February 13 Letters: Undemocratic disaster of housing plan

THANK you for including an excellent summary of the points put to Parliament by Pudsey MP Stuart Andrew (The Yorkshire Post, February 5), where he sets out very clearly and accurately the environmental disaster that is the housing plan devised by the present Leeds Council administration and their senior officials.

Tragically for the small towns surrounding Leeds, our democracy died in 1974 when these Metropolitan Districts were imposed on us without any serious attempt at consultation and our views are still being ignored.

Officially Leeds pays lip service to the protection of the green belt and green space, but in practice, through the known consequences of its flawed core strategy, they appear to be doing everything in their power to undermine national policies.

This is disgraceful and makes a complete mockery of the British “democracy” our establishment is so fond of trying to foist onto other countries.

Dirty deeds 
of foul felines

From: David McKenna, Hall Gardens, Rawcliffe, Goole.

IT was with interest that I read your correspondent Bob Swallow’s letter regarding the re-introduction of dog licences (The Yorkshire Post, February 7).

As a member of our local Rubbish Ridders, I can tell your readers that we pick up many bags of dog excrement which are found “growing” on bushes, hiding behind lamp-posts or merely thrown into the hedge bottom.

These people and their dogs should bag it and then bin it. It’s not, to use a hackneyed phrase rocket science.

We then move on to the next bone of contention, and here I realise that I will incur the wrath of many who believe that their pet is blameless. The domestic cat or the feline fouler, as it is known to gardeners, is about to strike again as the weather improves and we gardeners go about sowing seeds, manicuring our flower beds and shrubberies.

The amount of cat excrement and the foul stench that emanates from it is truly overwhelming. Talk about a dog licence, what about a cat one as well?

Creators of our chaos

From: Chris Schorah, Gascoigne Avenue, Leeds.

BARRIE Frost rightly deplores man’s inhumanity to man but seems to think that it should lead us to question the Christian belief that we are made in God’s image (The Yorkshire Post, February 9).

But he’s missed out the bit of the Bible which tells us that we’ve turned away from our relationship with God and chosen to become self-obsessed rather than God-focused. So we have kept some of the material attributes we were created with, such as our power, but have lost God’s wisdom in knowing how to use it properly.

Hence the self-inflicted chaos we see around us, a disarray that will continue until we get back to God and stop ignoring His commandments.

Turning 
the tables

From: John Springer, Ingbirchworth, Penistone, Sheffield.

I WAS, like your contributor Canon Michael Storey in the early 1940s, drilled in repetition by age seven in my first two years at school – 1934/36. I still can 
only work out what 6x9 is 
by whispering my way through the whole sequence until I 
reach 6x9.

Some people, notably my late wife, who enjoyed arithmetic as well as maths, tried to convince me that I need only rehearse the sequence as far as 9x6. I never could understand how this could be possible.

The only reason I was aware 
of for learning the tables was to be able to give the response asked for.

If the request were for 9x6, how could 6x9 possibly be correct?

From: David F Chambers, Sladeburn Drive, Northallerton.

IN the days when I scraped a 
pass in arithmetic, not all my school mates were as successful. As I remember, we all had “learning difficulties”, though not in today’s clinical sense which is another matter entirely.

After all, we were coping with 20 shillings in the pound, 12 pence in the shilling.

Not to mention 14 pounds in the stone, 16 ounces to the pound and three feet in a yard, 12 inches in a foot. Times tables were in demand daily.

Today’s educational experts, who perhaps never struggled over nine ounces of bacon at five-and-three a pound (er, two and 11 pence ha’penny), should certainly explain how anyone these days should leave school innumerate with or without electronic aid.

Call time on this joker

From: Trev Bromby, Hull.

LOUD mouthed, unfunny political no-hoper Al Murray, also known as The Pub Landlord, seems to have set himself a target to belittle and undermine Nigel Farage of Ukip.

If this clown was serious about his standing for public office, he would be bemoaning the incompetence, lies, sleaze and expenses scandals of the so-called “main parties” – and I am apolitical!