Ofwat chief could cut water bills

IF Jonson Cox, the new chairman at Ofwat (Yorkshire Post, March 7) wants to do something for the customers of the water industry, I have a suggestion.

When the water industry was privatised each of the new companies were given a P (or K) factor which was the amount they were allowed to increase prices above the annual inflation rate in order to pay for improvements to water quality. He could now, year on year, remove the P factor from them thereby reducing our bills instead of increasing their profits.

In the early years they could not spend the money fast enough and built up cash surpluses. The then regulator allowed them to pass on the interest earned on this money to their shareholders, not return it to us by reducing the following year’s bill.

Coal aid is needed here

From: RG Wood, Farnley Tyas, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

FURTHER to the recent correspondence about overseas aid, which I generally agree with, I am staggered today to find out we have given the Afghanistan coal industry £10m in aid.

When you consider the 600 men at UK Coal’s Daw Mill Colliery who were made redundant this month and their future and the subsidies of the Government’s green policies which was £1bn on wind power alone in 2012, it is a disgrace that the Government support overseas aid before our own.

For example, they would not support the UK company who were to run the Hatfield CCS project and were supported by the EEC to the tune of £400m and was named it the best energy project in Europe and was also supported by Siemens. That money is now lost. The effect here is that the taxpayer will be paying twice, one for the redundancies at Daw Mill and then the aid to Afghanistan, which we never voted for. Is there anybody in Government, in these trying times, who understand that charity begins at home? Sadly I think not.

A marital anachronism

From: Alan Brooks, Fieldhead Lane, Birstall, West Yorkshire.

HAVING a wife related to the only suffragette to die in the cause (Emily Wilding Davison), and a daughter who is a very successful businesswomen, I have, perhaps, more reason than most to support equality of opportunity for women in all walks of life.

Is it strange then, that I can still become irritated by the constant refrain, as exemplified by Suzy Brain OBE (Yorkshire Post, March 8) along the lines of ‘yes, things have improved a lot, but are still not good enough’. Will they ever be?

Does institutional inequality only work one way? Leaving aside the all too obvious bias of family courts, how is it that Vicky Pryce, a very senior, and highly paid, civil servant, and not an obvious sufferer from any “glass ceiling” can, when she gets (herself) in trouble, resort to the “little wifey” excuse, and claim marital coercion? Sensibly, the jury rejected this squalid, and risible, defence, but why does it still languish on the statute book?

Should not the Sisterhood be agitating about this anachronism from a more patriarchal age?

Views of
a dinosaur

From: John G Davies, Alma Terrace, East Morton, Keighley.

THERE is a suggestion in science that new theories supersede old ones, not by any superior argument, but as the old theory’s proponents pass away. I fear that no mass of evidence would modify the ulcerous hypotheses of Jack Brown (Yorkshire Post, March 9). What evidence can he muster to support his statement that the teachers who joined were second rate, ambitious and subscribed to the degradation especially of English or to the astronomical inferiority of women writers.

His claim that language is the key to intelligence does not seem, in his case, to allow him to see the role of language in the maintenance of social stratification; in keeping women, chavs, people of colour, etc “in their place”.

The airing, just after International Women’s Day, of this dinosaur’s rant is a sad reminder that these destructive views are still common in our society in spite of the efforts of many women and men.

Road to confusion

From: Arthur Quarmby, Underhill, Holme, Huddersfield.

THE Department for Transport seems intent on turning the hard shoulder of the very busy section of the M1 across and on either side of the Tinsley viaduct in Sheffield, into a fourth lane. And such a scheme is already under construction on the very busiest section of the M62, over and on either side of the Calder crossing.

With no hard shoulder, for those who break down the only course of action is to evacuate immediately and away up or down the embankment, before that juggernaut flattens your car and spreads itself across the other three lanes.

And how are the rescuers going to get there? “No problem,” says the Department for Transport spokesman without explaining how that miracle is to be performed.