Saturday's Letters: Collapse of community life has hit the school system

When the tripartite system enabled primary school children to be

directed towards grammar or technical schools and the rest of the secondary school pupils left school at 14 and made their mark, some very successfully, in useful employment, the situation was clear for everyone to see.

Children of parents who were financially comfortable have always been at an advantage, but these, including myself, required parents who could live on a financial shoestring while at the same time providing good, clean and healthy homes – good food (often home grown) and the ability to involve the family in quality activities – music, sports and, above all, good conversation and reading, often extending into community activities where citizenship was absorbed. This occurred during the war years when everyone was expected to make some effort to contribute to society no matter what their status or even medical condition was.

Many miners in our area were well-read, well-spoken, self-educated and keen to give us the best opportunities which they never had – sometimes because of lack of finance. I realise now how much they sacrificed, particularly in preparing us for education in schools, often

unwittingly. It says much of the system in schools that in 1945, some 29 children from our school out of a cohort of about 80 passed for grammar school at a time when schools were desperately short of material and staff.

This system was in place when I began my teaching career in 1956 but due to the number of children now involved, the increase in the school leaving age, constant changes in testing and examination arrangements and, above all, the collapse of community and family life in many areas which depended upon the benevolence of large industrial organisations, changes in attitude to life and responsibilities have altered.

We appear to have created a sizeable minority of parents who have lost control of their offspring who in turn have considerable learning/ behavioural problems.

It is noticeable that my successful primary school, now housed in a PFI rebuild, has "Sure Start" status – a statement that there are problems and these can be attributed to inadequate parenting skills, plus poor motivation and ambition. Those parents labelled "pushy" take their offspring elsewhere.

Surely it is not the children who need to learn how to manage money – it is those who are supposed to be expert at it who are responsible for the mess we are in and they should get us out of it. How about cuts in pay as a starter?

From: JW Slack, Swinston Hill Road, Dinnington, Sheffield.

UK should act against mail scam

From: Duncan Anderson, Mill Lane, East Halton, Immingham.

IT'S a shame that Royal Mail and TNT want to aid and abet with "advanced fee" scammers (Yorkshire Post, August 25). But the fact is; they are providing these scammers with postage paid facilities, they are then delivering these scams so profiting from the actions of scammers and they are providing "return to sender" addresses. And as the Government part owns Royal Mail, they are directly involved with criminal activity.

Therefore it isn't surprising, but highly disappointing, that the Government does nothing – the upshot is that there are now "advanced fee" scammers working in the UK and EU without fear of prosecution. And even more worrying is the fact that these scammers are now asking for various forms of identity as well, so international terrorists and criminal gangs now have masses of false identifications and loads of cash.

The Government could do a lot. They could collect these scams and collate the data of who is sending what from where. They could work with the couriers, reminding them that they are aiding and abetting, to reduce the numbers of scams coming into this country and being distributed around this country. They could approach the relevant Ambassador of the various countries where they originate and seek cooperation in dealing with this matter.

As some of the originating countries permit this activity, they can easily find the names of the company directors. The Government could then write to them asking them to desist otherwise a European arrest warrant could be issued.

From: Alexander Ogilvy, East Parade, Heworth, York, North Yorkshire.

THE proposals to transfer all mail sorting operations from York (Leeman Road) 20 miles to Leeds would not seem to make total sense.

This would threaten not only a number of jobs in York but also the quality of the service. Mail shuttling backwards and forwards between the two places (before and after sorting) could obviously lead to a number of unnecessary delays for mail bound for York. This would seem to be a false economy.

A city the size and population of York surely needs its own sorting office. I hope that the proposals are withdrawn and that mail sorting may continue in York.

A modest reform

From: Michael Meadowcroft, Waterloo Lane, Leeds.

DAVID Davis makes a fundamental error in his speech ("Let's vote for

clarity over constitutional change", Yorkshire Post, September 8) when he considers whether particular parties gain or lose from different electoral systems.

It is the electors who are represented by the parties that are cheated by defective electoral systems not the parties themselves.

If the purpose of elections is to give influence to the electors'

views, demonstrated by their support of candidates and their parties, then First Past the Post vividly fails.

Take two elections since the war: in 1951, the Labour Party polled more votes than the Conservatives but lost the election, whereas in February 1974, the Conservatives received more votes than Labour but Labour formed the government.

David Davis says that the present electoral system "has been very effective throughout history".

Perhaps so, but in the wrong ways. For instance, if, as the voters wished, Labour had formed the government in 1951, we may well have

not had the disaster of Suez. And if the Conservatives had formed the government in 1974, we might have avoided the winter of discontent.

The fact is that the Alternative Vote is a very modest reform which

will have the inestimable benefit of greatly diminishing the huge number of safe seats – such as David Davis's Haltemprice constituency – which undermine our democratic health.

Ugly truth for Britain

From: Eric Firth, Wellington Street, Wilsden, West Yorkshire.

AN international survey has revealed that people around the world consider British girls to be the ugliest on earth.

Sadly, it is not the first survey giving this message; others have said exactly the same: "British girls are ugly." The days when English girls were neat, trim, with thick, healthy hair, sparkling eyes and the then world famed English girls' "strawberry and cream" complexion started to die from the silly 1960s, like most good things about this country.

The modern lifestyle of junk food, little outdoor exercise, fags and cars, too many visits to the hairdressers, too much dying of hair, totally unnatural, has turned British girls into freaks.

Nor should it be any surprise that American girls are considered the second ugliest. Our young folk have modelled themselves on them, in fact taken over from them.

So the French will still be able to crack their favourite joke: "What do you call a pretty girl in London?" Answer: "A tourist." Ouch.

Why sportsmen may struggle in the classroom

From: Rachel Maister, Priest Lane, Ripon.

I FOUND Sheena Hastings's column (Yorkshire Post, September 7) on Wayne Rooney both arrogant and offensive. She says: "Footballers aren't over-endowed with brains and such brains as they have tend to be located in their boots."

Anybody watching top matches in football cannot but admire the quick-thinking and spatial awareness of a good footballer apart from the physical skills involved.

That is not to say that many footballers may have under-performed at school, both because of the large amount of time inevitably spent in honing their skills at the expense of their studies, but also because the ability to use both feet equally is characteristic of the good footballer, but also a sign of weak dominance of one side of the brain over the other. This causes reading problems, since reversed images are not adequately suppressed by the dominant side, resulting in long-term confusion of letters and numbers which are reversed images of each other.

When working as an educational psychologist, I made a long-term study of such problems and would expect that athletes and games players would often find difficulty in getting going with their reading and writing.

From: Tim Mickleburgh, Littlefield Lane, Grimsby.

WHY have the downmarket tabloids made so much about the private life of Wayne Rooney? He isn't the kind of person anyone looks up to to give a moral example, simply an overpaid young footballer whose only talent lies on what he does with his feet. I'm not condoning immorality, but oh for the days of Denis Compton when private lives were kept private.

Town let down by its three MPs

From: Colin Cawthray, Elmete Drive, Roundhay, Leeds.

WITH regard to your article "Cameron fails to keep pledge on Yorkshire City Ministers" (Yorkshire Post, September 8), Ed Miliband, MP for Doncaster North, said: "Since the Government took office, the people of Yorkshire have been badly let down."

May I remind Ed Miliband that while he was in office the people of Doncaster were badly let down, and have been for quite a number of years, even though Doncaster is represented by three Labour MPs.

Good reason to vote for Abbott

From: Frank McManus, Longfield Road, Todmorden, West Yorkshire.

BARRY Sheerman recommends David Miliband for the Labour Party

leadership (Yorkshire Post, September 6). I need but a single sentence to give cogent reasons for my voting: "1 – Diane Abbott; 2 – Ed Miliband."

She voted against the illegal and catastrophic war on Iraq; and he, not an MP at the time, didn't vote for it.

Long view

From: JN Duckett, Wormley Hill, Syke House, Goole.

HAVING read the letter from Charles Tart (Yorkshire Post, September 8) concerning the state of the roads in Darley, he makes the statement: "Darley is reported to be the longest village in England."

Our village of Syke House is at least five miles long and claims to be the longest village in Yorkshire. Is this assertion true and if so, is Darley's claim a myth?