Cheering for England

From: Fred Bishop, Bridge Street, Lower Moor, Worcestershire.

HOW wonderful to see Boris Tadic, President of Serbia, punch the air in celebration and an expression of national pride at the victory of Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon.

Rory McIlroy won a single great victory at the US Open golf tournament and he has been acclaimed, interviewed and made a national hero in Northern Ireland.

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Is it not time that England had a leader to celebrate the achievements of our nation’s sportsmen?

This year, Lee Westwood and Luke Donald became world number-one golfers – to a spectacular media and national silence.

Day by day we get more and more examples of why England needs a parliament of nationals that will do for England what other leaders do for their countries.

Planning reform will bring blight

From: Anthony Silson, Whitecote Gardens, Leeds.

I REFER to your report that a “new National Planning Policy Framework” (Yorkshire Post, July 4) will be released this month.

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If enacted, this policy would largely free builders from local authority planning control.

The consequences would be disastrous. Builders would avoid brownfield sites. So, towns and cities would be blighted by perpetual patches of wasteland such as that where Kirkstall Forge once stood.

In contrast, large areas, maybe even the whole of green belt land, would see farmland lost to buildings when the need to produce more food grows ever more pressing.

You can eat bread, but you cannot eat bricks.

Pension puzzle

From: Bernard Robinson, Midland Terrace, Hellifield, Skipton.

WHERE were the union leaders and the strikers when Gordon Brown was robbing private pension plans?