A drain on resources

THE letter by Mr G Senior (Yorkshire Post, January 11) reminded me of when the Yorkshire Ouse Catchment Board maintained the rivers in our region.

Formed as a direct result of the 1930 Drainage Act this board started work on the River Don, clearing the willows, deepening and widening the channel and using the excavated spoil to improve the river banks making them approximately four feet higher than the originals.

The flow capacity of the river was increased from 5,000 cubic feet per second to 12,000 cubic feet per second.

The Drainage Act of 1991 stated that those in charge of river maintenance could do as much or as little as they pleased, resulting in a deteriorating flow capacity.

Which Drainage Act helped to reduce the risk of flooding?

Gagging order

From: Ian Oglesby, Stamford Bridge, York.

MANY politicians, having been employed in Brussels, maintain a Europhile façade as a condition of their EU pensions.

This explains their absurd anti-democratic stance, in opposition to the overwhelming majority view of the electorate.

Our membership of the EU costs many billions of pounds each year and a fraction of this could compensate those who lost pension rights because they admitted that the best course for the UK is to get out of this increasingly oppressive Union.

Right words

From: Charles Taylor, Hemingfield, Barnsley.

I DO so agree with Mrs RM Pearson in deploring the degradation of our beautiful language (Yorkshire Post, January 15). It is sad, however, that she too has clearly been afflicted, albeit only slightly, by this regrettable trend.

“What or whom is to blame?” she asks. To be grammatically correct this should surely read “What or who is to blame?” I don’t know to whom we should turn for the answer!