Opponents left on sidings in HS2 debate

I RECENTLY attended the HS2 discussion at your offices in which Sir David Higgins repeatedly dodged the question of whether the vetoed report by the Major Projects Authority should be published (Yorkshire Post, February 20).

He misstated the case that 20 trains would leave Euston per hour (not mentioned anywhere in the HS2 business case) and then tried to frighten the audience by saying that Manchester had got its act together.

Well, Yorkshire has got its 
act together. The Yorkshire 
Post’s own poll show the majority is against, Bradford’s Chambers’ poll shows a majority against. Wakefield is against, and this after millions of taxpayers’ pounds has been spent trying to make the case, let alone the spin.

The facts remain there is no economic, business or environmental case.

And as for Leeds Council chief executive Tom Riordan’s comments, saying we need 
to bring in the top brains, I would argue that we already have them, which is why we can see a white elephant and are prepared to say so

Still suffering
after 66 years

From: Sue Cooke, Windmill Rise, York.

WE heard and saw for ourselves news of the desperate Palestinian refugees, holding on under siege at their refugee camp in Yarmouk near Damascus in war-torn Syria. The pictures and stories of shattered lives brought to our homes, thanks to BBC correspondent Lyse Douset, are harrowing, and should shock us into action.

It is important to remember why these Palestinian families are in Syria.

In the Nakba of 1948 their towns and villages in Palestine were destroyed in the creation of Israel and they fled for their lives to Syria, many with the keys to their homes believing they would be able to return within weeks.

Sixty six years have now passed. It is time to wake up to
this shameful situation and take all the steps we can to ensure these Palestine refugees are 
given their freedom and opportunity to return to their homes and rebuild their lives in Palestine.

Doublespeak
from the EU?

From: AW Clarke, Wold Croft, Sutton on Derwent, East Yorkshire.

LISTENING on the Today programme to the EU Commissioner for Freedom of Movement throughout Europe, Laszlo Andor, I was immediately and chillingly struck at how well his tone would have fitted a speech in 1984. Not a trace of doubt or uncertainty was allowed to cloud his judgment that in the matter of our Parliament’s decision to limit payments to new immigrants for a time was, as far as he was concerned, incorrect and we should not be allowed to get away with it.

One has to question the wisdom of our country going into an organisation voluntarily, which issues such edicts from unelected officials without any recourse to the ballot box.

From: Robert Heys, Bar Lane, Sowerby Bridge.

IT has been that Viviane Reding, the vice president of the European Union, has 
cited Winston Churchill’s 
call, in the aftermath of the Second World War for a ‘United States of Europe’ (albeit 
without British participation) in support of “a true fiscal and ultimately political union of Europe”.

Unmentioned, but even more remark able perhaps, was Winston’s reference in his memoirs to consideration, on the eve of the French surrender, to the possibility of an ‘indissoluble union’ between Britain and France conditional on that country’s leaders continuing the fight from its overseas territories.

One wonders what the long term consequences of such a Union would have been for the UK.

Clegg exposed
as hypocrite

From: D Wood, Thorntree Lane, Goole.

IT is reported that the political pygmy Nick Clegg is now 
trying to form an alliance with Labour in case there is another hung Parliament after the next election.

His reason for this, he says, is that Labour has changed.

This shows the total hypocrisy of the man and his contempt for the British electorate. Does he think that we have forgotten that he tried, at one point, to form a government with Gordon Brown after the last election?

Here is a political non-entity who will do anything to cling to his little bit of undeserved power, not for the good of the country, as he has proved in government, where he has blocked just about every policy that would have improved the country, but for his own inflated ego.

Hunt still has a lot to learn

From: Coun Nader Fekri JP, (Labour & Co-op, Calder Ward), Cheetham Street, Hebden Bridge.

BACK in July last year, Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt visited Calderdale Royal and tweeted “Off to the Royal Calderdale (sic) in Halifax today to help out on A&E shift and learn from the frontline”.

As we read that the closure of the A&E unit is the “preferred” option, I am left wondering exactly what it was that Mr Hunt learnt on that visit.