Give Sunday shop work to the jobless

I READ with amazement your editorial “Sunday trade-off” (Yorkshire Post, March 19).

Where have you been to say that there is no public clamour for more Sunday trading? Wherever you go on a Sunday, shops, shopping centres, garden centres are heaving, for many it can be the best trading day of the week.

The current limited trading hours make for many what should be a pleasant days shopping an unnecessary crush and hassle.

To me arguments about a “Sabbath” are totally fatuous, Christianity can not be precise about the life span of Jesus, it would therefore seem unlikely that it would know what the days of the week were.

The arguments about workers being pressed into extra work are equally fatuous, sadly we have vast numbers of unemployed, surely some of these would be grateful for the opportunity for gainful employment.

From: David Bentley, Pickering.

RICHARD Heller (Yorkshire Post, March 20 ) gives us an insight into yet another scam perpetuated by governments of both persuasions, but did not have space for many examples.

Two spring to mind: the crass idiocy that led to fire control centres which cost a ransom and are unoccupied and unworkable.

Another is the proposed waste incinerator to be built next to the A1(M).

Whilst not yet confirmed, our illustrious county councillors have gone so far down this route that they cannot sensibly cancel it because of the compensation they would have to pay to the financiers.

This project is unaffordable, unnecessary and unwanted by the taxpayers.

From: Godfrey Bloom, UKIP MEP for Yorkshire & North Lincolnshire.

AT last the Institute for Government has confirmed what we have all known for the last 18 months, senior officials from quangos have just moved to other departments.

The only people sacked were the clerks and secretaries.

The Treasury has confirmed government spending increased again in 2011. I warn again, the UK will lose its AAA rating soon owing to this deceitful and incompetent administration.

From: George Appleby, Clifton, York.

FOR a fair counterbalanced spread of national rewards, which would stop the endless widening of the division between rich and poor, there is one way everybody would support wholeheartedly and be in the same boat together, so to speak... except the one per cent who gambled us into a demeaning, avoidable depression by gambling our savings and pension funds away around the world, supported by our politicians and looking after themselves.

A maximum income at which tax would gradually increase from 50 per cent.

The NHS free for all according to their needs, not their means, as intended, needed and loved.

Without private finance and competition, except amongst its suppliers for best value.

Tax evasion punishable as unpatriotic with prison and hefty fines.

Plenty of scope left for trust, honest ambition, research, entrepreneurism and pride.

From: Don Burslam, Elm Road, Dewsbury Moor, Dewsbury.

IT is a well known fact that history tends to repeat itself and the mistakes tend to come round again as well.

Recently mention has been made of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal and that old war horse Keynesianism has been trotted out of the stable once again.

I have just been reading a book about the stock market crash in America.

The problems apparently lasted well into the 30s and many of Roosevelt’s measures to restore confidence or at least mitigate the effects were counter productive.

It was only rearmament which finally rescued the economy.

These bygone events have lessons for us in our current difficulties.

According to this theory, the economy became unbalanced by concentrating on channelling the government spending into propping up the public sector.

It sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Such policies raised taxes and discouraged development in the private sector.

It is so easy to bash bankers and stigmatise tycoons for tax evasion but the fact remains that their ranks also contain many of the wealth creators on which the country depends for pensions and welfare payments.

Bradford takes the biscuit

From: Raymond Shaw, Hullen Edge Road, Elland.

I AM certain Bradford must be proud and must be congratulated on the reincarnation of the city centre, as illustrated in Picture Post (Yorkshire Post, March 19).

You have recently published several letters regarding the litter despoiled areas of our county, including one correspondent implying Leeds is the worst.

Having recently travelled by rail to Penzance and northern Scotland, with several visits to London, I have with regret to say Bradford is by far the worst I have seen – just travel by train from Halifax to Leeds via Bradford, or by the ring road from Leeds Bradford airport.

I am, as a proud Yorkshireman, truly ashamed of the situation.

Bradford City fathers, please note.