Scarborough: A defence of MP Naz Shah’s ‘holiday’ comments – Yorkshire Post Letters

THE views of Scarborough from the childhood experiences of Naz Shah MP are valid and should not be ridiculed. People should be careful of criticising her.

The majority of emotional and mental health problems in adulthood arise from holding on to out-of-date feelings and thoughts from childhood.

As a 14 and 15-year-old London schoolgirl in 1963/4, I visited Yorkshire on two school holidays. I enjoyed staying in Bridlington, visiting Whitby, Goathland and York.

One very wet day, with early closing, we visited Scarborough. Nothing was open and I thought it was the most miserable place I had ever visited and would never return.

I kept that promise, avoiding it when bringing my children for a Yorkshire holiday in 1986 and unexpectedly moving to York in 1994.

One day in 1996 I had to go to Scarborough for a meeting on South Cliff.

It was a beautiful summer’s day and the view from the Esplanade overwhelmed me. I had made a judgement on one experience as a teenager and the result was my loss.

It was time to form an opinion as an adult. In 2007 on a visit to a friend, we saw a house for sale and, since 2010, have lived extremely happily in Scarborough, enjoying its wonderful position on the coast and bordering the North York Moors National Park.

Our grandchildren will hold lifelong happy memories of their holidays here.

The airport via Victoria

From: Bob Longworth, Glossop, Derbyshire.

THE decision to route trans-Pennine trains to Manchester Airport through Manchester Victoria (Roger Backhouse, The Yorkshire Post, June 24) was a conclusion of the 2010 Manchester Hub Rail Study.

At that time TransPennine Express trains to Manchester Airport and Liverpool had to cross the tracks approaching Manchester Piccadilly.

The crossing moves adversely impacted on network capacity and increased the risk of delays.

Re-routing TransPennine Express trains through Manchester Victoria and round to Manchester Airport via Manchester Oxford Road station would move a major source of delays, but this required enhancements to the Manchester network.

These were a new platform at Manchester Airport, enhancements to Victoria station, a new connecting section of track at Ordsal, re-modelling Oxford Road station platforms and two new platforms (15 and 16) at Piccadilly station.

The works at Victoria, Ordsal and Manchester Airport have all been completed but work on the Piccadilly and Oxford Road platforms was paused in late 2015 following a review into Network Rail’s investment programme triggered by cost overruns and delays to major schemes elsewhere in the country.

Omitting the new platforms at Piccadilly and Oxford Road will have had an impact on original service plans for both Transpennine Express and Northern as the current franchises were bid for, and let, on the assumption that the full scheme was completed by the end of 2019.

Leave it to us, London

From: Paul Brown, Bents Green Road, Sheffield.

AROUND one-third of the economic output of our country comes from London and the Home Counties (Rishi Sunak, The Yorkshire Post, June 22).

Politicians make great play of this but it appears that wealth creation in this country is rather more spread around the landscape.

Figures published by the House of Commons suggest that economic activity occurs in proportion to the population on a fairly even basis, with much useful work taking place in the great urban areas of West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and central Scotland.

If the country is to recover from an economic downturn, it could be that promotion of growth would be best achieved in the regions rather than London, where activity is concentrated in the financial sector.

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