Friday's Letters: Unemployment and the heavy price of progress

I'm really pleased to hear it, but would someone please tell me how the Government arrives at its figures when it seems to me that all around us the opposite applies?

I look back over the last 50 years and see at least a dozen English car manufacturers gone, each having employed hundreds of workers on assembly lines. The few remaining cars that are made in this country are largely put together by robots – hundreds of jobs gone.

The coal mining industry has all but gone, again thousands of jobs lost forever; the same applies in the steel industry, again all but gone – more unemployment. All vanished in favour of foreign competition and hundreds of thousands left unemployed.

Progress is another cause of unemployment. Take agriculture, for

example. When I worked on a Lincolnshire farm in the early 1950s, there were some 30 employees; now the same farm employs five.

One man on a computerised tractor does in an hour what a man and a pair of horses took a week to complete. That's progress – fine, but that is not my point. All I want to know is where do the Government figures regarding reducing unemployment come from?

Due to progress and the closure of almost all our manufacturing industries everything points to less employment, not more. Unless, of course, the recording goalposts have been moved in order to cook the figures.

From: Michael Booth, Bramhope, Leeds.

On the scent of the carbon paw print

From: D Birch, Smithy Lane, Cookridge, Leeds.

RECENTLY, in a BBC programme on climate change, I heard that there are scientists looking at household pets for their carbon footprints.

They have come to the conclusion that the average dog is responsible for a ton of carbon emissions per year.

No, not like our cows that produce a lot from their back end; they have taken the dog a shade further and taken into consideration that their food has to be manufactured and all that, which entails buildings and transport.

Plus, of course, taking the animal to the vets' surgery.

It's all included in the research that sounded very serious, unless it was a joke.

Can anyone believe that someone is paying these people for such data?

I am one of those who don't believe climate change is a "man made" problem.

Both car and other transport manufacturers are lowering emissions from vehicles – and doing a good job.

For my part, I wonder about the world as a whole. We have been taking out and consuming oil, gas and coal since the 18th century, which must amount to trillions of tons of weight that must have made the world lighter.

During the Second World War, and since, atom and hydrogen bombs and nuclear warheads have been tested underground. This, combined with such huge loss in weight, might have moved the world nearer to the sun just a fraction and, at the same time, tipped its circular movement just millimetres, but just enough to cause global warming, altering climate all over the world.

Do we have scientists who check these things? I do appreciate that NASA in the US sends up rockets and maybe it showed up in their

calculations. All they would do is re-measure and alter the settings and the same with satellites.

The world at this time is spending billions on what nobody seems to be too sure about. We should be spending those billions on the defence of what is happening – buildings that withstand the full might of earthquakes, re-evaluations on flooding and defences where it occurs regularly.

All these should be our priorities; stop putting the cart before the horse.

From: Dave Haskell, Newchapel Road, Boncath, Pembrokeshire.

THE term climate change means different things to different people and I guess the current weather conditions occurring across the North American continent are going to pose something of a conundrum.

Folk who live on the western side of this continent are having to import thousands of tons of snow for the winter Olympics in Vancouver, this being due to the warmest January there on record – so I guess you could understand the local inhabitants for supporting global warming.

Whereas on the eastern side of the continent they are experiencing what President Obama has termed "Snowmageddon" – blizzards dumping as much as 32 inches of snow after one of the biggest snowfalls for a century – so no doubt these folks could be convinced a new ice age is coming?

Slippery slope to more taxes

From: Robert Bottamley, Thorn Road, Hedon, East Yorkshire.

I refer to your report "Snow levy on council taxpayers approved" (Yorkshire Post, February 18).

Already, motorists pay for roads and their maintenance in a variety of ways – council tax, road tax, parking charges – whenever they purchase fuel for their vehicles. In some cities, drivers are required to pay a congestion charge.

And now, we learn that North Yorkshire Council has imposed a "snow tax" on its residents.

Personally, I cannot conceive of any other pretext by which local or central government might extract more money from residents to subsidise a road network which, by and large, remains in the same unsatisfactory condition year after year.

My imagination is limited by what might be considered reasonable: some thrusting young council executive or Westminster civil servant might envisage new ways of charging taxpayers over and over again for the same amenity.

Perhaps some sort of national competition could be organised?

'Ridiculous' bank bonuses

From: Maple Avenue, Pershore, Worcestershire.

THE popular phrase "money isn't everything" doesn't seem to apply to Barclays – or any of the banks – unless you want to borrow 2, to run your business (Yorkshire Post, February 17).

The Barclays announcement of 1.6bn profits gave me very mixed

feelings. On the one hand, I am pleased that they have had

a "successful" year and without any public money.

On the other hand, to say that all investment bankers would receive average pay of 191,000 for 2009, including an average bonus of 95,000, is not only incredible, but ridiculous.

It is an obscene amount of money, and in the light of our present financial straits, highly tactless and thoughtless to those who are currently unemployed – and us pensioners.

Like many, I seriously think the money could have been put to better use.

A vital vote to create a more responsible society

From: David Quarrie, Lynden Way, Acomb, York.

MANY of today's politicians and probably most of the UK population claim that what they are looking for and wanting most is a "change".

We have a chance, possibly in May, to obtain that, but not if the few people who bother to vote – which, I guess, is about 33 to 43 per cent of the people allowed to vote – choose Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Green.

Most of what needs to be drastically altered cannot be, because we are

in the EU.

Britain today, as it has been since about 1959, is afflicted with an all too large segment of its population consisting of parasitic and useless lazy people who contribute nothing whatsoever to society but who are the first to expect that our society will look after them, help them when they are in trouble, grant them every kind of "right" and afford them every kind of protection.

They never consider their duties nor their responsibilities. Indeed, it seems that sometimes the whole of our society's amenities, welfare, compassion, and help are directed towards making life as easy as

possible for this segment of the population – and at the expense of useful and responsible citizens.

This is, of course, a natural consequence of "liberal" values in operation.

Surely now, at long last, after all the evidence of abject failures by all our governments since 1946, we must vote in an alternative way.

Give Bront classic a break

From: Tim Mickleburgh, Littlefield Lane, Grimsby.

I HAVE read Emily Bront's Wuthering Heights twice – once as a callow O-level student with no experience of passion, the next occasion a generation later when I knew more what the author was getting at.

And having read all the Bront novels, I can understand why they have stood the test of time.

Even so, I question the need for yet another adaptation of Emily's masterpiece (Yorkshire Post, February 15). Are today's film-makers really so short of ideas that they are resorting to falling back on the old chestnut of producing a tried and tested classic? Sadly, it seems so.

Praise for airport security staff

From: Roy Aspinall, George Lane, Notton, Wakefield.

MY wife and I recently went on holiday to Lanzarote and had the pleasure of flying from East Midlands airport.

In this age of high security, how refreshing it was to be treated courteously by security staff who even had a smile on their faces. Contrast this with the high-handed attitude of the security staff at Leeds Bradford airport.

The management of Leeds Bradford airport should consider sending their security staff to East Midlands for a lesson in how passengers should be treated.

Crime message

From: Peter Robinson, Roman Avenue, Leeds.

I RECENTLY met a man who had lived in Singapore for many years. There had been a crime wave even worse than in the UK.

The authorities decided to redraft the penal code with hanging for murder, and drug involvement, and four strokes of the birch for anti-social behaviour.

The message got around.

Singapore is now the most peaceful place on the planet.

Numbers game

From: Michael Ellison, Knapping Hill, Harrogate.

JIM Beck (Yorkshire Post, February 17) invoked memories of when I was a child living in a rural environment.

I had heard of of the counting method by shepherds but had never learnt the numbering – other than yan and tan.

Out of curiosity, I checked the website Wikipedia by searching with the first three numbers. There are words listed up to 20, but the spelling for each number varies for approximately 20 counties, dales or areas.