Leeds should still fly EU flag from public buildings – Yorkshire Post Letters

LEEDS City Council should be congratulated for renewing a 52-year-old relationship with its twin German city of Dortmund.

The cities have just re-signed a memorandum of understanding which encourages mutually beneficial social, educational, cultural and economic exchanges.

Better still, the Dortmund mayor makes clear in their joint statement that this renewal was initiated by Leeds.

I will be among many looking forward to seeing the fruits of those cultural and other partnerships bursting back into life once this pandemic is behind us.

The announcement was a refreshing antidote to much of the negative news lately, in which Government Ministers talk about “friends in Europe” through gritted teeth, while their supporters take perverse delight at the prospect of a more isolationist, self-harming Britain.

If they have not already done so post-Brexit, I hope other authorities in Yorkshire will follow the example of Leeds and dust off and breathe new life into twinning arrangements built up over decades with European towns and cities. These connections are needed now more than ever.

Leeds City Council should go one step further: What better way to highlight Leeds’s status as a great European city than by flying the flag of Europe on all of our public buildings?

Let’s be proud of our European connections and show that our friendship with people of other nations on our continent can survive the harm that Brexit has caused.

From: Ian Barnes, Salvin Road, Stamford Bridge.

I READ with interest Sir Greg Knight’s comments regarding 
red tape facing exporters 
(The Yorkshire Post, February 
13).

It seems that he, along with other Government Ministers including Michael Gove, are
a bit like Mr Micawber out of Charles Dickens’s novel David Copperfield “that something will turn up”.

They seem clueless at being able to give practical advice that would help exporters, especially the fishing industry who seem to be particularly hit by problems since the first of January.

As with Covid and now the aftermath of leaving the EU, there doesn’t seem to be any joined up thinking from the Government as to how we can resolve these problems. Thank goodness the NHS has organised the vaccine programme and is doing an amazing job.

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