Robin Hood and his men in reverse

From: Richard Billups, East Avenue, Rawmarsh, Rotherham.

As everybody knows, Robin Hood was based on a typical Yorkshire man but to stop the Nottinghamshire lads from getting upset we’ll compromise and say Robin was a northerner and had the trait of robbing the rich to give to the poor and needy.

Now when people talk about the North-South divide they also mean the character of the southerners is totally opposite, as the southern lot in Parliament have shown. They take from the poor and needy and give to the rich. They are also called Robin Hood, but it is spelt r-o-b-b-i-n-g.

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For example, the homeless in Hull get £66,000 while the homeless in Bristol receive £1,080,000 which shows where this coalition Government’s heart is. They are taking money from the North to buy votes in the South. Another example is the money allotted for new house building – the North has received a pittance but the South is awash with grants.

In 2015, Chameleon Cameron will come north with his bag full of promises but as he’s given us nowt – that’s exactly what we should give him.

We have scraped through over two years of receiving little or nothing in the North. But come 2015, we will have our say.

A life shaped by tragedy

From: Michael Meadowcroft, Waterloo Lane, Leeds.

IN your excellent article on the special collections at the University’s Brotherton Library you relate how Edward Brotherton’s “fortune made in chemicals helped fuel a passion for books” (Yorkshire Post, January 7).

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There is, however, a much more personal reason that helps to understand Edward Brotherton’s life. In his early 20s, he suffered the devastating blow of the death of his first child, probably stillborn, and the tragedy of the death of his young wife just three weeks later. He never remarried and remained a widower for a further 47 years.

He enjoyed femine company and clearly loved children, as was shown by the parties he held for disabled children at his later home, Roundhay Hall. These personal losses may well help us to understand why he put so much time and energy into public life, philanthropic work and his collecting passion.

Lost concept of making do

From: Maxwell Laurie, Victoria Terrace, Cockfield, County Durham.

IN his review of divorce trends (Yorkshire Post, January 8), Rod McPhee omits a number of probably vital contributory factors. For example, how many soap operas concentrate on stable marriages and positive “giving” relationships? Regular church attendance is declining. Increasingly success is measured solely in financial terms. Happiness depends more and more on selfish pursuit of the Joneses. A constructive ethos of make-do and mend has virtually disappeared; anything which develops a small hole or dent is thrown away – including a marriage, especially perhaps if entered with scant emphasis on sickness, health, better and worse.

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Children may be the biggest problem – but there, that’s a whole different minefield.

Costs must come down

From: Kendal Wilson, Wharfebank Terrace, Tadcaster.

FAR from being the economy booster it is always hailed to be, property is at the heart of our present economic cancer. We regularly see news stories of many proposed new developments, often in excess of a thousand homes crammed together, with no obvious underpinning of a viable local economy. So, in reality, where is the mortgage coming from?

I always find it odd that no economist will talk of deflation and reality. Some of our modern costings in society need to come down, mainly in housing. In some future moment this would ideally collude with green projects, e.g. solar power, wind power, biomass as Drax is starting with and spent heat from some industrial waste. This type of environment with the right homes could help families become more self-sufficient.

It is no good City of York Council leader James Alexander talking of paying a living wage when nothing is being done to lower housing costs. In the south of England, steel containers are now being converted into semi-permanent flat-like living spaces, a little bit like wartime homes.

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If this trend comes up north and into parts of Yorkshire, I believe communities that emerge from this environment will teach a valuable lesson to their comfortable parents.

Innovators required

From: Dr David Hill, Chief Executive, World Innovation Foundation, Huddersfield.

I READ with interest the possible setting up of a £1bn Northern Innovation Council, (Yorkshire Post, December 1) but where I have seen it all before?

Although the thinking is good in theory, it never works out in practice. Establishment people are always appointed to manage and produce/implement a bureaucratically-controlled innovation system (the death knell for all creative thought).

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It is not the fundamental thinking that is wrong with these ideas but who is appointed to implement the situation. Until we put applied creative and innovative thinkers in the driving seat, all these so-called economic dynamos will do nothing but spend even more of the country’s wealth without tangible return.