Good points of life under China regime

I HAVE recently been on a trip to China and so disagree with Tom Richmond (The Yorkshire Post, November 15) that the British public won’t trust anyone until they tell us everything.

It was a blessing to find there was no Facebook or Twitter allowed in China therefore no possibility of setting up terrorist plots rapidly via social media and no cyber bullying as recently occurred with Jessica Ennis-Hill.

The streets were absolutely free of litter and chewing gum, no grafitti on walls and the transport system was fast, clean and on time.

All Chinese citizens carry an identity card and must show it when they travel on any form of transport. We couldn’t get any UK Google or news so it was a holiday from all the horrors of our news broadcasts.

I’m not advocating their system in total but it does have some good points that we might emulate here. Total knowledge means that we have so many different opinions thrown at us that it becomes confusing. The next election will surely show this when Ukip, the Greens. SNP and the remaining Lib Dems will surely leave us with a Government incapable of implementing even the simplest of proposals.

From: John Fisher, Menwith Hill, Harrogate.

THE loss of the referendum on Scottish independence has increased the membership of the Scottish National Party by seventy five per cent something that none of the main UK political parties could achieve in their wildest dreams.

Should the SNP remove some of the Scottish Labour MPs in the next election, there is a possibility of the SNP holding the balance of power should the Conservatives fail to achieve a majority in the next parliament.

If this were to happen, the SNP leader has stated their objective would be to influence changes to the UK via their controlling influence in parliament.

Could I suggest the following “to do” list for the SNP?

Give the UK the same proportional representation election system as Scotland and get rid of the first past the post system which allows the UK to be governed by a party with as little as a third of the votes cast and prevents small political parties entering Parliament.

Get rid of our Victorian regional police structure which is grossly expensive and is failing to deliver an acceptable public service. We need a national police force which can operate quickly and effectively throughout the whole of the country and one that can maintain a high national standard of service and leadership.

It would be ironic if we were to rely on Scotland to drag the UK into the 21st century.

Lessons from war ignored

From: Arthur Quarmby, Underhill, Holme.

WE have just come to the end of the lengthy commemoration of the start of the First World War, which is all right and proper, 
but no one seemed to be questioning the war itself, and whether the conflict could, should or might have been avoided. This a great pity; unless we learn from such tragedies, how can we ever hope to do better in the future?

Certain conclusions can now be reached; the First World War was a major factor in the generation of the Second World War, and although Britain was the victor in both wars, our country was the biggest loser on each occasion.

Which leads one to think that if we had not resisted German ambitions, our neutrality could have preserved and hugely boosted our wealth and manufacturing capacity, in each war.

On the other hand if we had simply yielded to Germany as France did in 1940, we would now find ourselves a junior member of a European-wide German Empire.

Lure of online bully culture

From: David T Craggs, Shafton Gate, Goldthorpe.

SO the number of child cyber bullying victims has doubled (The Yorkshire Post, November 14). What did people expect…for it to simply go away once the “novelty” had worn off? And it wouldn’t surprise me if a future survey were to reveal a similar increase. The increase is easy to explain. Not only can it be done anonymously, it can be done effortlessly by the press of a key on a keyboard or the touch of a screen. But there is also another reason… the perpetrator hasn’t to verbally bully their victim actually standing in front of them, face to face.

So, what are those who run the various social networks, the so-called experts and parents, going to do about stopping this bullying? What in fact are the options? Well… the first and most obvious one is for the victims not to go on the websites in the first place. But this is a non-starter because there is a mood afoot that those who are being bullied have a right to read what is being said about them.

The second option is for bullying comments to be in some way screened out. But what would be the criteria here?

The third option is for parents to educate their children on what is and is not acceptable. This method was suggested by The Yorkshire Post’s Editorial.

Before retiring, I was a year tutor in a secondary school and interviewed many parents whose children were bullies. But many parents were not prepared to accept this, making excuses such as… “well, you know what girls are” and “it was only a bit of horseplay”. If parents cannot accept that their children are bullies, you cannot educate them.