YP Letters: Food menace shows neglect of official duty

THE floods in this region have indicated that that those bodies in charge of environmental matters have been pathetic.

It is to be hoped that they will abandon their protracted apathy and at last show respect for the people of this region and throughout the UK, by implementing the best possible solutions to avoid future disasters. We no longer want to see the destruction of lives, homes and businesses through dereliction of duty by bodies neglecting their responsibilities.

Professor Ian Rotherham, of Sheffield Hallam University, stated that recent governments have not had a good record on environmental issues and we can equate with his dismay.

As an environmental group The Sons of Neptune, which predates Surfers Against Sewage by many years, we constantly monitor all issues in regard to water courses and the oceans with the support of many of the world’s leading scientists.

It is to be hoped that the Government will at last react to the reality of climate change and the implications for this country. The political spectrum still does not have the will or desire to take a pragmatic and responsible approach to the environment. To quote Sir David Attenborough: “Man is a plague upon our planet.”

From: John Seymour, Church Fenton. Tadcaster.

DESPITE the floods, the Government pours huge amounts of taxpayers’ money into HS2. Adding insult to injury they cosy up to China for investment.

It is time to take stock and look at the real basic priorities for the whole population. The complete political system needs an overhaul to get rid of governments which have the sould aim of staying in power.

We need proportional representation and with it a legal requirement for the whole of the eligible population to vote (as in Australia). This would give us a balanced set of policies across the board. It seems to work well enough in Ireland and Denmark where members of my family live and are happy.

You and who’s army exactly?

From: Robert Bottamley, Thorn Road, Hedon.

THANKS to CF Beck (The Yorkshire Post, January 18) for an amusing if unintended satire regarding demonstrations staged by junior doctors against Government proposals.

Your correspondent observed that during the war, they would have been conscripted into the army and sent anywhere they were told to go, for whatever payment the government decided upon.

The temptation here is to ask which army: the one that opposed fascism, or the one that embodied it? When national socialism achieved power in Germany, almost its first action was to make strike action illegal. A few years later, doctors certainly were “whipped into the Army and sent wherever they were needed, with no negotiations over pay and weekend work” in precisely the way CF Beck appears to admire.

We are not now at war: between the years 1939 and 1945 this country famously resisted the despotic ambitions of a foreign state, but to imply (as CF Beck implies) that restrictions to basic freedoms become acceptable during a time of peace simply because they are imposed by our own state is really an argument that turns on itself.

From: John Gordon, Ripon.

OLDER readers of The Yorkshire Post will remember the district nurse. She toured the schools looking for rickets and picking the nits out of the hair of children. There has been a great change. She is now a community nurse working for an NHS trust. She is now commissioned to find dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Where is EU protection?

From: Terry Palmer, South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley.

MORE steel job losses are announced and the reason given is cheap Chinese steel dumping in Europe. Can someone please explain why cheap Chinese steel is being allowed to be dumped in the EU?

We are told if we leave the 
EU the world will end. It 
certainly isn’t ending for non-EU member China which doesn’t seem fazed one iota by not being in the EU.

There don’t seem to be any safeguards from being in this corrupt club called the EU.

Bridging fund gap in London

From: Nigel Bywater, Morley.

CHANCELLOR George Osborne has promised to fund the estimated £3m annual running costs of a garden bridge over the Thames. £3m is an interesting amount. Because that is the estimated cost of the replacement bridge for Tadcaster. I wonder if Tadcaster’s new bridge will be pedestrian and plant friendly?

Joke policy for Trident

From: Paul Buckley, Barnsley.

AT PMQs several weeks ago, David Cameron made a joke about the Labour party’s energy policy – that they would pay miners to dig a mine and leave the coal down there. Jeremy Corbyn has taken this joke and applied it to defence policy.