July 14: Alternative site for Leeds Bradford Airport

MAY I congratulate The Yorkshire Post on your leader on Leeds Bradford Airport (The Yorkshire Post, July 9). I agree with every word of it. It is essential to have a rail connection from the Harrogate line at Horsforth for there to be any success there.

There is, however, a viable alternative which has not been explored by anyone from the air industry and that is the aerodrome at Church Fenton which is in private hands but could be developed as an international airport.

Church Fenton already has a runway which can take on the biggest planes flying and it faces the prevailing wind, south-west to north-east, and is in a rural area which will not impinge on expansion.

Church Fenton also has excellent road links, the A1, M1, M62 and A64 are also close by, as is the railway line from Leeds to York, Sheffield to York and the Hull to Leeds Line.

It would need a five to 10-year plan for development, which the Government would have to play for but it has a catchment area of five million people. It could save the Government having to build the third airport in London.

Church Fenton would be an entrepreneurs paradise so come on, someone with brains. How about it?

Greece brings hope of EU end

From: David Nutt, Huby, Leeds.

WE all know that the Greeks are a fun-loving people, so no surprise then that most of them voted for the fun to be resumed – so long as someone else picks up the tab. The referendum would have made an ostrich proud – simply bury your head in the sand.

Is it too much to hope that any further expansion of the EU will now be off the agenda indefinitely? Is there a chance that the Euro penny will at last drop with the realisation that the Eurozone pipe dream has become the inevitable Eurozone nightmare?

The answers to the above are no hope and no chance. Why? Because the EU is founded on the principle of all-embracing political union stretching from the Baltic sea to the shining Aegean, this to be achieved by whatever means are necessary, be they fair or foul. Unfair? Consider the recent ill-considered attempt to engineer the integration of Ukraine into the EU, or if you like, the gross deception foisted on us by Edward Heath when he successfully concealed the federalist intention behind the first EU referendum.

If (oh happy day) Britain votes to leave this shambolic federation, we will still be ruled by politicians of questionable competence but we will at least have voted for them all.

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

OH dear! Ted R Bromund (The Yorkshire Post, July 6) questions the existence of a leader of 
the Left just as little Greece’s Alexis Tsipras challenges the Chicagoan monetary orthodoxy that has ruled the Western world since his beloved Reagan and Thatcher regimes.

Roosevelt’s New Deal and Clement Attlee’s rebuilding 
of a stricken, post-war Britain endure as examples of the Keynesian alternative, which prevails in left-wing regimes 
like Russia and China, 
whose leaders of the left are naturally, discounted by Mr Bromund.

Read between the lines of Prime Minister Tsipras’s visit 
to President Putin a fortnight prior to the Greek referendum, the almost immediate 
tempering of IMF demands 
and the USA’s suggestion last week that perhaps the EU 
was being too hard on 
Greece.

There is an alternative to the austerity that has the poorest paying for the insatiable appetites of the richest. It is panicking the leaders of the hegemonic right.

As a member of Unite, 
I am proud that my union is backing the Labour leadership candidate (Jeremy Corbyn) who represents that alternative.

Christianity in Britain

From: Arthur Quarmby, Underhill, Holme.

I FIND it surprising that a priest (GP Taylor, The Yorkshire Post, July 8) should state that Augustine brought Christianity to Britain in 597.

Christianity in Britain is very ancient indeed. There are 
some who claim that it arrived during the reign of Tiberius (37 AD) but this may be speculation, as may be the report that the British king Lucius travelled to Rome in 156 to discuss Christianity.

What is known is that the first recorded British Martyr was Alban in 304 – and that a delegation of British ecclesiastics (including the Bishops of York, London and Caerleon (Gwent) attended the Council of Arles in 314 AD. And a subsequent delegation to the Council of Rimini in 353. By the 360s most of the population was Christian – but Saxon invasions then set it back.

Another curious fact is that Britain later claimed to be the very first country to become Christian; this claim was discussed and upheld by the Council of Pisa in 1417, by the Council of Constance in 1419, the Council of Siena in 1423 and the Council of Basle in 1431.

From: KL Rawling, Otley.

HAVING read the article by GP Taylor relating to the church and paganism, some of what he said is true but there are grave errors. The denominations are declining in membership, but the true church is growing across the world.