Greek crisis shockwaves hit whole EU

EU finance ministers have a very real problem. If they give a second bail-out to the Greeks, might it not simply encourage them – and other countries too – in their improvidence? If the more responsible countries will always rescue the improvident, then why should the latter bother to budget carefully?

The conclusion which will be reached by Ministers now is that firm financial controls will have to be established right across the eurozone.

Certain member states have been allowed too free a rein, and have abused that privilege.

From: Nick Martinek, Briarlyn Road, Huddersfield.

SO the euro is beginning to fall apart. That’s the euro which the great and the good told us we had to join, or perish.

Yet, despite British eurosceptics warning of the dangers of “one-size-fits-all” interest rates and monetary policy, right from the beginning, we, the UK taxpayers, are also liable via the (temporary) European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM).

David Cameron needs to escape our EFSM liability to avoid appearing to submit to our EU masters. To get this, he has traded his agreement to a Lisbon Treaty modification to set up a permanent fund, without giving us the referendum we are owed by his own previous promises.

He hopes we will not notice. Again, the EU gets more powerful from a crisis, abetted by weak men like Mr Cameron, who haven’t the strength or foresight to leave the EU.

True heroine of cycling

From: Graham Snowdon, Hallam Grange Croft, Sheffield.

IT was good to see the archive photograph of Beryl Burton (Yorkshire Post, June 20), but to describe her as “one of Britain’s top women cyclists” is the understatement of the year.

Beryl was not only by far the most successful British woman cyclist of all time, she was one of the greatest sportswomen the world has known (albeit, sadly, little known to the man in the street in this country).

To list all her achievements in chronological order would take up a complete page of your newspaper, but she set 47 British time trial records. Her final records at 10, 25 and 50 miles each lasted 20 years before bring broken by younger women, while her 100-mile record lasted for 28 years and her women’s 12-hour record stands to this day.

She is probably best remembered for her ride in the national 12-hour championship of 1967, when she won the women’s event with a British all-comers’ record of 277.25 miles, almost a mile further than the men’s record which was set by Mike McNamara on the same day. Her overall British record stood for two years before being beaten by Yorkshireman John Watson in 1969.

The high price of one fish

From: Ross Taggart, The Avenue, Eaglescliffe, Stockton-on-Tees.

YOU carried an article (Yorkshire Post, June 16) regarding the return of salmon to the nearby Riven Leven in the form of one small fish.

This success was attributed to the construction of a fish pass. The said concrete construction was built in the river immediately downstream of the ancient Leven Bridge, with the inevitable result that a bridge engineer of Roman times would have foretold, but sadly not the engineers of Stockton Council.

Eighteen months later, the bridge literally cracked in the middle, its foundations sucked away by the altered current. This disaster was officially blamed on – wait for it – global warming! The busy road over the bridge was completely closed for three months with diversions of several miles along traffic-choked alternative routes.

The financial cost was of course unimportant to the public sector geniuses who supervised the whole debacle; however the environmental cost of needlessly burning at least an extra million litres of motor fuel was presumably not inconsiderable.

A very expensive fish indeed.

No excuse for bad language

From: A Rogers, Raywell Hall Park, Riplingham Road, Raywell, Cottingham.

It surprises me how many people are willing to defend bad language (Yorkshire Post, June 18) and people believe that it sometimes adds an air of authenticity. How strange.

In the mid 1930s as a 10- year-old schoolboy I well remember a master explaining the problem this way: “The only reason why people swear or use bad language is because they are unable to express themselves in King’s English.” It was George V then. No-one can argue with that statement.

From 1942-1946, I was in the Marines, part of the time in Burma – the Arakan, Ramree and Rangoon. In all of this time, and there certainly was extreme provocation, swearing was minimal, much less than 10 per cent of today’s profanity.

The great English authors wrote hundreds of books without bad language; today it is hardly a chapter, but it is not just in the written word. Television is the chief culprit (or those who run it).

My class master of 76 years ago describes them as unable to express themselves correctly and therefore they should not attempt to force their failure upon us.

Keep up the good fight for cleaner, better Queen’s English.