Education 
is not about 
the buildings

ON the subject of education and Tony Blair’s words that you highlighted in your Editorial, (The Yorkshire Post, December 11), are top class buildings absolutely necessary for a top class education to be implanted in the young?

I got my school education in an old 19th century elementary school in Goole and was later chaplain to a successful well known private school in Berkshire. What seems to me necessary for good teaching and learning to take place is the combined commitment of parents and school staff. Some parents are browbeaten by more self-assured professionals and either respond not at all or with aggression. They need help on how to inspire their offspring to want to learn.

All too often many kids don’t get such encouragement and so instead make do with satisfaction and kudos from antisocial peer groups. This suggests that throwing money at fine buildings was not quite the right way without the important steps of good social and educational inclusion.

Think local over homes

From: Mahendra Karia, Meanwood, Leeds.

AS a resident of Meanwood, I know I can’t be alone in worrying about our housing situation and where the next generation are going to live?

Surely, with an election around the corner, there needs to be more of a serious local debate about the homes we desperately need in our community?

The increasing need for affordable homes and big shortfall in supply means house prices are becoming out of reach of our pay packets. Home ownership is at its lowest level since 1987 and renting from the private sector is eating up more and more of our salaries.

I am part of the Yes to Homes campaign, which is helping to create a lifeline for people who are renting, trying to get on the housing ladder, or stuck at home.

We all need to be prepared to join in the local debate to tackle this problem, and think about how we can get the right homes in the right places at prices that are affordable for everybody in the borough.

We need more local voices saying Yes to Homes so our community leaders take notice, and more importantly action, to deliver those homes.

Annual pleas for our cash

From: John Watson, Leyburn.

YOU can tell Christmas is getting close. My morning post is increasing in bulk, mainly Christmas cards, which I welcome, but also of letters from various charities enclosing sticky address labels, the odd pen and various other gimmicks as an inducement to contribute a little more to their cause.

At the end, there is a panel highlighting various amounts which we are invited to tick, depending how generous we feel. I have decided to give any of my meagre donations to local charities where I know the money will be well spent without coercion of any sort.

I recently read a Press report about the high, if not obscene, salaries earned by the heads of some of our large national charities. I was so shocked that I decided there and then that any future donations from me to these institutions would cease forthwith.

Realities 
of research

From: Allan Davies, Heathfield Court, Grimsby.

TIM Mickleburgh (The Yorkshire Post, December 11) is not asking the right question.

Finding £15m or £15bn is the easy bit. Finding the highly qualified scientific personnel capable of doing the research on Alzheimer’s disease is a very different matter. Furthermore they will almost certainly be involved in other vital medical research in which case the choice becomes research on Alzheimer’s disease or some other serious illness.

Research first, money second. Incidentally, one billion is equal to one thousand millions and thus one million is one tenth of one per cent of one billion.

Hysteria is getting dull

From: Susan Towle, Grange Garth, Fulford Road, York.

I MAY be suffering from False Memory Syndrome, but seem to recall a distant time when the general reaction (Andrew Vine, The Yorkshire Post). December 16) to anything pleasant was not the screeching, screaming, whooping, jumping up and down or (self) applauding which now seems obligatory. Similarly, the now ubiquitous utterance of “omigod” appears to be the only acceptable accompaniment to these non-verbal displays of hysteria or, in fact, to anything. Its constant use in a recent reality show made me want to scream.

In times past people would only scream when frightened, would wait for others to applaud them when they had done something really well, and would signify approval by something other than “yay!” with accompanying “high five”.

Surely there is no need to copy everything the Americans do – can’t we reclaim our own culture? I realise nothing is going to change, but the current trend really does demonstrate a pitiful imagination, and is very boring.