Letters September 22: Contrasting feelings over Corbyn’s rise

I HAVE for many years, before and since the farce of 1974, been a Liberal supporter. However, two items on the same day (The Yorkshire Post, September 18) have encouraged me to support the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn in particular.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s “painful period” was of his own making and how is he worth £5,000 per day? The meddlesome Assem Allam is one of the most objectionable examples of wealth trying to exert influence on others, and for the first time ever I would agree with Lord Prescott’s comments concerning this intervention.

The last straw from my point of view is Sir Vince Cable’s comments that Labour Party members should move over to the Liberal Democrats.

Why would they do that, and how does dear Sir Vince have any credence having lost his seat at the last election?

Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, you now have a new member and supporter.

From: Martin Fletcher, Flanders Court, Thorpe Hesley.

Jeremy Corbyn needs to get a reality check. To be honest, I would like to see the railways renationalised. But if he takes them by force he will be in court for the next 100 years.

Plus, if he then gave them to the unions, we would still be at their mercy. Overmanned, overpaid and with old dirty carriages that are never cleaned.

Prices will not go down with money reinvested in new trains and equipment, it will be spent on bloated and overpaid staff, just like the London Underground now. The rabble rousers on Unite and Unison will see to that. I gave up with Labour in the 1970s. They are not a workers’ party, they are a non-workers’ and shirkers’ party with everything paid for by those who do work.

It was not the Tories who killed off all the best private pension funds, it was Gordon Brown, who used the funds to bribe Unite and Unison people to vote Labour. But remember a mandate is a mandate and that cuts both ways – and Cameron’s was much more legitimate.

From: John Watson, Hutton Hill, Leyburn.

Ever since I took an interest in politics I have disagreed with lots of politicians but with one or two exceptions I have always respected them.

I am afraid I can’t say that about Corbyn and his new shadow cabinet. What a bunch of opportunists they are. They are jumping on the bandwagon while they still have a chance of hitting the headlines.

The same crowd wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in any other government of the past.

How can they be in cahoots with a leader whose economic ideas would bring the country to its knees?

How can they respect someone who refused to sing the National Anthem at a ceremony remembering those airmen who died in the war, and a man who was a supporter of the IRA whose murdering tactics cost the lives of our servicemen and many innocent Irish people?

He also wants us to leave Nato which, above everything else, has kept peace in the western world since 1945.

I am not attached to any political party but I expect my Government to be full of wiser people than myself and who I could respect.

Excuses over coastal path

From: Peter Young, Otley.

In your feature on the planned national coastal path and its problems with the East Yorkshire section (The Yorkshire Post, September 17), Dorothy Fairburn of the Country Landowners and Business Association offers some lame excuses for opposing the project. More toilets and shops for visitors, as she suggests the money should instead be spent on, are hardly the same as following on foot the ups and downs of the Yorkshire coastline, to the accompaniment of the North Sea and the call of the gulls.

I am sure that most readers will at least be attracted to the idea of enjoying a walk on this path, round the coasts of England. Anyone who has walked on the South West coastal path will cherish the memories, and Yorkshire’s coast offers great views.

Erosion is obviously a problem but no one should suggest that this exciting project should fail because of that.

Road to rudeness

From: Don Alexander, Sheffield.

Elisabeth Baker’s letter (The Yorkshire Post, September 19) reminded me of a walk I made a few years ago, along the canal from Victoria Quays to Rotherham.

A cyclist came from behind at speed, at a narrow part, and shouted: “Keep to the edge!”

In a burst of anger I yelled out: “Get thi’ssen a bell!” Already about twenty yards away he yelled back: “Tha wouldn’t have heard!”

I was then seething at this ‘ageist’ insult, but it was rather funny, on reflection.

When one of my daughters got a bike to cycle to work in London, part way along a canal, she bought a bell, at my insistence, but soon told me the downside, with pedestrian rudeness too.

As she slowed down behind a walker and sounded her bell, he turned and berated her. In one or two extreme cases down there cyclists have been pushed in the canal!