

Whose NHS is it these days?

A decision we must live with

From: John Fisher, Menwith Hill.

A BREXIT no deal looks increasingly likely and a potential disaster for the UK.

We have a Conservative party which is devided on Brexit and unable to negotiate with the EU.

This is possibly the most important decision taken by any government since the Second World War and future generations will have to live with the positives and negatives.

Ghost towns on horizon

From: Dr David Hill, CEO, World Innovation Foundation, Huddersfield.

WE hear of more shops every year sequentially closing on the UK’s high streets and this is inevitable with all the destructive forces that are at play (The Yorkshire Post, August 13).

Out-of-town shopping centres; an outdated planning system that is not responsive to business; uncompromising councils who can’t innovate; property owners who incessantly put up their rents and councils that deter people visiting the high street by putting in place obstacles such as penalty fine bus lanes. And then there are online retail giants such as Amazon who took £11.4bn of the sale of goods out of the UK economy last year.

So eventually the high street’s days will definitely be over for retail, and it is only a matter of a couple of decades, in my opinion, before town centres become purely leisure centres and high street retail sales are just a thing of the past.

And although this is the way that things are currently going, there is an even more severe case in that without innovative council and business thinking, possibly ghost towns will  emerge.

For, in this respect, all the major overwhelming forces are currently growing stronger without relent against the ability of high street retail shops to survive.

Cancelling our compensation

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

I’M retired and no longer subjected daily to the overpriced privations of Northern and the rest of them – lucky me!

We now learn that despite everything, the Ilkley, Harrogate and Skipton lines have not met “the agreed cancellation threshold” for compensation – suit-speak for “get lost” (The Yorkshire Post, August 11).

Is there a comparable performance-related  “threshold” for boardroom bonuses and shareholder dividends?

A note of the extent to which these, largely faceless, suits and their families rely on the  services which they are  supposed to provide might be interesting; or would that produce petulant howls of “invasion of privacy”?