Ukip divides opinion as a force of change

I WAS sorry to read about GP Taylor leaving Ukip (The Yorkshire Post, October 15), but everyone has a right to their opinion. You have to follow your conscience but for me Ukip is the viable alternative to the main parties.

Ukip certainly creates a wide variety of reactions and opinion, highly charged and emotive at times, but at the root of what they are saying is that there should be no political union with Europe and that better immigration controls are required. They want to change politics as we know it.

I agree on all counts, hence the reason I recently joined and changed my allegiance on Scarborough Borough Council from Independent to Ukip. Change is needed at all levels but there comes a point when change has to be made from within – within Parliament, local councils and the party.

Ukip can and should appeal to a broad spectrum of the population.

It is the party for change, neither left or right, but rather right from wrong.

Party politics in Britain is in disarray and change is necessary. We need to get back those disaffected voters and show them their votes can make a difference. Many of those who still do vote feel they are not being listened to at the national or local level.

From: ME Wright, Grove Road, Harrogate.

I WONDER how many ordinary folk, like me, share GP Taylor’s new-found disaffection for Nigel Farage and his guise as “an ordinary chap”?

I can quaff a pint or two and scoff a bacon sandwich with the best of them. That said, my dad was not a stockbroker; I didn’t attend a public school and I didn’t make a pile in the City. My Isle of Man connections are not of the tax-dodging kind. We know so little of his daily doings as a “man of the people”.

From: John Eoin Douglas, Spey Terrace, Edinburgh.

I COULD be persuaded to turn a blind eye to Nigel Farage’s conspicuous consumption of real ale and cigarettes – which gives regrettable support to the evil alcohol and tobacco industries – if Ukip made it a pre-condition of any coalition that we dump metric measurement in favour 
of the traditional Imperial system.

From: Ruthven Urquhart, High Hunsley, Cottingham.

TO Nigel Farage: just remember that one swallow doesn’t (necessarily) make a summer, so keep supping your beer and smoking your fags, for I rather doubt that either addiction will assist much with your futile aspirations.

From: David Cook, Parkside Close, Cottingham.

At the various party conferences the arguments regarding the EU fly back and forth. Yet one factor is never mentioned – the absurdity of the EU Parliament trekking 267 miles each month from Brussels to Strasbourg and back. Unless a solution is found, then common sense demands we give up membership of this folly.

Thatcher was greatest PM

From: Terry Fountain, York.

I AGREE wholeheartedly with Sir Bernard Ingham, by far the best PM was Margaret Thatcher. On her appointment, inflation was of the order of 30 per cent. She defeated it.

Her tactics, still opposed by many, were sadly necessary.

At that time I was a director of a well-known South Yorkshire Plc whose non-executive directors were charged with recommending variations in colleagues’ emoluments. They proposed upward adjustment in line with inflation. We all received a salary increment of 33 per cent. Thus those who complain “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer” can only blame the earlier ineffective administration who created the said level of inflation.

From: Fiona Lemmon, Clifton, Maltby, Rotherham.

WITH reference to Sir Bernard Ingham’s article (The Yorkshire Post, October 15), your readers may be interested to learn that a Royal Mail special issue of stamps of British Prime Ministers was released the previous day (first class and 97p).

Clock change waste of time

From: Dick Appleyard, Saxilby, Near Lincoln.

THE clocks will go back an hour on Sunday, October 26. GMT stands for Greenwich Mean Time, but to me it stands for Meaningless Time.

When Harold Wilson became Prime Minister in 1964, he believed that there was no point messing about with the clocks and so he stopped GMT.

Then in the winter there were outcries and in 1971, they brought back GMT for every winter.

I would prefer Double Summer Time in the summer and no GMT in the winter.

But it looks as though Double Summer Time will never happen and GMT in winter will always be the norm. By the way, an extra hour in bed means an extra hour of dark at teatime.

From: Mrs Pamela Z Frankland, Dunnington, York.

AT this time of year on dark wet mornings we always said “bed pulls” meaning we did not want to get up and face the world. Has anyone knowledge of this saying? I lived at Northallerton at the time.