How we can restore England’s green and pleasant lands without resorting to racism and jingoism - Yorkshire Post Letters

So, welcome to England's green, unpleasant land. A land that is dirty because councils have no money to take care of the little things, like sweeping pavements and clearing drains. Little things that would make such a difference to how people feel about their environment. They spend an enormous amount of time and money clearing up the mess left by fly-tippers.

Would it not be cheaper just to open up waste disposal sites to everyone, including businesses, free of charge?

A land that is becoming more and more divided by the rhetoric surrounding immigration. We all know that we cannot support everyone in the world who wants to come and live here, but we also realise the foolishness of wrecking the diversity of our existing society, where many people who were not born here give their all to help provide us with the essential services we all need to survive.

A land where many of our young people cannot get through the education system because schools are not given the support to tackle problems like autism, dyslexia and ADHD, problems which befall many of our children and at least are recognised nowadays, yet are not being faced up to in most cases because of a lack of the resources needed.

Instead, schools tend to focus on the 'clever' pupils who can get them through Ofsted with a glowing report. Not really the fault of headteachers, they need to do what they need to do for their respective schools to survive, but wouldn't teachers be happier if they were able to help their whole classroom move forward at a steady pace because the help they need was close at hand?

Our green land is so green due in no small part to the efforts of farmers, who, despite the efforts of this government to intimidate them, keep going and doing every day the things bred into many of them over generations.

I read with interest virtually every week, letters from Barrie Crowther, a farmer from Walton, who I knew in the 1970s, and who is so obviously tearing his hair out on behalf of his farming colleagues at the ineptitude of a government who would rather plant our land with solar panels and wind farms and then sign trade deals with the likes of the USA to supply us with cheap food that no one has any idea about the real quality of.

Why are we spending millions on building new prisons? Why are we not instead spending millions on our communities to try and reduce the desperation which draws people to crime?

Why can we not have a society where the young respect the wisdom of the elderly and the elderly respect the enthusiasm and abilities of the young? Parents should be able to be proud of their children, no matter what their achievements or abilities. Every person has something to be positive about, something to contribute to this society of ours if we just encourage them.

So, fly the flags not in a way which can be mistaken for jingoism or racism, but in a way which tells the world we have something to cheer about. We have a King who would make a far better Prime Minister than anyone currently in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, yet he is not allowed to have an opinion that can be shared. England can once again be the pleasant land we want to leave for many generations to come, so long as we love it not wreck it.