Our taxes should help the deserving

WHEN sending our hard earned cheques to the tax office, I did think that I would like mine to go towards the flood victims in our country.

I cannot bear the thought that it would go to support the residents of Benefits Street or even worse to the Roma families living on benefits.

How disgusting that our politicians are allowing this to happen. I was going to write tothe Immigration Minister but I have just remembered he has been sacked for employing an illegal immigrant as his cleaner.

Our Government is not fit to govern and the immigration department needs to sort itself out.

From: Bernard Robinson, Midland Terrace, Hellifield, Near Skipton.

NOW after all the flooding, will the Government listen to the people who have spent a lifetime in those areas? They know from the past how the rivers and ditches ought to be managed.

Governments have listened too much to people like the RSPB and English Nature, who would like to see everywhere flooded. What has never entered their brains is that all birds in this country have wings and can fly off to a habitat that suits them. A farmer cannot do that. He has to stay and look after his livestock and his crops. A lot of people today do not realise where their food comes from.

The countryside is dictated to too much by the townies today. The people that clamoured for the hunting ban do not realise that the mink is a far greater danger to the water vole than any dredging ever was.

From: Mrs L Vorlicky, Moseley Wood Drive, Leeds.

IN view of all the recent, very severe flooding (albeit mostly in the South West) how can Taylor Wimpey (home builders and developers) continue even to contemplate building 200 and more houses in the Cookridge area of Leeds, known locally as Moseley Wood Soggy Bottom – or indeed anywhere else that is in a similar position?

I consider the company to be seriously lacking in judgement and their proposed scheme to be profoundly flawed. What do other readers think?

Polio’s legacy is still with us

From: James C. Porteous MBE, President, British Polio Fellowship, Yorkshire Region.

I WRITE to deliver two compliments and an observation.

The first compliment is to the BBC – I watched a recent episode of Call the Midwife. The subject a difficult one, dealing with physical and mental disability. The use of disabled actors for the appropriate parts is to their considerable credit.

Understandably they were unable to find a young actor (11 ish) with polio disabled legs to play the doctor’s son. Polio disabled youngsters in the UK being a thing of the past.

Second compliment goes to the medical profession, Bill Gates, his foundation and Rotary who have orchestrated the imminent eradication of polio worldwide.

It does, however, lead to my observation.

In the 1950s Call the Midwife setting. polio was responsible for the severe disablement of many youngsters in the UK and those who survived now face their old age with that disability.

Many struggle on a day-to-day basis with the ageing process adding to their disability.

Few medical practitioners have a working knowledge of polio or the effects of ageing upon those who contracted it in the 1940s and 50s.

The British Polio Fellowship offer the opportunity for those who do have knowledge and experience to be a resource 
for those who require help, support and contact with other with similar difficulties – many 
of those who have had polio 
are still struggling although 
the disease is now, thankfully, lower on the medical radar 
than it was.

Contact the British Polio Fellowship through their website www.britishpolio.org.uk

Price of real independence

From: Godfrey Bloom, MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, Main Street, Wressle, Selby.

PERHAPS I could enlighten politicians who have had no traditional training in economics that fiat currency is simply a medium of exchange.

It facilitates trade as long as the parties to such trade have confidence in it. Scotland can easily adopt the pound sterling if they wish.

It has nothing to do with George Osborne or the chairman of the Bank of England.

Why they should wish to adopt a currency which has lost 99 per cent of its value in the last 100 years is beyond me.

Of course they could not print the currency to fund socialist welfare spending or conservative corporate welfare and there is the rub. Scotland could of course become the new Hong Kong of growth and free enterprise.

My advice is to get true independence and leave the EU and adopt an asset back currency which politicians cannot degrade. But I suspect the addiction to welfare north of the border is too strong.

From: Trevor Anson, Little Heck.

THE writer HG Wells would smile at the “war of the words” over Scottish independence. I sense that our general population, whatever badge they wear on their shirt, are already a little sick and tired of it as we all go about our real life business with feet firmly on the ground, coping 
with everyday problems and dramas.

I detect a growing resentment against the Scottish attitude of them being a cut above the rest of us, as riff raff, holding them back. The strange thing is, however, that the smallest always make the biggest noise, to hide an inferiority complex.