Resignations should follow over children

THE report of the Home Affairs Select Committee lays bare the staggering incompetence of the Children and Young People’s Services Department of Rotherham MBC in its refusal to take seriously the obvious scale of organised sexual abuse in the borough (Yorkshire Post, June 10).

The MPs’ devastating criticisms make it clear that those in charge, at both officer and councillor levels, ignored both the scale of the criminal activity taking place under their noses, and their responsibility to the vulnerable children whose care was their most important task.

The officers showed “a woeful lack of professional curiosity”. In Lancashire, 100 cases were prosecuted; in Rotherham – none! One wonders who advised Shaun Wright, now the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, and then the cabinet member for children and young people, that it was “not appropriate” for him to meet any of the victims.

The only acceptable answer to this broadside of justified outrage is immediate resignations, without compensation or the opportunity for fictitious retirement by those responsible at all levels.

Let councils build houses

From: D Birch, Smithy Lane, Cookridge, Leeds.

WITH reference to the housing policy by this coalition Government giving millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to the “deserving few” who can’t save up enough money to put down on a privately owned house, has the Exchequer now become a bank or a building society to assist the private building industry?

David Cameron and any spokesperson for this Government keep going on about workers who can and will buy now and if they haven’t done it by the time they are 28-30 years of age they should be able to apply to the Government and get assistance from the taxman using mine and your taxes for a private house.

Personally, I was 38 and all the people I know at my sort of age were anything between 35 and 40 years old before they had saved enough to buy. Prior to that, we all lived in rented accommodation without any assistance from family or welfare.

We don’t need any more private accommodation, this country has millions of apartments and houses all for rent from greedy landlords, who continue to push up the rents, because they are sitting on a gold mine provided by the Government, no matter what they say about rent allowances.

The Government should stop selling off social housing; give any money they are going to give away on our behalf to councils and give them the freedom to build more social housing and bring in a law for lower fixed rents.

Don’t let the badgers suffer

From: H Marjorie Gill, Clarence Drive, Menston.

WE can all understand that a difficult decision had to be made to cull badgers in order to protect our cattle from being infected by the TB virus (Ed Barker, Yorkshire Post, June 8).

What most people fail to understand is that any 
animal which contracts this disease is suffering terribly.

If one had a pet with a 
disease which could not be 
cured, then the humane thing 
to do would be to have it put down.

Why should badgers suffering from this terrible disease have 
to suffer when there is no 
method of curing or vaccinating them?

Animal rights activists appear
 to forget that wild animals 
can be in pain and suffer dreadfully unless some other animal kills them when they 
are too weak to defend themselves.

Animal rights activists always look at the picture they prefer to see and never the actual one.

If all the badgers with TB 
could be culled, then the 
badger population would be in a much happier state than at present, even though their suffering can’t presently be 
seen.