Cuts threat to vital work of volunteers

YOU are correct to raise the alarm about cuts to services for Yorkshire’s most vulnerable people (Yorkshire Post, September 26).

At voluntary sector agency Involve Yorkshire & Humber we estimate, from our research, that over 6,500 charities in the region do health and social care work as their main activity – this work is under real threat.

These organisations support tens of thousands of vulnerable people, many of whom will be at risk as services from charities and local authorities are cut.

Nationally, Compact Voice, which monitors the compact with the voluntary sector, has found that half of all local authorities are making disproportionate cuts to the voluntary sector.

We call on local authorities to keep talking with the voluntary sector to preserve or re-design important services where possible, and help us to harness volunteer energy.

We urge local authorities not to make disproportionate cuts to the voluntary sector. We call on Government to invest fairly in Yorkshire and Humber.

Motorway madness

From: Bob Watson, Springfield Road, Baildon.

So, now we learn (Yorkshire Post, September 24) that work is to start on opening up the hard shoulder on parts of the M62 to ease congestion.

When the motorways were first built many years ago they were obviously much quieter, and yet hard shoulders were rightly considered necessary.

How can it now be felt that they can be dispensed with, and be replaced on certain sections by occasional emergency bays without compromising safety?

This appears to be simply an exercise in adding further motorway lanes on the cheap, and does no credit to those concerned.

When the first death occurs due to there being no hard shoulder, then all those involved in this decision will have to bear a heavy responsibility.

Airport’s unfair charge

From: John Holbrook, Sycamore Drive, Cleckheaton.

Leeds-Bradford Airport has introduced a deplorable £2 charge for dropping off and collecting passengers.

There is no way around the change unless you actually drop off or collect passengers on the approach roads.

To my knowledge, this is the only airport that charges passengers being dropped off and collected.

This needs to be investigated. The airport needs to justify why these charges have been introduced or is the travelling public being fleeced by this locally applied duty?

University of life skills

From: Fiona Lemmon, Clifton Byres, Clifton, Maltby, Rotherham.

Regarding “Many new to college can’t even boil an egg” (Yorkshire Post, September 26), I am half amused and half surprised at university freshers’ lack of basic life skills.

I started at university in 1967 and it soon became evident that there were students who, like 14 per cent in the Sainsbury’s Finance survey, “cannot even boil an egg”.

In my day, virtually all these students were male.

The university I attended was all but fully residential and the only meal not provided for students living on campus was on a Sunday evening when the Student Union didn’t have catering available either so not being able to prepare even a snack produced only very short lived hunger pangs.

I received my education in a very gender stereotypical grammar school, the first co-educational school in Wales, where girls did domestic science and needlework at school for at least three years while boys did woodwork and metalwork.

Although cookery has never been my strong point, I remember much of what I was taught in domestic science and I was able to help my mother prepare meals from time to time.

No mention was made in the survey of freshers being able to sew on a button or tack up a hem. I bet there are few who can do either.

Being a girl, I left school and home well able to fend for myself. The poll results in your article have not given a gender breakdown of the statistics but I anticipate that males are less able to look after themselves than females.

People with learning disabilities are taught life skills to help them live as independently as possible so how come university freshers haven’t received such tuition?

Should we blame the school curriculum, schools, parents or all three? Or are youngsters brought up in a “can’t be bothered” culture and rely on fast food outlets?

I live in an area which has seen input from Jamie Oliver teaching young mothers who cannot cook a meal to do so instead of giving their children take-away meals on a daily basis.

It’s no wonder that obesity and poor health are rife here – not to mention debt.

Surely our supposedly intelligent university students should be able to set a good example when it comes to life skills, including budgeting.

Or have I got my head in the proverbial academic Ivory Tower?