YP letters: Who will save Ilkley’s heritage in age of austerity?

ILKLEY, the future of our town. A tourist town without a tourist information office, A floral town without flowers.

A historic town with thousands of year of history, the Celts, the Romans, or Saxon and Danish ancestors, the Victorian Spa town, an Edwardian community.

Now without a museum. The Manor House, morally our Manor House, yet another restaurant? Our library? Do we need books or a place to study or research?

We cannot afford austerity. There is plenty cash in our country’s coffers. It seems though we prefer bombs rather than books. Weapons of mass destruction rather than waste collection.

And does it matter if a few more hundred are put on benefits? The real benefit would be to see our town bloom and blossom. What about reviving Ilkley as a spa town? Mass action is needed to save our town from the present day vandals. What about it councillors, MP, the wide community, the media?

When it is gone, it is gone.

From: Bill Hunter, Derwent Road, Honley, Holmfirth.

I HAVE a simple suggestion for Grant Woodward, the author of the article ‘City’s clogged arteries make blood boil’ (The Yorkshire Post, December 3).

Get on your bike. Either for the whole journey or to the nearest railway station. If you haven’t got a bike, ask your employer about the Cycle to Work Scheme.

Leeds, like many other towns and cities, is creating cycle paths and improving road conditions for cyclists. Traffic congestion, delay and pollution will only get worse, so take heed of the Paris climate talks, use your car less and your legs more. If enough people do this it will make a difference.

From: Terry Morrell, Prunus Avenue, Willerby, East Yorkshire,.

THE ‘Tear Drop’ project centred on land now vacated by the railway is the ideal opportunity for York City Council to reward its most famous son, George Hudson, by naming the site, or the proposed bridge in his name.

It was his entrepreneurial vision that created this site which for the city and paved the way for the massive tourist trade which is its life blood today.

The ‘bad man’ image that has been generated over the past 170 years was never justified. If the unfortunate ‘financial’ collapse of the mid 1840s had not occurred, York would probably now be even richer than it is today.