April 6: Parties still favouring the South East

From: Richard Ainley, Ridge Hill, Rastrick, Brighouse.

IN his letter on the danger of a constitutional crisis (The Yorkshire Post, March 30), DS Boyes gives a lengthy list of services which have to be paid for in England but are provided free of charge in Scotland at the expense of taxpayers throughout this so-called ‘United Kingdom’.

Residents in Wales and Northern Ireland also receive a disproportionate share of the Government’s generosity with our money.

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But there is a fourth ‘country within a country’ which has been allowed to develop by successive Labour and Conservative/Lib Dem governments, and which also gets much more than its fair share of the cake. The ‘United Kingdom’ now comprises Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, South East England (all of which are getting more cake than they need) and the rest of England, which has to get by on the crumbs. And none of the above mentioned political parties have any believable plans to do anything about it.

During his media opportunity after telling the Queen that there was going to be an election, Mr Cameron had the gall to use the phrase ‘our United Kingdom’. The man is in danger of giving hypocrisy a bad name!

From: Chris Giddings, Springwood Drive, Halifax.

IN his article (The Yorkshire Post, April 1), GP Taylor fails to mention one of the most dangerous politicians in the forthcoming elections, Nicola Sturgeon.

She and her erstwhile colleague Alex Salmond are determined to wrest all vestiges of control over Scottish politics from Westminster irrespective of the consequences to the UK overall.

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Their intention seems to be to change forever the current ethos of government in this country and eliminate in the process the Upper House. Their determination could, in fact, destroy democracy as we currently know it and leave the UK in a worse political mess than it already is.

As for the comments made by Sir Bernard Ingham (same edition), I am reminded, regarding standards, of the old saying, “the rot always starts at the top”. So don’t blame entirely the electorate for the present lack of interest in politics by young people and falling standards.

Strong leadership from our mainstream parties is nowhere to be seen or heard which is what we currently need. The Conservatives have the policies despite the barrage of criticism from all opposing sides (and fashionable hatred by certain sectors of society), but not the voluble strength to get the message over. The failing points of the Tories remain with their lack of ability to tackle the problems of immigration and the EU which does call for strong leadership.

From: Bernard Hill BSc. Hons, National Avenue, Hull.

FURTHER to your reader Roger P Brown’s enquiry about the M11 to Hull (The Yorkshire Post, April 2), this motorway was mooted in the early 1970s and it was basically, as he has asked, to join up the northern end of the M11 through a combination of motorway and dual carriageways to the Humber Bridge and then continue through East Yorkshire to eventually link up with the A19 outside of York.

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There were many reasons given for not starting this venture, but what was interesting that the A14 was upgraded to join the M6/M1 with the Midlands and Felixstowe.

The conspiracy theorists always claim that it was that the Labour MPs in the area outnumbered the total number of MPs (irrespective of party) for the East Coast Motorway.

From: James Robson, West End, Kirbymoorside, North Yorkshire.

SEEING a trailer on Channel 4 News on Monday evening for a voxpop outing to Pickering in North Yorkshire about the forthcoming General Election by anchorman Krishnan Guru-Murthy, I decided to watch.

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I had hoped for a fairly serious debate about such pressing rural concerns as the young unemployed in the country, about dairy farmers going out of business because their milk has become cheaper than water, or hill farmers whose sheep cost more to rear than they’re worth at market. What ensued was patronising and trivialising in the extreme. After some shots establishing the beauty of the location we saw Krishnan biking across the moors, up hill and down dale then sitting on a bench taking in an idyllic view – we then cut to a pub interior in Pickering where he interviewed several rather embarrassed looking locals – a very representative bunch including an ‘incap’ hypnotist (every village should have one) who seemed to have been chosen because of their difficulty in stringing two words together. After this debacle the camera focussed on a pot hole into which a (probably Arts Council sponsored) local clown deposited a dollop of pink porridge and ranted briefly about ‘the infrastructure’.

From: Howard Ray, Bramley, Leeds.

I FEEL I must reply to the letter from DS Boyes (The Yorkshire Post, March 31) and, in particular, his comments relating to Rachel Reeves who is seeking re-eelction as Leeds West MP.

It’s true Rachel does not come from Yorkshire so it must give her great satisfaction to have overcome this handicap by becoming a first class and much admired MP for Leeds West. She has a work rate second to none and a genuine desire to look after the wants and needs of her constituents. To also find the time to satisfy the ever increasing demands of the media is to be much applauded.