Thursday's Letters: Let's put new thinking on the timetable for bus routes

Our evening bus service has struggled on for years between Scarborough and Helmsley, steadfastly avoiding the main centres of population in Ryedale which lie only eight miles from its route. Fares have risen way above inflation so passenger numbers stay stubbornly low. This means that fares rise higher still, and yet this service is a lifeline to the many residents, many of them essential service workers, who don't have a car or access to the family car that evening, and to both the foreign and British visitors who come to Ryedale without a vehicle.

I'd like to suggest that NYCC look again at what they are trying to achieve here. A bit of fresh thinking would make for a cheaper evening service. I suggest a bus shuttling between Scarborough and Pickering, meeting a smaller bus which would travel between Norton/Malton, Pickering and Helmsley, and would allow people living here to get off a train at Malton after 7pm and still get home.

It would let us explore the evening delights of York, and make it far easier for the residents and workforce at Flamingoland to get about, yet still keep those on the A170 corridor mobile. It would take much more fare money than the existing service, and so, as it develops, require less subsidy still.

If NYCC are serious about buses, I hope that they will look at suggestions such as this very carefully, because otherwise much of Ryedale will be immobile after 6pm and on Sundays, and that's a blow that the local economy does not need.

From: Eden Blyth, Foundry Cottages, Wrelton, Pickering.

From: Paul Kirby, The Chase, Wetherby.

FIRST Bus is the largest operator in West and South Yorkshire but seem to be losing the plot. I have defended them in previous letters but find it hard to do so now, following an idiotic decision on my doorstep.

They have just re-routed the Leeds bus in Wetherby. It now misses out an industrial park and a council estate with a large elderly

population.

This part of the route is well used in my experience and many locals are outraged at this decision. It is a saving of a few minutes and a mile's fuel – cost-cutting on a trivial scale for a massive, profitable company. Two commuter buses were also cut.

Ian Humphreys, the new managing director of First West Yorkshire, says the re-routing was to improve reliability. Yet reliability on this route was excellent until First moved to their new base in Hunslet. Road conditions have not deteriorated in that time and, indeed, will soon improve with a new bus lane on Roundhay Road.

My support for First Bus has dwindled over the years. They spend

millions on new buses but cannot be bothered to keep the interior tidy or employ drivers who have any customer service skills. A large

majority of them are simply miserable, much more so than other

companies' drivers. Why is this, particularly on an easy route like Wetherby with polite passengers? A long-standing poor management culture must be to blame for this sad state of affairs.

Loyal passengers are getting less value for money from their area

tickets as more buses are cut and more routes are taken over by Huddersfield Bus Company and Centrebus. No wonder people like me are

put off using the bus as the alternative to their car.

A foreign influence on our courts

From: Gerald Jarratt, Baghill Road, Tingley, near Wakefield.

I RESPOND to Don Burslam's letters (Yorkshire Post, September 6) and how the arguments against the closure of magistrates' courts seems to have little force.

I submit that the reason for this is that opposition to the cuts centres on the financial aspect and that the true reason behind these proposals is simply yet another deceitful move towards the creation of a European super state.

The present proposals are simply a rerun of the same exercise carried out in 2001 when Morley Magistrates Court, along with many others, was abolished on the grounds of cost.

As a nation, we are subservient to the dictates of the European Union. In reality, the Government is taking further crafty steps towards

complying with the Amsterdam Treaty's requirement to impose Corpus

Juris (an embryo EU wide criminal code drawn up in 1997) on an unsuspecting British public, thereby creating a single "harmonised" judicial system throughout the EU based on Continental (Napoleonic) law. Specifically, Article 26.1 of Corpus Juris excludes judgement by

"simple" jurors and lay magistrates. No jurors. No lay magistrates.

None of the European Union's plans include the freedoms of Magna Carta (1215), the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus or jury trial.

Closing our courts and transferring work elsewhere inevitably means that many (unpaid) lay magistrates will have to resign which is what

the government wants so that they can fill any shortfall with paid (stipendiary) justices based on the Continental (Corpus Juris) model.

We are asked to believe that replacing unpaid volunteers by paid professionals is a money-saving measure.

Beware. One thousand Britons have been extradited to Europe on the

orders of European Prosecutor and are now subject to Napoleonic law without having the right to ask a British judge to test the merits of the case against them.

Five young men were deported to Greece on flimsy assault charges dating back to a holiday two years ago. They faced up to 18 months in a Greek jail just awaiting trial. So much for Habeas Corpus.

When I first put on a khaki suit in 1941, I was told: "You are fighting to preserve the British way of life, you are fighting to keep your country free from foreign domination."

Politicians have betrayed us and those who gave their lives to keep our

country free.

Railway realities

From: Martin Driver, PR Manager, Metro.

IN response to your correspondent Stuart Moss's question, Metro was not involved in the recently reported discussions between Northern Rail, the Harrogate Chamber of Trade and Commerce and Harrogate Council about train services from Harrogate to Leeds (Yorkshire Post, September 2).

Metro understands that these talks are at a very early stage, given that reducing journey times between Harrogate and Leeds would require significant investment and work to improvement infrastructure such as signals along the line, as well as additional rolling stock.

As a signatory to the Northern Rail franchise, Metro has to agree any changes that would have an impact on local train services and I can assure Mr Moss that while we support the aim of reducing journey times along the line, this will not be at the cost of services to West

Yorkshire stations such as Headingley and Burley Park.

Waste of NHS funds

From: Ted Saunders, Belle Hill, Giggleswick, North Yorkshire.

THE Government has requested that the public submit suggestions as to how to reduce public expenditure.

The suggestion I have sent to Julian Smith, my local MP, would, if implemented, save the National Health Service significant sums of money, have positive impacts on health provision, not create unemployment and would be endorsed by the great majority of health professionals.

As a matter of urgency, the Ministry of Health should immediately scrap the funding of homeopathic treatment on the NHS.

Homeopathy is a faith-based medical superstition whose treatment

consists principally of prescribing "magic memory water" and sugar pills. It has no merit whatsoever apart from a possible short-term placebo effect.

It is dysfunctional to fund an anti-scientific absurdity with millions of pounds when proposed expansion of NHS front-line services may be curtailed.

Pain and gain behind the influence of religion

From: Brian Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.

I DON'T like Richard Dawkins's style any more than Maureen Hunt (Yorkshire Post, September 2) but the militant atheist professor's anger is not without foundation.

Mrs Hunt clearly had an excellent education at a Methodist school. I went to a small, but high-achieving Church of England primary school. However, some schools in the USA, especially in the conservative southern states, strongly influenced by the fundamentalist Right, have enforced the teaching of Creationism, resulting in some science teachers being forced into resignation. Moreover, on a broader scale, the great art, music, architecture, as well as charity and education, inspired by religion has to be weighed against the undeniable suffering inflicted in its name.

Like your correspondent, I am warmed by the story of Matt Martinson, the armed robber who reformed to become an Anglican priest, but if Professor Dawkins were to have the Damascene experience wished on him by Mrs Hunt, he would probably ascribe it to a cerebral malfunction and consult a neurologist.

At this point, Mrs Hunt's gentle rhetoric gives way to a somewhat evangelistic tone. When will believers understand that religious conviction is not accessible to all of us? It is perhaps just as well.

EU is prime target for cuts

From: Dennis Whitaker, Baildon, Shipley.

IT is imperative that the measures announced by the coalition

ultimately bear fruit but there is one cut, yet to be announced, of the reduction in our contribution to the EU. I have suggested that the EU exists by the politicians for the politicians and apart from UKIP, have heard little to refute this suggestion.

Barbara Stark (Yorkshire Post, September 6) warns that more taxes are on the way from the EU. Her letter is written with authority and the tax should be countered with the same diligence, by the electorate and our politicians, as used when it was proposed.

Where is the intelligence in watching the pennies spent in this country when the pounds haemorrhaged to the EU go unchecked?

Children given a smoke signal

From: Linda Appleby, Ganners Way, Bramley.

WE all know that young people are influenced by what they see around them. It is ridiculous that cigarettes are openly on sale in newsagents and supermarkets, often next to the sweets and crisps by the counter. The brightly lit, colourful displays show off rows of cigarette brands like huge adverts for tobacco.

Cancer Research UK's Out of Sight Out of Mind campaign calls on the new Government to get shops to cover up their displays. It would not cost them very much and would take away one of the ways that tobacco

companies market their deadly products to children.

I hope the Government takes this opportunity to stop today's children becoming tomorrow's smokers.