YP Letters: Pleasures of a gadget-free childhood

WITH reference to Peter Hyde’s letter regarding children and gadgets (The Yorkshire Post, 
May 5).

Shortly after Easter, I stopped for a sandwich and coffee in Thornton Dale. Across the aisle were two ladies with two small girls, about four years of age. One mother asked a child: “Did you enjoy your holiday in Scarborough?”

“Yes, thank you”. “What did you enjoy most?” There was a pause for thought. “Playing on Mummy’s iPad”. One could feel the shock horror of us adults. “What did you enjoy second best?”. A pause. “Playing on Daddy’s mobile phone”.

How sad. What’s happened to building sandcastles, playing with a ball or having a paddle?

It makes me very glad of my gadget-free, happy childhood.

City’s team loyalties

From: Peter Denton, Anlaby Common, Hull.

IT was interesting to read the article “City finds a novel appeal” (The Yorkshire Post, May 10) but I found Nick Quantrill’s comment on the docks confusing. He states that if you worked on the trawlers you worked on the west side of the city where Hull FC was based, and if you worked bringing the fish in you lived on the east side of the city and supported Hull KR.

As far as I know, St Andrew’s Dock on the west side of Hull dealt with all of the fish and the docks on the east side were purely for cargo.

However he is right about rugby league, with Hull FC’s core support coming from the trawlermen and fish-dock workers in the west and the vast majority of Hull KR’s support coming from the east of the city.

What a lot of people may not be aware of,though, is that this was not always the case. Prior to the early part of the 20th century, Hull FC were the east Hull club and Hull KR were based in the west.

Your vote stays secret

From: Michael Meadowcroft, Former Liberal MP, Waterloo Lane, Leeds.

PAM Bradnum (The Yorkshire Post, May 9) need have no qualms over information on who does and does not vote being publicly available. This rule has been in force since 1870 and, of course, does not at all imply that how one votes is known.

It was devised as a safeguard against personation. In other words, if a party or a candidate thought that they could line up supporters to vote in place of legitimate electors who, for instance, had died, were ill or who had moved away, the fact that such individuals on the electoral register were shown to have voted when they could not have done so can give rise to official investigation or even, if very widespread, the annulment of the election. The provision is particularly important when, quite correctly, the UK does not have identity cards.

If the perpetrators of electoral fraud are identified and convicted, the penalties are very severe. Also, if a legitimate elector is told wrongly, at the polling station, that he or she has already voted, they can still vote. They are given a specially coloured ballot paper and, at the count, these are counted separately and, if the votes marked on them, would affect the result, the election is referred to the High Court. It is, however, exceptionally rare for this to happen – our polling station process is extremely secure.

A career in the shadows

From: Trevor Stones, Rawcliffe.

SO Jack Straw figures Boris Johnson is an apologist for Putin. This would be the opinion of the same Jack who was Shadow-this, Shadow-that and Shadow-the other in various governments, in fact Shadow-so many times that he has become a shadow... and since when did shadows have opinions, never mind opinions that counted for anything?

The only time the man was a little more substantial was when he was recognised by Tony Blair, one of the greatest blights ever inflicted on this country.

So rather than Boris-bashing, why not try something a little more redeeming Jack, like a touch of contrition for your failures over Hillsborough?

Mr Trump’s many faces

From: Brian Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.

DICK Lindley really should get to know more about Donald Trump (The Yorkshire Post, May 9).

The best thing that can be said about Trump is that he was the least right-wing of all the candidates for the Republican nomination.

I suggest your correspondent reads “Donald Trump’s Greatest Self-Contradictions” in Politico Magazine, probably a left-of-centre leaning publication, but its sources are impeccably authentic.

It cites hundreds of examples of Trump contradicting himself. The history of his utterances up to the present day has been marked by incoherence.

Notably he has occupied both sides of the fence in the debates on abortion, same-sex marriage and, incredibly, both the Republican and Democratic parties. A little equivocation is no bad thing, but this anything but self-made man is a loose cannon too far.