Saturday's Letters: Let's have real jobs created that require real expertise

Why do you not explain to the public what the jobs will be? I have yet to see any vacancies for "offshore wind turbine jobs". The coal, steel, shipbuilding, textile and construction industries have seen massive job losses in the past 25 years. That list, by the way, could be added to many times over when you consider that once what were "household" names made in this country, indeed this county (especially when you think of York), have now been "sold off" abroad.

The coal industry, in which I have spent most of my working life, has seen job losses of more than 250,000 since 1985. Yet the job creation schemes and Government training packages and support initiatives do not seem able to adequately replace those jobs and the specialist technical skills that go with them.

We are rapidly in danger of losing our engineering and manufacturing base altogether. The Tory Party is certainly not the answer to this country's problems either – indeed, some people might hold true to the argument that the Tory policies in their last tenure in charge have left us where we are today.

Neither has Labour covered itself in glory, when you look at our "industrial heartlands". All politicians should be using their supposed intellect to pull the country together, not score cheap points off each other.

We need a robust media to challenge what is being said and to print the whole story, not just scratch the surface. It is surely important not to vaguely allude to jobs but give people a real sense of purpose and hope for the future that there will be real jobs that they can apply for.

It isn't "rocket science" to understand that if you haven't got the necessary skills, you cannot apply for the job .That is why we need a safe, secure, indigenous energy mix to secure our nation's energy needs.

Successive governments have written off the coal industry. Yet they do not relate to the public at large that there are nearly 40 million tons of coal imported into the UK annually. That is a job for the media. Let's have jobs that we have got the skills and expertise to apply for please.

From: Chris Skidmore, Yorkshire Area NUM chairman, Witham Court, Higham, Barnsley.

From Martin Deane, Belvoir Street, Hull.

I WOULD be pleased to see a major manufacturer, like Siemens (Yorkshire Post, March 29) set up shop in this region and build us some serious

wind turbines.

It would create much-needed manufacturing in this area and beyond, creating hundreds of jobs. I'd like to commend the Government for paving the way – but I'm not going to. Okay, it's better than nothing, but what if these were British companies rather than a German supergiant which can up sticks when it gets a better offer? What if engineering co-operatives were incentivised and backed by government and the regional development agencies? What if we made it happen and invested in our own energy security?

Rather, this so-called "Labour" government is having to pedal furiously after last year's fiasco where the UK's only wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas, departed the Isle of Wight. Vestas, of course, is Danish

and went off to America where wind turbine manufacture has sky-rocketed over the last five years.

Can you imagine having only one wind turbine manufacturer if there were serious Green representation in Parliament?

From: DM Loxley, Hartoft, Pickering.

THE Energy and Climate Change Committee, in a report to the Government, has said that the uptake of low carbon energy technologies is "too slow". The measure which they have used is the Government target for 2016.

The Committee seems not to have addressed the question "why?"

Here are four reasons gleaned from public perception:

Government policies are heavy handed, oppressive and repeated ad nauseam like "public announcements" in North Korea.

Individuals are required to self-finance most of the policies, particularly the most expensive, while corporate bodies receive up to 50 per cent capital grants.

That global warming and climate change are little more than political concepts which do not represent the manifest weather – like heavy snow.

Overt and covert taxation is taken from all the schemes which support multi-million pound commerce into HM Treasury and there is no equable investment in the relevant policies.

Meanwhile, carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere at the rate of about eight billion tonnes each year.

New realities of pubs and rural life

From: Paul Sherwood, South Kilvington, Thirsk.

IT has been interesting reading the saga of the Milburn Arms, in Rosedale; and the local antagonism towards trying to keep a viable business running in this North York Moors valley (Yorkshire Post, March 31).

This particular inn, which I first frequented back in the '60s, was always a very popular village inn, it had a reputation for good beer and sensibly priced food and accommodation. By the mid- 1990s, it had become another of the over-priced ghastly gastro pubs with no inherent interest in the needs of the locals.

Gone are the days when you could wander into your village "local" after work in overalls and wellies, in fact, the days are almost gone when you can actually call in your "local" for a drink. The majority of the few remaining village pubs do not want local "wet" trade, tables covered in tablecloths all set out for diners complete in many cases with candles.

We are losing hundreds of pubs per week nationally, mainly through the avarice of the "pubcos" and the Chancellor, but the situation was not helped by the fact that once the so-called recession came along, people had curtailed their habits of dining in quaint and tarted up inns.

As a former licensing magistrate, I used to hear people explain how they were going to make a run down, and in some cases, already closed pub into a successful business, usually by offering some wonderful catering – they all try it and generally fail. Try selling some wonderful beer instead.

The old adage of survival of the fittest seems to be quite apt in the licensing trade. The Milburn Arms failed, go a few miles up the road to the Lion Inn at Blakey and it is always packed, good beer, good food, good accommodation and all sensibly priced.

So now we have a redundant pub in a prime spot in a village centre in the centre of a major tourism area. No doubt a few people became unemployed by its closure. But the residents seem to be hell-bent on not wanting to see a successful business operation on the site, the chances are that once closed as a pub it will never re-open. The proposed "outdoor centre" would have employed local people, but Rosedale doesn't want "deprived young people from Grimsby".

History of brewery

From: M Toft, member of the Brewery History Society, Windsor Avenue, Silsden.

WITH regard to your article headlined "Brewery aims to halt supermarket" (Yorkshire Post, April 1) on the new Ilkley Brewery's bid to rescue the original Ilkley Brewery's premises from theclutches of supermarket giant Tesco.

The article stated that the Ilkley Brewery "was one of the largest breweries in Yorkshire before being acquired by Hammond's Bradford Brewery Co; in 1923".

In fact, at that time, the company owned 37 public houses, Hammond's estate then amounted to around 170 licensed properties.

It was Hammond's, renamed Hammonds United Breweries Ltd, in 1946, which became one of the largest breweries in the North owning more than 1,200 pubs by 1960.

From 1937, the company's sole managing director was HL Bradfer Lawrence. His major acquisitions for the business were Bentley & Shaw Ltd; Lockwood Brewery, Huddersfield, with 192 pubs, in 1944, Tadcaster

Tower Brewery Co Ltd, with 247 pubs, in 1946; also in the same year Seth Senior & Sons Ltd; Highfield Brewery, Shepley, Huddersfield, with 99 pubs, and Bentley's Old Brewery, Rotherham, with 65 pubs, in 1956.

We need a different approach to motivate pupils

From: David T Craggs, Tunstall, East Yorkshire.

I READ with some dismay two articles (Yorkshire Post, March 26): "Labour attacked for failure as truancy numbers reach record" and "Practical science teaching hindered".

Funnily enough, the two are closely related. Let me explain why.

In the early 1970s, I taught at a school where the more able students took GCE and the less demanding CSE. The less able students followed courses that did not lead to subject qualifications.

As their science teacher, I hated teaching the huge but restrictive GCE chemistry syllabus. For instance, one section on "salts and their preparation" had to be covered in about a couple of weeks. With sufficient practical work to do justice to the section, I wanted to take the best part of half a term on it, but couldn't. I had to press on.

On the other hand I, and I alone, decided what the less able students studied, the head having sufficient confidence in me to get on with it.

With my fourth year, sorry, Year 10, I chose to study "the motor car" – for a year. I can fair hear the gasps of today's science teachers, but I simply ask them to sit down with a pen and paper, and make a list of every bit of science they can think of in the motor car. They'll be surprised.

I divided the topic into five main sections, each with 12 experiments, making a total of 60 for the year. This meant a practical every week, sometimes two, in order to get them all in.

The experiments were set out on cards and were done in a "circus" where groups of two or three students moved from one experiment to the next until all 12 were completed. Each experiment was written up using the headings – title, apparatus, diagram, method, results, conclusion. This formed the weekly homework. It was very "grammar schoolish" but it worked.

In many ways, I was fortunate. Having worked as a chemist in

an NCB laboratory, I entered teaching with a wealth of practical experience. In secondary schools throughout the country such imaginative science teaching was going on for less academic students.

The formula is simple and well-tried (sadly, not in recent years) – teach them something that catches their imagination, and at the same time is of interest to the teacher. Motivation will improve, as will attendance.

We could well now have a discipline problem in some of our schools that cannot be pulled back – unless a completely new approach is tried with those disillusioned and non-motivated children who at present either refuse to attend, or create hell for their teachers when they do.