Cameron runs risk of losing two batttles

REFLECTING on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in 2015, it struck me how it was considered a disgrace if an officer lost the King’s Colours during a battle. As a matter of honour when faced with such disgrace, an officer would consider his options including shooting himself.

When I thought a little more about this I realised it might be an opportune time to express my allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen by writing to warn her of a risk to her sovereignty and peoples.

How on earth have we found ourselves in the position of giving our sovereignty away to Brussels and in so doing placing at risk the whole future of our great nation based on a referendum that will never take place?

Captain Cameron must realise that we know that he has no serious intention of supporting a referendum on Europe. If he was serious about giving the British people a say in the matter he would have held such a referendum by now.

Inviting Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Houses of Parliament and giving her the red carpet treatment was clearly designed to coerce the sceptics into submission. It backfired when she announced that the treaty is not up for negotiation– thus making it clear that we must form a line. Is she preparing a cavalry charge? Should we form squares?

How can it also be that we find ourselves facing the hideous historic blunder in risking the fragmentation of the United Kingdom as a consequence of the independence of Scotland?

Captain Cameron runs the risk of going down in history as the first Captain of the United Kingdom to lose the Queen’s Colours, not once, but twice. If he loses the Queen’s Colours will he do the honourable thing and consider his options?

From: E Andrassy, Ex-York and Lancaster Regiment, Peel Street, Horbury.

I FEEL I must write to you regarding the laying-up of colours in the caption below your photograph in Sheffield Cathedral where the colours of the Yorkshire and Lancashire are held in St George’s Chapel.

This is totally incorrect. There is no such regiment. The correct title is “The York and Lancaster Regiment” a totally Yorkshire regiment.

In 1881 it was decided by Parliament that instead of being known by numbers, regiments would be known by local names. After a great deal of discussion and voting the result was:

65th Foot 1st Battalion to be York and Lancaster Regiment.

84th Foot 2nd Battalion to be York and Lancaster Regiment.

This was confirmed by General Order Number 41 on May 1, 1881.

While there are no “Sheffield Pals” left to mourn this error, there will still be lots of proud old soldiers who served up to 1960 when the Regiment was disbanded, who are upset by this error.

Not so secret documents

From: Father Neil McNicholas, Redcar, Cleveland.

YOU couldn’t make it up... you see football team managers talking tactics to their coaches behind their hands in case anyone in the opposition dugout with a laptop tuned to the match might be able to lip-read, but Hugh Powell, deputy national security adviser, holds briefing documents in plain sight of press photographers and so compromises Britain’s response to Russia and Ukraine being in a brink of war.

How many times is this now that papers have been openly carried around rather than being in at least a closed file or, better still, a briefcase, and been photographed by the press? And still it continues to happen. Here we have someone in the position of an adviser on national security and he can’t even keep his own paperwork secure. These are the sort of people who are running our country. Will the next lot of paperwork he is seen holding be at the JobCentre?

From: F Wyatt, Pocklington.

LISTENING to and reading about the response we in the West can make reminds me of an anecdote which my history master related to our class in the early 50s. He said the Pope had been berating Stalin, for what, I can’t now remember. Stalin replied by asking “How many divisions have you?” which sums it up nicely.

In tribute to the teacher concerned, he had survived the Burma campaign and brought history alive to us, not always I now suspect by the official curriculum route.

Real start of springtime

From: June Fountain, Dallowgill, Ripon.

ON page two of your paper (Yorkshire Post, March 3) was a picture of a little girl surrounded by crocus flowers with the caption “Spring has sprung”. Underneath it stated: “Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds was a sea of colour as Spring officially began.”

I was always given to understand that spring does not officially begin on the first of March but on the Vernal Equinox, usually March 21, when the hours of daylight and darkness are of equal length, likewise autumn begins at the Autumnal Equinox around August 21. Summer begins Midsummer’s Day in June and winter on Midwinter’s day in December, both around the 21st of their respective months.

Poverty and 
the Church

From: Ian Wingfield, Bamford, Hope Valley.

UNDER the bold headline ‘Church should stop meddling with the politics of poverty’ (Yorkshire Post, March 1), your correspondent Philip Smith suggests the Church of England, instead of spending tens of millions of pounds a year of its vast resources on keeping thousands of churches open with no more than 12 attending, should redistribute this to what he cynically refers to as the “so-called poor”.

Had Mr Smith taken the trouble to speak to anyone involved in the administration of any CoE church, he would have learned that no money whatsoever is forthcoming from that quarter to any church, from the smallest to the largest in the land.

All the money required for day to day running of a church, together with the costs for maintenance on any scale, has to be raised by the congregation, the vast majority of which are in excess of his purely fictional figure of 12.

It is true the salaries of vicars etc are paid directly by the CoE, however individual churches are required to make substantial payments (described as their parish share) annually to their diocese – amounts which in our case and that of most others are in excess of payments to clergy. We have been without a vicar for the last six months but still pay our parish share.

Mr Smith would also do well to look a little more closely at the impact of poverty on young and old alike, he might then moderate his tone.