North still getting a raw deal as City’s money heads south

DID you hear it last week, first time this year? No, not the cuckoo, the fatuous remark “Prosperity in London and the South East will have a trickle-down effect”. Oh, yes, and porcine activity will be noted by air traffic controllers in northern skies. The City of London would rather invest in a shoeshine franchise in Albania than it would in the North.

Mention engineering to a stockbroker and investor in the South and he will think of dirty overalls and smoking chimneys. Mention it to a German and he will think of Mercedes, VW, BMW, Bosch, Seimens, Krup etc, you know, the sort of “sunset industries” so despised by Margaret Hilda and her cohorts of yesteryear.

Oh well, as they say in Derbyshire, “where there’s hope there’s Bamford”.

From: Mr Richard Billups, East Avenue, Rawmarsh, Rotherham.

I FULLY expect to be castigated for my forthright remarks about Yorkshire getting a raw deal from this Conservative-led government.

What I write is now being used by none other than Sir Bernard Ingham in his column (Yorkshire Post, January 29).

He quoted my own thoughts, in that there is no energy policy. He could have gone all the way and also mentioned that there is no flood policy, transport policy, wages policy etc.

The rubbish being sent out from Conservative headquarters about this lot’s popularity is mind-blowing when you consider the number of members who have turned their backs on the Conservatives because of their broken promises.

I know there are people who shy away from the facts because their beloved party is not performing to their expectations, so I am attacked for calling a spade a spade.

David Cameron is the worst leader since the war.

He makes promises to all he talks to, he has a colour for every occasion and he is a chameleon.

Every country who suffered during the banking nightmare is showing signs of recovery, so their chancellors must be doing alright. Our own George Osborne wants to come and explain why we in Yorkshire aren’t doing so well.

There is one word for him – useless.

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

THERE’S an old Barnsley saying, used by a man who makes a mate react angrily to something said: “Yer c’n gerram dahn wi’ chaff.” (You can get the pigeon into the loft without using grain). Much of what Bill Carmichael says can be taken with a pinch of chaff but his rants against the NUM and Arthur Scargill portray him as the swivel-eyed loon.

The issue of the council flat is too complex for Bill Carmichael’s purpose (Yorkshire Post, January 31) but any objective analysis will bear out Arthur’s contention that it would have been a good investment for the NUM. There are two things wrong with his comparison of Arthur with Margaret Thatcher: Arthur expected the State to be neutral as it had always claimed to be. Thatcher broke the law by abusing State agencies and by vetoing a mid-strike agreement between Arthur and Sir Ian MacGregor.