Speak up to save region’s strategic assets from closure

I SHOULD like to refer you to your article (Yorkshire Post, May 28) which was headlined “Cameron accused of broken pledges to region”.

It would seem to me that a degree of reflection is required.

The previous Conservative government was responsible for the construction of Sheffield’s own “downtown” City airport.

As soon as Labour regained power, locally, they set about assisting moves for early closure. Despite the airport project being in receipt of millions of pounds, in both UK and European funding, one Labour councillor was heard to say that as a previous Conservative government had built it, it was sufficient incentive for him to help close it down as he, “didn’t want any testimonials or monuments to the Tory Party here in Sheffield”.

Doesn’t this bigoted attitude also demonstrate a serious dereliction of duty by the council?

Hopefully, the council will take some notice of the letter written to them by Timothy Kirkhope MEP (Yorkshire Post, May 23) see some sense before the bulldozers move in and destroy what could so easily be a vitally important asset for a community desperate to improve its commercial and competitive position.

From; David Bowe, Former MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber (1989-2004), Silverdale Mount Guiseley, Leeds.

I CAN only add my support to the call by Timothy Kirkhope MEP (Yorkshire Post, June 1) for a regional strategic body to be created to replace Yorkshire Forward, and to speak up for the region to the “powers that be” in Brussels and elsewhere.

He is also right to point to the important role previously played by Yorkshire’s MEPs on the Yorkshire Forward Regional Strategy Board as our only regionally elected representatives.

However, he cannot justify his attempts to concoct a strategic body from people already overburdened and with parochial perspectives that will ensure they will be ineffective in this new role.

Why not have the courage of our convictions and create a democratically elected body with the time, energy and region-wide perspective to do the job properly?

From: Gordon Lawrence, Stumperlowe View, Sheffield.

I AM, in part, quite amazed at the article by Shadow Business Secretary John Denham, (Yorkshire Post, May 27) on the regions.

He was a member of a government whose whole momentum lay in its aim to preserve and prolong power; in the short term, to foster popularity by lavish spending on initiatives which were equivalent to bribery on a grand scale; in the long term, to boost the Labour-voting population by increasing the numbers on benefits.

So, in the first part of John Denham’s article, where he showers praise on the importance of private business, I have to wonder where he was during the 13 years of Labour’s rule, for this part of his exposition reads like some guru’s speech down at Tory Central Office; it’s as if Emperor Nero suddenly started being nice to Christians.