Pedal power helps charity and health

I READ Tom Richmond’s column (Yorkshire Post, January 17) on the Tour de France bike ride, and agree completely that it will play a huge part in promoting health and wellbeing in our region.

Here at Huddersfield Town Football Club, we aim to promote healthy living, sports participation and social inclusion through various activities, but none more so than through our annual “Pedal for Pounds” bike ride which raises funds for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance charity and our Academy.

Aside from the fact that the campaign has raised more than £750,000 in just four football seasons, the real triumph is how it has brought together all sorts of different supporters, all at different cycling ability levels.

Along with our chairman who has done them all, we’ve had MPs, air ambulance pilots, a young blind boy riding on a tandem bike, 14-year-olds to 70-year-olds, ex-players and non-Town fans taking part. In the first year, there were just 22 entrants, last season there were 280.

Our next ride is the “Pedal for Pounds 4: Tour of Yorkshire” launched in December 2012 and which will be over four days in May 2013.

We hope to continue making an impact on health and promoting participation in cycling in the county, just as the TDF will do next summer I’m sure.

From: Howard Bannister, Fiddlers Cotes, Hutton Lane, Levens, Cumbria.

I REFER to the comments of Christian Prudhomme and John Fahey on Lance Armstrong’s admission of doping (Yorkshire Post, January 19).

So, the Tour de France Director and the CEO of the World Anti-Doping Agency believe that Lance Armstrong has more to tell; well, Armstrong is clearly not alone in that.

I had hoped to see, in their comments, something from 
the horse’s mouth – including a “mea culpa” or two perhaps on behalf of their organisations – 
but what I actually read in the belated condemnations 
seemed to have more than a 
whiff of the other end of that animal.

I would be rather more impressed if those responsible for running and policing the Tour de France could state, definitively, who really did win the Tour between, say, 1996 and 2011.

From: Paul White, Tennyson Road, Bradford.

YOUR letter writer Mr Sherwood (Yorkshire Post, January 18) refers to how unsafe it is for cyclists and others to have road surfaces full of potholes, sunken grates and eroded verges.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg suggested in the same edition, that if the Tour organisers go to the Government with a costed programme of work needed to make the Tour a success, then they (the Government) will look at it.

To the Tour organisers, let’ s leave a legacy of at least having some of our roads repaired and no Tour rider injured because of the state of the roads en-route.

From: Michael Dennis, South Grange, Laverton, Ripon.

GREAT news about the Tour de France route through the Yorkshire Dales!

Will the Government agencies which carry responsibility for the roads ensure that all the numerous potholes will be 
filled in, prior to the event taking place? Otherwise the A&E departments throughout the region will be inundated with injured cyclists.

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield, East Riding of Yorkshire.

LOOKING at the route of the Grand Départ for the Tour de France, I take note that poor little East Riding of Yorkshire has been omitted from the route.

We fought hard and long to rid ourselves of that hated Humberside name and I 
would have thought that we would have been honoured with a little snippet of the start of this great event.

Horse meat is good for you

From: Brian Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.

I MUST take issue with your Editorial (Yorkshire Post, 
January 17) which is “thankful that horse meat is banned in this country”.

I wasn’t aware that the sale of horse meat was illegal here as long as it was described as such. May I ask why it is banned? It can’t be yet another EU directive. It is leaner than beef, lamb, pork and duck so it should be healthier.

Of course, supermarkets selling beef burgers containing horseflesh are in violation of the Trade Descriptions Act and should be prosecuted but if they were honest all producers of burgers would label their product “contains rubbish”

The typical British view is that 
it doesn’t matter how much gristle, fat and offal goes into a burger so long as it doesn’t contain. horror of horrors, 
horse meat.

From: Linda McAvan MEP, Labour Member of European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber.

NEWS that horse meat was found to make up 29 per cent of a beef burger on sale in one of our leading supermarkets raises serious questions about the traceability of our food, and the integrity of the supply chain.

The traceability of meat, beef in particular, was supposed to have been improved following the discovery of ‘mad cow disease’ in the 1990s which makes this news all the more worrying. Problems like this are the reason why Labour MEPs have called for the origins of meats which go into processed products like burgers and lasagnes to be appropriately labelled. At the moment this is not a legal requirement as origin labelling only applies to cuts of meat.

Despite Labour’s efforts these recommendations failed to become law, with the European Commission agreeing to look at the issue and report back by 2014.

If companies like Tesco were forced to specify where the beef in its burgers came from, it would have much greater control over its supply chain, significantly reducing the chances of meats of unknown origin creeping into the food on its shelves.