Time to ban building on 
flood plains

I AM writing to ask for your support to introduce a law to avoid our grandchildren and all generations that follow from being made bankrupt by our stupid building on flood-risk areas and land below sea level.

Why do we have people being flooded out of their houses every few months?

Answer 1. Because nature produces high tides, tidal surges, heavy rain and cloud-bursts.

Answer 2. Because those buildings which flood were built below the level of the water.

The first law of nature is that water runs downhill and finds its own level. Remember Noah building his ark to take his family and animals to higher ground? Lincolnshire is already an island, separated from the mainland by rivers. If water levels increase as predicted, Lincolnshire could be separated by rivers one mile wide.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond MP said on TV that only 13 per cent of England is below sea level. Please help me to make it law that all building is done on the 87 per cent of higher ground.

We have no option except to continue paying billions of pounds every year to protect most of the properties, now at risk, and it would cost less to give money to people in isolated properties to buy or build on higher ground and develop the flood plains, as ings, as nature intended.

Encourage the water to follow its natural course along the lower ground. Inland, overflowing rivers could be diverted into valleys and gorges to form more large reservoirs, ready for the next drought.

Palin back in
old haunts

From: John V Hutchinson, Boroughbridge Road, Northallerton, North Yorks.

MICHAEL Palin is quoted waxing lyrical regarding the recent three-part drama Remember Me on BBC1 (The Yorkshire Post, December 9). His enthusiasm can surely only relate to his own acting opportunity, for the production as a whole did not establish and maintain a story-line in which the audience could become engrossed.

The subject matter is a challenging one to put over successfully. Nevertheless, the basics appeared to have been largely jettisoned in favour of a series of unconnected and disjointed scenes interspersed with special effects. Even the things that go bump in the night did little to raise the tension.

The drama was heavily trailed, not least by Mr Palin enthusing at length given any opportunity but, for me, identifying Yorkshire locations (it was largely filmed in Huddersfield and Scarborough) became the principal interest.

Signs of a
controversy

From: Vernon Wood, Wharfedale Crescent, Garforth.

YOUR account of Andrew Beadnell’s spat with Leeds Council’s “Environmental Action Service” concerning the for sale board on Spofforth Hill, Wetherby, makes intriguing reading (The Yorkshire Post, December 13).

The council’s claim that one sale sign can “cause an eyesore, create road traffic hazard, indirectly injure pedestrians and count against city cleanliness assessment” seems to be taking the minor malfeasance to laughably extreme ends.

So once again officialdom is exposed to ridicule by threatening a £,2500 fine plus removal costs and legal fees in measures bringing the sledgehammer/peanut simile to mind.

If the council wishes to protect the environment and citizens, it would be better employed reviewing the signage activities of Leeds Council itself, responsible for countless thousands of road signs.

Many of these are mislocated, misaligned, duplicated or obscured and rarely add any significant element of safety 
or information to aid road 
users.

Probably the worst example of illogical and unnecessary signage expenditure is the current scheme to instal 20mph signs in 120 zones throughout the city... at a cost of £6m.

Grange estate in West Garforth has already undergone the treatment, even in roads where achieving 20 mph is difficult. Residential amenity value and environmental issues have been steamrollered at an estimated cost of £1,724 per sign.

MPs failing
constituents

From: Louis Kasatkin, (Protest Against Zero Hours Contracts), Pinderfields Road, Wakefield.

I FIND Hemsworth MP Jon Trickett’s recent public comments on the vacancies or lack thereof at Next somewhat surprising, given the indecent haste with which the UK government in 2004 
flung open the gates to unrestricted inner-EU migration from the economically bankrupt East.

One can be forgiven for assuming that Mr Trickett’s views might be open to the charge of being disingenuous if not downright hypocritical on the matter.

Having failed to acknowledge publicly their own complicity in being trailblazers for the 
current inner-EU migration debacle as well as being incapable of supporting campaigns against zero 
hours contracts, it doesn’t 
bode well for either Mr 
Trickett’s rapidly diminishing credibility nor that of his neighbouring colleagues, 
all of whom are manifestly 
failing their hard- pressed constituents.