Importance of heart unit in Yorkshire

I KNOW that you have run articles on the campaign to save the heart surgery unit at Leeds General Infirmary. I am a keen supporter of the campaign and wondered if you were interested in any further news input.

My daughter, Emma, underwent surgery/procedure at the unit when she was six – she is now 12 and approaching her 13th birthday.

I know from personal experience how important it is to have a unit close to where you live.

Heart surgery on Emma was extremely stressful for her and the rest of the family. To have to travel to an unfamiliar city, miles away from home would only have added to the stress.

It would also have been impossible for family members to have supported Emma during her surgery.

A five- or six-hour round trip for family members to visit either before or after surgery would have been impracticable.

I personally believe that Yorkshire children should be treated in Yorkshire hospitals. Yorkshire has 5.5 million residents. Their children should not have to travel to Merseyside or the North-East for life-saving treatment.

I also have grave concerns about travel times in an emergency situation.

Travelling to Liverpool or Newcastle is not easy at the best of times, and really difficult during rush-hour.

Climate change plea

From: Matt Carmichael, Chair of Tidal; on behalf of the Big Climate Reconnection, Green Road, Leeds.

I AM writing to appeal to every one of your readers to join me in reconnecting to the issue of climate change.

The wildfires on our moors, the record cold winter, the floods and tornadoes in America – individual events like these may or may not be due to climate change, but all are certainly a taste of things to come in a warming world.

By taking action now, we could, quite literally, change our world for the better.

MPs are now debating a new Energy Bill. The Bill is fundamental to securing future energy supplies, reducing fuel bills, creating jobs as part of a green revolution and tackling climate change.

But the draft legislation is not ambitious enough, and I want our MPs to be championing amendments that will make it stronger and a better Bill overall.

If we can band together locally to show how much we care, we have a much greater chance of our MPs taking that message to Parliament.

It’s not just for us; it’s for our children, and their children. I want to be able to look my children in the eye and honestly say I did as much as I could to tackle climate change.

William Hague and the EU

From: Ken Cooke, Wheatley Road, Ilkley.

WhilE agreeing with the general thread of William Hague’s article (Yorkshire Post, May 6), I have to note that he is most disingenuous in his attitude to the European Union.

On the one hand, he says it is crucial that the EU’s response to the death of Osama bin Laden matches the epochal nature of these events. On the other, he says he has never believed that the EU should act as if it were a nation state with a national foreign policy.

What does he want? For the EU to have a policy or for the EU not to have a policy?

It seems to me he wants his cake and to eat it.

His attitude reflects the current Tory dilemma of acknowledging that working within the EU is the only rational way forward to making a world political stance, as against appeasing the ultra-right die-hards in their ranks who will never trust Johnny Foreigner. The Conservative Party should take the courage to dump these on UKIP and BNP, parties that are not going anywhere.

Otherwise Tory leaders will continue to speak with forked tongue.