North’s rail services betray region’s history – Yorkshire Post Letters

WE live in a country which gave railways to the world. George Stephenson developed the steam locomotive from a machine which ambled slowly around a coal mine into one which could pull a train at 50 miles per hour.

Opportunity Yorkshire: Why this Lancastrian politician is welcome in Leeds and might back Skipton to Colne rail link – The Yorkshire Post says

In addition he supervised the civil engineering of many lines, most notably the one from Derby to Normanton. It is an almost forgotten part of British history that Normanton was once the junction between two railway companies where passengers from Derby enjoyed refreshments on the station before continuing to York on another company’s trains.

How one man achieved 
so much in a lifetime is a 
mystery to us nowadays where any development has to be preceded by years of political argument.

Henry Bessemer invented 
the means of making steel in great quantities and at low cost and James Nasmyth invented 
the steam hammer which allowed axles and other parts to be made of sufficient strength to reliably operate in high speed machinery.

Today we find ourselves in a situation where our railways have been renewed using equipment made in Japan, Germany or Spain and assembled in workshops here.

Apparently we no longer have the ability to design railway equipment in this country. It is an insult to the industrial workers of Britain for this situation to be promoted by government and shows just how empty is the promise to level up the North.

From: Doug Clark, Skipton.

JUSTINE Greening’s blind optimism in the ‘levelling up plan’ is laughable (The Yorkshire Post, February 19). She is one of six Tory Education Secretaries who have introduced a succession of policies which have devalued the teaching profession, fragmented the whole system and moved the accountability of schools away from the communities they serve to multi-academy trusts.

If they genuinely want to close the attainment gap between disadvantaged youngsters and their richer peers, how about they start with a few basic steps?

They could, for example, make it mandatory for teachers to have a teaching qualification, something that was scrapped in 2012. Maybe they could re-introduce mandatory work experience for Year 10 students – a valuable part of getting young people ready for work. Perhaps they could create an agency to help young people with careers advice and guidance, much like the Connexions service which was also scrapped by Ms Greening’s party.

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