Run for profit not the public

NICK Clegg’s “bus passes for teenagers” is doubtless good election fodder (Yorkshire Post, September 17).

However, in North Yorkshire we are facing yet another round of service cuts. Passes, free or otherwise, are becoming increasingly irrelevant in a system which is run primarily for the benefit of shareholders.

Did Messrs Clegg and Cameron visit mainland Europe during their summer break? If so, did they come back with any ideas as to how our creaking, costly system might be made to merit the name “public service” once again?

Did they perhaps start to wonder if “competition” is really the universal panacea which they claim?

Does this wider problem not require something more cerebral and visionary than the rah-rah-mores of the playing fields of Eton, or wherever?

Light relief

From: Coun Nader Fekri JP, Labour & Co-op, Calder Ward, Hebden Bridge.

THE news that TV loudmouth Jeremy Clarkson is thinking of running for Parliament is to be welcome.

It has been more than a dozen years since Screaming Lord Sutch passed away, and many of us have missed the lighter element he brought to all elections, as well as the welcome lost deposit of £500 each time.

So despite Mr Clarkson’s somewhat dubious political statements thus far, and even more dubious denim-based sartorial crimes, I say jump aboard, we need a good laugh.

Off their trolley

From: Michelle Pepratx-Evans, Headingley, Leeds.

COULD the “city fathers” who erected the unfit-for purpose Department of Health carbuncle and other poorly designed buildings in Leeds be trusted to deploy their ill-conceived creations throughout our 
city under the guise of a non-state-of-the-art trolleybus?

I think not.