Thursday's Letters: Yorkshire benefiting from 2012 Olympics

In the last few years, I have visited North Yorkshire and Sheffield several times, with my most recent visit to Leeds, Bradford and Shipley in June.

Sport is at the heart of the Games so, among many other activities, I was delighted most recently to see 16 schools brought together by the Bradford School Sports Partnership for an athletics competition with the aim of getting more children inspired by London 2012.

I also met the fantastic "Steps to Inclusion" project which offers training and development opportunities to community sports clubs and coaches to provide improved sports participation opportunities

for disabled people across South Yorkshire.

I was proud to award "Steps to Inclusion" with the London 2012 Inspire Mark which celebrates sporting, cultural, education and sustainability projects that are delivering a community legacy. With 46 of these awarded across Yorkshire, it is clear that local people are making use of the Games.

Elsewhere, Yorkshire firms have won more than 40 contracts already, with many more firms operating in supply chains.

Through our "Get Set" education programme, young people in more than 1,000 of Yorkshire's schools and colleges are learning about every aspect of staging an Olympic and Paralympic Games.

New partnerships and exciting cultural initiatives are being forged with over 20 public events registered for this year's Open Weekend on July 23-25, and regional contributions to two of our flagship projects – Artists Taking the Lead and Stories of the World.

Furthermore, with foreign teams signed up to base their training camps in Leeds, Sheffield and York, people will see Olympians and Paralympians on their doorstep – hopefully inspiring the next Jessica Ennis, Tom Daley or Ellie Simmonds.

With the London 2012 volunteering and Torch Relay opportunities on the horizon, there are still many more ways to take part in this once in a lifetime opportunity, and I'd urge people to get involved today.

From: Sebastian Coe, Chair, London 2012 Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games

Government right to be cautious

From: P Wade, Locksley Gardens, Birdwell, Barnsley.

LIKE some of your earlier correspondents, I, too, worked tirelessly for Sheffield Forgemasters. In fact, I have worked in local steel works for 46 years and have seen them steadily decline as successive governments used taxes, energy and environmental costs to milk them for all they were worth.

Heavy industry employed thousands and was a major contributor to the Exchequer and local economy. It took on apprentices in droves and paid the mortgage on countless local homes.

The clamour of politicians, who have suddenly woken up from their dream world and now want to be seen supporting it when it is on its knees with just a few hundred employees left, is nauseating.

Why didn't they support the industry when the Government was giving away cash like confetti? Where were they in 2007 when Gordon Brown gave 825m to India, who promptly bought the whole of the UK steel industry then decimated its workforce? Why, in two years, of promising 80m to industry did it not materialise when it only took two weeks to make an apparently sacrosanct agreement to pay a succession of Fred Goodwin-type characters obscene amounts of public money?

I also paid into Sheffield Forgemasters' pension scheme and, when they reorganised in 2004, they kept my money. No hard feelings, they were broke and the Government was prepared to stand by and let them go under.

But history is littered with entrepreneurs who got rich by keeping other people's money, and the coalition Government is right to be cautious.

A return to common sense

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

WITH what appears to be the slow demise of the unelected "quango", Yorkshire Forward, shall we see, waiting in the wings, a return to the local councils of old, to replace the argumentative, metropolitan district councils, most of whom are being well paid to make the present mess?

Could local councils mean that the ordinary man in the street would be closer to the elected council members of his town and, therefore, have at least a little say in how his taxes should be spent instead of the borrowed, easy-come, easy-go attitude that has been present over the last decade or so?

While writing this letter, three items of junk mail dropped through the letterbox. Could I suggest that instead of this junk – and this would save people going on the internet or to the job centre – that a comprehensive list of jobs available in the district comes through every letterbox once a month?

This could replace the Citizen and further-education brochures that are

a monthly post and, with me being almost 77 years old, are of no interest.

However, as the retirement age is soon to be raised, the vacancies list may be of some use. Any offers?

My main qualifications are City & Guilds sheet-metal work; sorry, no university degree but plenty of common sense, which does not appear to prevail in the 21st century.

Crime and punishment

From: Chris Manners, Elver Gardens, London.

ACCORDING to Bill Carmichael (Yorkshire Post, July 3), "only very clever people can be so utterly stupid".

Having read his article, I am convinced that stupidity isn't the sole

preserve of the very clever. For one thing, it seems to have escaped his notice that there is a coalition Government, hence the Tory

manifesto isn't going to be implemented in full.

Seeing he can't understand stuff like averages and shows no interest in looking at international comparisons of imprisonment and crime, I'll give him a personal example.

Someone I know committed a serious offence for which he was jailed. Mr Carmichael might be interested to know there had been no prior offences, or soft community punishments. But what there had been was a period of depression and alcohol abuse, for which this person had long been on a waiting list for help.

No one is suggesting letting people like him off, or that the offence wasn't his fault. We're suggesting that perhaps the sentences of the many people like him could be shortened a little and the money saved spent on prevention work – prevention work that ends up being done in prison any way, at much greater expense.

Victims are surely better served by this than by Mr Carmichael's machismo.

UK should adopt Canadian rules on immigration

From: Geoffrey Thorpe, Lister Avenue, East Bowling, Bradford, West Yorkshire.

DURING the election campaign, David Cameron stated that if the Conservatives managed to form a government, he would sort out the immigration problem.

Nick Clegg stated that if the Lib Dems took power that they would give an amnesty to all illegal immigrants living on this island.

It seems that these two party leaders have different opinions on immigration. The people who know how difficult it is for so many people to integrate have, in the past, been called racists.

It is now coming to light how right these people were. We hear of schools that speak many languages, so money from the education budget is taken out for interpreters – therefore, money that should be used for education purposes is going to fall short of what is needed for text books, etc.

All parents should ensure that children can speak English before starting school and if they cannot, then, in my opinion, they should be

fined.

The National Health Service also spends large amounts on interpreters. If these people go to the doctor's or to hospital, they should provide their own interpreters.

There will be very few countries that will help other nationals at the taxpayers' expense. The savings made on these two suggestions must add up to millions.

This new Government states that it would like to turn this country round like the Canadian government did. If this is so, it should copy everything the Canadians did – no job, no entry.

If they were let into Canada, immigrants paid a large proportion of their salary in taxes and could not draw any benefits until they had worked several years.

This country should apply the same terms – no job, no money and no preferential treatment, and if the EU do not like it, tell them to look after the migrants, as a lot originate from the other side of the English Channel.

Undeserving of the title

From: Miss Margaret A Popplewell, Chapel Lane, Emley, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

OVER the past week or so, following the disappointing departure of the England squad from the World Cup, I have heard the terms prima donna(s) and ballerina(s) in quite frequent use by sections of the media, commentators and, indeed, members of the general public.

To achieve the status of prima donna in opera or prima ballerina in the world of dance, an artist must undergo years of rigorous and dedicated training, sheer hard work, which requires not only physical strength but considerable focus upon mental strength and total discipline – in some cases, a degree of self-denial.

So please, bestow upon the gentlemen of the so-called "beautiful game" whatever titles you will, but prima donna and ballerina – never!

A gardener's world of nature

From: Libby Mitchell, Springfield Road, Baildon, Shipley, West Yorkshire,

IN response to letters commenting on the lack of garden birds and insects (Yorkshire Post, July 7), in my small garden I have a ceanothus shrub in blossom, covered with hundreds of bees collecting pollen.

There is also a clipped silver birch with both robins and blackbirds nesting in it, and I have seen at least one blackbird fledgling feeding on my bird table.

There are also plenty of little sparrows as well as huge pigeons, crows and starlings.

My garden, created three years ago by my daughter as "easy care for an old lady", is suddenly a riot of colour and scents, a mini-jungle, in fact, and I'm glad so many birds and insects are enjoying the fruits of our labour.

Miles apart on the jobs front

From: Ernest Witt, Wrenbury Grove, Leeds.

"IF you didn't laugh, you'd cry" is a phrase well worth applying as a relief from frustration.

We are continually learning of the different ways of entering the country by people seeking work – even clinging to the undercarriages of jet aircraft, chancing death in over-crowded lorries, having paid enormous sums for the privilege – yet a suggestion that English people should move a few miles to where there are jobs (Yorkshire Post, June 27) creates indignation that knows no bounds.

It must bring a smile, surely?