HGVs openly defy limit at roadworks

AS someone who has to regularly pass through roadworks on the M1 between junctions 39-42, and the more extensive section between junctions 31-28, I make every effort to keep to 50, give or take a couple of miles per hour or so.

I am regularly overtaken by heavy goods vehicles that are obviously exceeding the limit by a good margin, rapidly becoming a fast diminishing dot in the distance, without any apparent consequence. It can be quite intimidating to find yourself boxed in by these speeding thugs, the gap between them and the crash barrier rapidly diminishing.

Obviously they are not experiencing any form of retribution from the law, as if they were, with financial penalties and appropriate points on licences being imposed properly, the practise would soon stop. Perhaps someone from the relevant police authority might like to explain why there appears to be one rule for the law abiding motorist and another for the road haulage industry.

Anonymity breeds trolls

From: Dai Woosnam, Scartho, Grimsby.

SO the woman unmasked by Sky News as a troll in the McCann case has apparently taken her own life.

I feel immensely sorry for her, and I hope the McCanns do too. I look forward to a noble statement from them.

Was she a bad person? I am sure that she was like most of us: a mixture of good and bad traits. Her problem was “the alias”.

The sooner that internet services insist on users using their true name, the better. And that goes for newspapers too.

What happens is this: people adopt the persona of their alias, and stupidly say things that they think their character might say. It is that simple, and that insidious.

Hague just as out-of-touch

From: AJ Eddison, Church Fenton, North Yorkshire.

IN Words of the Week (The Yorkshire Post, October 4), William Hague said: “Don’t anyone ever try to tell me that you have to be privileged or come from the South, or be connected to get to the top of the Conservative Party. Our party is the party for everyone”.

Yet, on page four of the same paper, it is revealed that in four years the Foreign and Commonwealth Office spent more than £100,000 to provide access to VIP airport suites for just one person – yes the very same William Hague.

So at a time of savage cuts in the public sector, despite being told we are “all in it together”, I wonder how many ordinary, Rotherham comprehensive educated people have spent £100,000 of their own or others’ money on VIP suites for themselves.

Two very different examples of how the current Government is so woefully out of touch with the realities of life.

NHS is being privatised

From: Terry Duncan, Greame Road, Bridlington.

WHY does the Prime Minister lie when he says the NHS will not be privatised?

I have just returned from a Cornish holiday where a private company, Serco, runs some of the NHS services. I include the following from Serco’s website:

“Cornwall out of hours GP care. Serco has provided out-of-hours GP services to the Cornwall and Scilly Isles Primary Care Trust since April 2006. Covering more than half a million people in Cornwall, our team consists of more than 180 doctors, 50 other clinicians and around 140 support staff including drivers and receptionists. The service is managed by a highly skilled and experienced call centre team based in Truro, Cornwall.”

From: Hilary Andrews, Nursery Lane, Leeds.

ALL the political parties at their annual conferences seem to be able to “Save the NHS”. Rubbish. Costs for the NHS will continue to rise until we, Joe Public, decide to save it by eating less junk food, drinking less alcohol, doing more exercise and managing simple things like a cold by ourselves. We seem to be unable to take responsibility for our own fate.

From: Jack Brown, Lamb Lane, Monk Bretton, Barnsley.

NOT what you know; not who you know; who knows you?

David Cameron’s family experience of the NHS (The Yorkshire Post, October 2) reminds me of Ron Lyon, a mining mate we had to regularly prop up when he collapsed on WMC outings. Hospital consultants diagnosed vertigo until one day, he managed to collapse into one of Barnsley town hall’s sumptuous blue sofas. Naturally, an ambulance patient from such a prestigious address was found to be in need of a heart transplant.

Dialect word

From: Keith Sturdy, Grimbald Road, Knaresborough.

YOUR correspondent John Wresdell (Country Week, September 20) asks if anyone else has heard of the word “Cainge”. In my part of the former East Riding – Norton – the word was used to describe a scrounger, referred to as a “Cainger”.