Celebrate the 
values of 
our nation

EVERY year at this time a sense of memories filled with emotion and laced with tears sweeps across the nation. And understandably so. Articles like those of Andrew Vine, Tim Jones and Dan Jarvis (The Yorkshire Post, November 11) punch home the salient reminders about why we should keep remembering the debt we owe to so many who have died, or been injured, in preserving our freedom and ways of life.

Yet, as those who witnessed these terrible wars pass away, memories will inevitably fade. Perhaps we should be thinking about what should replace Remembrance Day in our national calendar. I feel that what we need is a national celebration day which both recognises and appreciates all that we value in this great land of ours and the part played by so many in helping to create, develop and preserve it. It would still embrace the part played by all who have died or been injured in the two World Wars, but why not previous conflicts, such as the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo and subsequent conflicts such as the Falklands, Korea and Afghanistan?

That day of celebration could become a national holiday sometime at the end of October/beginning of November coinciding with schools’ half term.

It would also constitute an invaluable way of teaching our history. At the same time, let us abandon the celebration of the terrorists Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators once and for all.

Don’t put the
blame on Attlee

From: Tim Mickleburgh, Boulevard Avenue, Grimsby.

GORDON Lawrence (The Yorkshire Post, November 1) criticised the late Clement Attlee over the creation of the welfare state, which he believed helped to create today’s so-called dependency culture.

In fact there was nothing wrong with both Attlee’s and Beveridge’s ideal, which helped tackle the main wants of society. What has been amiss, however, are governments failing to live up the goal of full employment, with Lady Thatcher even going so far as saying that unemployment was a “price worth paying” if it led to inflation coming down.

If we had the jobs, which are lacking in many northern towns and cities, there wouldn’t be the problem with welfare that some believe we have. Indeed, such was the feeling that joblessness would only be temporary that those out of work were to get the same amount of money as pensioners.

A far cry from the world of 2014, when those on the dole receive around £72 week, a sum that has reduced in cash terms over recent years now that the unemployed are having to pay an increasing amount of their benefit in council tax thanks to the Con Dems’ reduction in the amount they give to local authorities.

From: Derek Dawson, Ryhill, Wakefield.

IN response to my “challenging letter” (The Yorkshire Post, November 3), William Snowden says that he had the work ethic instilled into him from an early age, but he does not let us know what he did for a living.

I must say that it takes a bit more than work ethic to get on that pit cage every day and be dropped down into the blackness.

I would assume that at his place of work he would have somewhere clean and comfortable to sit and eat his lunch and also have the luxury of toilets when required. None such down a pit.

I would refer again to my point concerning the miners falling down the wages league table. William mentions “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”; well, that is exactly what the miners wanted, together with job security. Recent releases of government documents from the time prove the Thatcher government did have a hit-list of pit closures and the miners were lied to.

Blades using a
Nelson telescope

From: Jack Duckworth, Rockingham Hills, Oundle.

I AM greatly disappointed to learn that Sheffield United has agreed (The Yorkshire Post, November 12) to let Ched Evans train with the Sheffield United Squad for no pay. How generous. Would this be because the club wishes to assess his recovered potential before fully signing him on?

I understand Evans has not even expressed any remorse about his conviction and imprisonment, which were the outcome of a fair trial. I can understand why he has not acknowledged such a crime because this would no doubt add to revulsion.

For Sheffield United to use a Nelson telescope belittles their integrity.

The moral
millions

From: Beryl Williams, Ash Glade, Wakefield.

AMAZINGLY, Fiona Woolf, who has just stepped down from heading an inquiry into paedophiles and continuing allegations of sexual impropriety at Westminster, says in her defence to counter the victims’ allegations of her partiality that ‘everyone’ has connections, and ‘you’d have to be a hermit’ not to.

Oh really, Fiona? There 
are millions of well-educated, shrewd and competent 
people out there who do 
actually move around and socialise, not in Westminster, 
not part of the Establishment, who live by very high moral values and are not paedophiles, don’t know any and don’t want to. And who could take your place tomorrow with the utmost dedication and integrity?