Following calls for Tories to return Frank Hester’s money, will Labour return union donations? - Yorkshire Post Letters

Re: Jayne Dowle, March 18. At such a crucial time for the UK and indeed the world, with violence, slaughter and famine quite rightly the daily headlines in the news, this is becoming sidelined by the never ending pursuit of the reported racist remark made by Frank Hester at a meeting at his company's headquarters in Leeds in 2019, five years ago.

Whilst this attack, if reported correctly, was racist it would probably have remained of little importance were it not for the fact that Frank Hester was a major financial supporter of the Conservatives and a General Election is imminent.

If the Conservatives returned the money would that have made the remarks non-racist and thus acceptable and left Ms Abbott to personally pursue a claim against Hester for comments 'reportedly' made five years ago at his company's headquarters?

Based on the above demand for Conservatives to return the donation to Mr Hester, should the Labour MPs who receive large donations from the rail unions in an attempt to secure support for the regular strikes, return these donations or accept them only after insisting that the full terms of the pay offer be put to the full workforce in writing and the votes be independently scrutinised.

Ed Miliband, who, in his speech when accepting the Leadership of the Labour Party, suggested that he would not be unduly influenced by the unions, in his actions for the constituents and country and yet he must realise that Mick Lynch and the Aslef chief with their massive salaries have no genuine interest in the welfare of their members.

The LNER services on the ECML are excellent in timing, comfortable facilities and friendliness and I am sure that the majority of their staff realise that the unions are not responsible for their salary increases but the very many satisfied customers who prefer rail travel to any other form of transport to work or holidays.

Once rail transport becomes unreliable then travellers will resort again, however reluctantly, to cars, buses, airways and will not easily be tempted back.

There have been several other opportunities to expand the transport system in this area which have not received the full backing they deserved from the Doncaster MP, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire Mayors and it has been left basically to Doncaster Mayor, Ros Jones, her council and the local chamber of trade to press for these projects (as well as the Carbon Capture Schemes based on Hatfield Colliery, and Drax).

Ed Miliband is again switching sides on Carbon Capture which was based initially in his constituency with the Don Valley Power Project which was judged as the best and most advanced in Europe and awarded a matching grant of some 4m Euros by the EU to develop it further.

I am sure you will have a mass of letters from me on all the failures of MPs to support these projects which would have been beneficial to the whole of Yorkshire, the North East and North Midlands.

It is disgraceful that Politicians from all Parties are incapable of seeking success by their own policies but prefer instead to make the most of any errors, faults, own-goals committed by their opponents.