Sour taste as doorstep milk prices soar

I NOTE with interest the recent findings of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in relation to alleged anti-competitive actions in the provision of milk and cheese by some supermarkets (Yorkshire Post, August 11).

I would however draw attention to what is a far more serious contention: that of the escalating cost of doorstep milk deliveries. The cost of a pint of milk in a reusable glass bottle to the doorstep is now 65p, while buying the same product at a supermarket or shop in a slow or non degradable plastic container can be as little as 25p a pint.

In my case the cost of my milk bill as risen by some 20 per cent over the last two years. I suspect that in the main, doorstep deliveries are to elderly and disabled people, who may not have their own transport, and are often on low incomes. These people find carrying heavy shopping bags from their local supermarkets or shops difficult.

Clearly, the milkman serving these households is a godsend and indeed often a point of valuable social contact. However, the price they have to pay for this service is becoming unrealistic and can only put in serious doubt the future of the service.

A problem in Hull and surrounding villages (and most likely in other areas) is that there is only one dairy company involved in the provision of doorstep deliveries. I have referred this matter to OFT, but apparently they do not deal with individual complaints.

Bus cuts hit everyone

From: Mrs Kath Williams, Howard Court, Rutland Drive, Harrogate

REGARDING the Parliamentary report into cuts into rural bus services (Yorkshire Post, August 11), I live in what is known as the “Duchy” area of Harrogate – no way can it be called a rural area.

Yet our bus service was re-routed a number of months ago, and now we have no bus service at all.

Our area has many large houses occupied by people with cars. However, many of these houses have been converted to flats and these together with a number of purpose built flats, house a number of elderly people with no transport. There are also younger people left with no transport to get to their place of work.

We have no shops, doctors surgeries etc in the area either.

On complaining to the local bus company and even offering to pay a concessionary fare if only we could have a bus, we are told: “You can’t pay, you have a bus pass.” Great, if you have a bus on which to use it!

No one seems to care about our plight, or recognise our isolation. Even friends are unable to visit now unless they have their own transport.

From: Mike Smith, Elvington

YOU rightly draw attention to the threats facing our rural bus services, but it is not just weekend and evening services that are being sacrificed.

Take the case of the East Yorkshire 195 service that currently sets off from Pocklington at 6.45am on weekdays taking people from the villages like Seaton Ross and Elvington to work in York, and then runs back again at 5.15pm taking us home again.

This isn’t a luxury, it’s not for sightseeing, it’s the one public transport connection for people who live in the region who work in York. But, on September 5, it will be dropped from the timetable. Something has gone wrong with the calculations when even commuters are being abandoned.

Back to basics to fix schools

From: James Anthony Bulmer, Whitehall Court, Peel Street, Horbury, Wakefield.

YORKSHIRE, the bedrock of Labour politics, has seemingly gone wrong once more with the basics.

Wakefield is just three from the bottom in a league of 151 districts on primary education of children.

This is after all the hype from Tony Blair on education, education, education.

What will happen now to Wakefield’s application for university status?

Or have the efforts to become a cultural city included advances in schooling with the building of the new education centre?

Come classroom, come playground, come £35m Hepworth. Could this be the university of the future? After all, it is free entry.

As I write this letter, I can hear the councillors shouting “the cuts, the cuts, the cuts” are the reason for some of our primary schools failing.

Have they been implemented yet? Basics, basics, basics should now be the cry, as without them nothing can be built.

Start from the bottom, not the top.

Don’t dream the impossible dream, America did and look where it’s got them, lost in space. Let’s borrow advice from elsewhere.