Sky-high fees ripping-off air travellers

I SHARE recent letters regarding the money grabbing £2 charge by Leeds Bradford Airport to drop off or pick up outside the building.

LBA seems to have been zealous in its search for opportunities to extract revenue from their customers, not only are their car parking charges eye wateringly expensive, they compound the expense by charging an extra £2.50 for using a credit card to make payment.

Considering the transaction is facilitated entirely electronically, with no necessity to empty the machine, count the cash, transport it to the bank and pay it in, or make any security arrangements, surely a discount of £2.50 would be more appropriate.

No doubt they will claim there is a fee payable by them to the bank for the credit card facility, but this is a diminutive percentage figure compared to this profiteering.

We all know that being fleeced at airports, motorway service areas and “in flight” is opportunist highway robbery, but what next? Are we to be charged a surcharge for oxygen consumption?

Politicians play charades

From: David W Wright, Easingwold, North Yorkshire.

WE are now witnessing the annual charade of the party political conferences with countless promises and the opportunity of self-aggrandisement and pomposity.

The Lib Dems have had their jamboree and have simply shown that they could never hold office on their own and are clinging onto their newly-found importance.

Labour, however, have shown how unelectable they are under Red Ed Milliband and are lacking coherent policies and people of substance to run the country in these very troubled times.

Meanwhile the trade unions – Labour’s financiers – are stirring up trouble and alienating the public with their threats of industrial action at a time when the country is broke.

The Conservative Conference is this week, but what can we expect? The usual pontification no doubt, but probably no mention of the EU/euro crisis and the dire need of a referendum to leave the sinking EU ship, stop all overseas aid and a halt to further immigration.

Paying price for Prescott

From: Paul Emsley, Hellifield, Near Settle.

LISTENING to Lord Prescott talk about Labour Party economic policy to get out of the recession (which his Party helped to create), we might forget that he is a past master at spending public funds.

Shouldn’t we count up how much public (our) money was wasted on the PPP initiative for the maintenance of the London Underground; the Millennium Dome; the PFI initiative for hospitals and schools and the much reported 999 Centralised Control Centres for the Fire Service?

And there was no visibility of the true cost of Railtrack’s West Coast Mainline upgrade because it was kept out of the public accounts at the Treasury.

Rather than interviewing a failed politician, why doesn’t the country ask the National Audit Office for a true measure of cost benefit against cost, for all of these fiascos?

Then we could do the estimation of how many nurses, matrons and nursing homes we could have had instead?

Make leaders head north

From: Alan Tidswell, Dacre Top, Harrogate.

I HAVE been giving serious thought as to how we can even out the so called North-South divide.

My idea is simple, Parliament should sit for say two weeks in London then the whole lot should move to say Leeds for the next two weeks. Just think of the business this would generate for Leeds and the surrounding area.

All those expensive hotel rooms, restaurant bills not to mention the removal revenue for moving all the files and civil servants. It would obviously require the construction of a new Parliament building at say Seacroft, but just think how this would breathe new life into our flagging local building trade.

80mph cure for congestion

From: Phil Hanson, Beechmount Close, Baildon, Shipley.

HURRAY for a glimmer of common sense to try and ease the ridiculous congestion we face daily! A speed limit of 80mph is reality, cars are far safer than when the limit was set, ABS and a host of other features support this, however there is still the waste of the two plus lane on busy roads.

As a Bradfordian, I would rather see the abolition of the biggest waste of money spent in the area in years, the two plus lane off the M606! This is a ridiculous waste and was from its inception.

I want to know which clown thought of it and when we are going to get our money back or the extra lane at what is a blackspot daily.

On a similar vain, the mega fire control centre that will never be used, can we have it made into a monument to the Labour Years of Waste? Again, this does not seem to be a reason big enough to bring anyone to account! How can we ever improve the quality of our government if such a diabolical waste goes unchallenged?