YP Letters: Environment matters more than fracking

WE NEED a healthy environment, not fracking. I recently visited the entrance to the KM8 well site at Kirby Misperton. There I saw the police, as an institution, facilitating the industrialisation of the countryside against the will of the local people. It is a waste of time and resources on all sides that we can little afford.

It is sobering to witness that for all the science and technology they pride themselves about, human beings have yet to accept the basic fact that they live on a finite planet, with finite resources, and that it is time to learn to use those wisely.

We do need a healthy environment to exist.

At a time when the UK Government is under scrutiny for its lack of action to tackle air pollution, while nonetheless imposing the polluting and 
water consuming industry of fracking upon unwilling populations, it is worth putting the current debate into perspective.

One can survive a few minutes without air.

One can survive a few days without water.

Yet homo sapiens have lived and thrived on Earth for a couple of hundred thousand years without using natural gas or needing electricity.

I am not suggesting a return to hunting and gathering, rather I plead that we become aware that our planet is precious, and endangered, and that we should all join together to protect what is left of the countryside and of wild places. We cannot take them for granted.

So here is the choice we have to make, as individuals and as society: dig for gas despite the risks involved, despite the added pollution, despite the sacrifice of local communities, for the sake of a few decades of supply or decide now to protect what we have left and turn towards renewable sources of energy.

The impacted communities and water protectors who have put their lives on hold have made a clear choice unheeded by the central power.

And they will not give up, for what is at stake goes far beyond their personal well-being and livelihood: it is the future of the planet itself.

From: Mick Hanks, Barlborough.

I APPLAUD the protesters at Kirby Misperton. It is Third Energy which is reckless, along with Ineo, and all the energy companies who say fracking is safe.

If it’s so safe, why is it being banned all over the place but not England?

This Government is either blind to the dangers or just doesn’t care.

The lives of our children and grandchildren will be effected for years to come. Renewable energy is the way forward.

From: Jarvis Browning, Main Street, Fadmoor, York.

IT looks like the fracking test is going to happen soon. “Ah, it be reet”. What? Wake up before it is too late! “It ain’t all rite”. North Yorkshire will

never ever be the same again. Stand up and fight for your corner.

We can never be one region

From: Paul Alexander Sherwood JP, South Kilvington, Thirsk.

WITH the exception of the rolling news story of Brexit, the only other mind-numbing saga is that of the monotony and tedium inducing ‘Yorkshire devolution’ anti-climax.

Where exactly is Yorkshire in this discussion? Other regions appear to have well defined boundaries, usually historic, geographical and cultural and that is what binds the inhabitants together. The North-East is a good example, encompassing, Tyneside, Wearside & Teesside, historically much the same and to a certain extent they can all understand each other!

Other man-made areas don’t work. Take the ill-fated Humberside, a child of the 1970s, there is nothing in common between the old East Riding and Lincolnshire; it needs more than the Humber Bridge to combine them.

So, where do we stand on devolution and the One Yorkshire Plan? Seventeen out of 20 local authorities support the idea of having a Yorkshire Mayor, but what possible combination of local civic leadership and governance can possibly combine the needs and economic interests of upper Bransdale with Rotherham? People in Appersett or Fryup can hardly understand those in Barnsley or Hull.

The transport interests and financial needs of central Leeds are far removed from the total lack of transport in Arkengarthdale or the state of the remnants of the steel industry in Sheffield, or indeed the remnants of the fishing industry along the Yorkshire coast. Yorkshire is not one place, the very reason it was historically divided into the three Ridings.

Come election day, whatever system it works on, there is no hope whatsoever of the rural minority in many thousands of hectares of generally Conservative countryside even getting a say in how the area is governed. Industrial and commercial urban areas with generally a Labour electorate will control everything. This is not democracy.

Unfortunately, the dividing line is the River Tees. Certainly the Hambleton, Ryedale and Richmondshire areas of North Yorkshire would be better tied into the North-East rather than Yorkshire and Humberside.

This can be demonstrated in a very practical but un-scientific way, the vast majority of TV aerials in those areas point to North-East-based services (both ITV & BBC) not to Leeds!

Pride lost for social homes

From: Ian Kendal Wilson, White Street, Selby.

THE Government has prescribed a ‘one size fits all’ agenda without thought for wage-costed, social homes. There was a time, a long time ago, when a Prime Minister such as the late Harold McMillan, spoke with pride and respect about providing good quality social homes that were affordable for working people.

Now we have a working class, hooked on speculation and they are the problem.