East Coast line should be privatised

As a Leeds United fan living in Cleethorpes, I take the opportunity of driving to Doncaster to benefit from travelling to London King’s Cross on the East Coast Main Line.

When run by the Great Northern Eastern Railway (GNER), the service was superb and very cost effective. It provided value for money.

However, since GNER relinquished the franchise, the fare structure has changed. Even booking tickets in advance, the prices have risen inexorably with the first class supplements having doubled in price.

The cheapest first class return booked in advance from Doncaster to London King’s Cross is now £80 which is extortionate.

Now comes the news that punctuality on the East Coast Main Line has declined alarmingly since the state-backed Directly Operated Railways took over the franchise (Yorkshire Post, July 9).

Over the time that National Express ran the franchise, punctuality reached 89 per cent but since DOR took it over, it has declined to 83.1 per cent.

During its tenure, National Express produced better than 90 per cent punctuality over seven four-week periods yet by comparison, DOR is yet to achieve this once on figures to May 11.

Now we have a Government that is an advocate of a free market approach, it is high time that the East Coast Main Line was returned from whence it came – back to the private sector.

As the line is essential for the vibrancy of the Yorkshire economy, a private operator is desperately needed to restore the line to its previous standard of reliability and punctuality.

Cities like York and Leeds deserve better than the poorly performing DOR.

From: H Marjorie Gill, Clarence Drive, Menston.

WE already have the East Coast route, and I wonder why this can’t be made into a high speed line. When consideration is being given and lots of publicity to a new route desecrating some of the most beautiful parts of the countryside, I can’t help wondering what has happened to the old route used by the former company known as LMS (London, Midland and Scottish) to give it its full title.

This route – if I remember rightly – left the London Marylebone station and travelled through Brackley and called at Sheffield and Leeds but further North, and which city in Scotland it served I can’t say, but surely there must be some trace of this very useful route to be considered rather than opening up and spoiling new parts of the country?

I’m surprised none of the many railway enthusiasts have not brought this route to the attention of the relevant authorities, I can’t be the only person who has travelled on it, though having had relatives living in Brackley, Northamptonshire, certainly made me aware of the possibility.

How Murdoch robbed us all

From: George Appleby, Clifton, York.

SOME years ago, Sylvia bought a mug with this on it for Barbara, her lifelong friend: “You will be my friend for ever. You know too much about me.”

She thought it was funny but true and it has been in a prominent place in Barbara’s kitchen ever since. As teenagers, Sylvia Wroe, as she was then, and Barbara Leadill, as she was then, were inseparable.

Particularly in our teens, we did and said things we didn’t tell our parents about and don’t tell our children about now.

This simple truth in life, financial persuasion and the promise of media support are the basic fuels for the power used to extremes by Murdoch and his operating managers to build and extend the completely undemocratic relationship between them, the police and our politicians.

It has taken power away from the electorate, where it rightly belongs, and has had the worst effect on the trust of the people in our politicians, police, financial institutions and authority in general. We are left feeling completely powerless.

From: James Anthony Bulmer, Peel Street, Horbury, Wakefield.

THE recent uproar created by the phone-hacking Press appears to be another nasty side effect of which there are many in the so-called modern state of the arts – technology.

Most medicines of today usually have several, sometimes nasty, side effects. Modern technology is slowly bringing out a rash of very harmful and detestable problems and as yet no one of the so-called educated, intelligent people who have discussed the Milly Dowler scandal has broached this subject.

So far and over the last 10 or 15 years, we have read of paedophilia, cloned identities, cloned credit and debit cards, old people being robbed of their life savings, millions of pounds taken fraudulently electronically from accounts and some people lulled into suicide. All victims – fish – caught in the “trawlers” – the internet and computerisation.

The Government’s top secret files have been hacked into – apparently fairly easily. Will technology eventually bring out a mind reading machine? And will “Big Brother” become even more out of control? Fill a large container ship with this rubbish technology and scuttle it in the mid Atlantic, as it is slowly drowning us with its nasty medicine.