Passengers treated with rail contempt

ACCORDING to reports in the newspapers and on television, Northern Rail have received many new coaches from their benefactors.

This evening, Tuesday, long suffering passengers on the Harrogate Line were treated to two cars on the 17.13 train out of Leeds, and two cars only on the 17.29 train to Poppleton – two of the busiest services of the day reduced to two cars.

Every day, the senior managers of Northern Rail demonstrate their total incompetence and inability to run even a Hornby railway.

Every day, these people treat their long-suffering passengers, customers, with total contempt.

An increase in the number of coaches is only one factor in improving rail services in the Leeds area – I believe that another 100 coaches would not improve services so long as Northern managers remain in charge.

I urge everyone who travels on Northern services, especially the Harrogate Line, to write to Peter Myers at Northern Rail expressing their grave dismay that nothing ever improves.

From: David Neil, Otley Road, Menston.

THIS week marked the introduction of new railway timetables, with an extra peak-time service to Leeds on the Wharfedale line and a few extra carriages dotted around.

I wonder, did anyone tell Northern Rail this was happening?

Every day this week the service has been in disarray with trains running late or not at all and barely a word of explanation to the poor paying punters.

It’s insulting enough that the promised “new” trains turn out to be relics that look like they have been carrying coal to a dockyard in Poland, but Northern Rail’s ineptitude and transparent contempt for its customers rubs salt into the wound.

Northern is part owned by the Dutch railway operator, which manages to run a textbook service in that country.

I wonder how they’d get on if, as a week’s experiment, we swapped their staff for our third-rate managers and bolshie guards. Would the Dutch stand for it?

Or are they less resigned to expecting the worst from their public services?

A game generation

From: Jeff McWilliam, Crown Point Drive, Ossett, West Yorkshire.

NOW well into my seventh decade on this Earth, I am only too well aware that I belong to a wrinkled and cynical generation of “old f**ts” who, as Bernard Ingham so fully asserts (Yorkshire Post, December 7) “have known unprecedented comfort and security” in their old age.

So it is with great pride and satisfaction that it appears we have in turn sired a tough and resilient new generation with far superior intelligence and stamina than we ourselves ever had.

What with a 98 per cent pass-rate in GCSEs these days, and a record number of students embarking on a university education, it should not be too long before your average “nerd” will soon be on a par with Newton and Einstein.

And now with youngsters barely in their teens ski-ing (and even biking) to the South Pole (Yorkshire Post, December 10 and 13), one wonders why the likes of Shackleton and Scott (not to mention Amundsen) all found it so difficult? Could it possibly be then that we can all relax now and look forward to an even more bright and culturally rewarding future than ever before, or has “hype” so totally taken over from reality that we can no longer tell the difference ?

Penalising pleasures

From: Terry Duncan, Greame Road, Bridlington, East Yorkshire

I AM confused about the reports that leading medics have put their name to a petition to Parliament that it should follow the Scots, of which I am one, that supermarkets should be banned from selling so called cut-price alcohol.

Having worked all my life, without one penny in benefits from the taxpayer during that time, having paid the maximum possible in health stamps for our future, and every penny in tax that the Government milked off my income, I wonder who these medics are targeting.

For they shouldn’t pick on all of us for our wee pleasures in life and not categorise all of us as binge drinkers – but maybe raise the age of drinkers and the penalties for those who feed and supply the booze to the teen mob from the shop or in the house.

A large omission

From: Richard Killip, Thomas Fyre Drive, London.

NICK Clegg justified excluding Bradford from the Government’s new cities agenda – further jeopardising the future of the former Odeon cinema in the city whose retention is supported by the Cinema Theatre Association, Theatres Trust, Twentieth Century Society, Bradford Civic Society, British Film Institute, University of Bradford Union and several high profile celebrities – by saying that: “it is logical to start with the eight biggest cities” (Yorkshire Post, December 9).

I should be interested to note whether Mr Clegg will clarify when, exactly, Bristol (pop 433,100), Liverpool (pop 435,000), Manchester (498,800), Newcastle (292,200) and Nottingham (306,700) became bigger than Bradford (501,700).

Grim reality of the EU

From: David Allsopp, Lindrick Common, Worksop, Notts.

FURTHER to Keith Wigglesworth’s excellent message to Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy (Yorkshire Post, December 13), I would like to ask them the following question: would they invest their personal money in a company whose auditors have refused to sign off the accounts as showing a true and fair view for the past 16 years?

This is the situation with the EU accounts and totally demonstrates that the EU is either incompetent or fraudulent. I simply cannot understand why we continue to contribute billions of pounds per annum of UK taxpayers money into such an organisation.