Wednesday's Letters: Labour vote highlights AV system flaws

Details of the voting transfer pattern, which would become commonplace if the AV system is ever adopted by the country, indicates the uncertain nature of counting second preference votes. Along with a significant delay in reaching a final outcome, it will delete election night fever forever.

It is clear that Labour MPs and party members preferred David Miliband and his brand of a varied New Labour politics.

However, the Labour Party's paymasters, the trade unions, want to return to the previously rejected dogmatic methods of old Labour, and have found the puppet they can control via the less experienced Ed Miliband.

Seething disillusion will pervade among the socialist multitude when they realise the first past the post winner came second, their man being displaced by the block vote organised by the union barons. Hopefully this unsatisfactory result will persuade thousands of Labour Party supporters to reject the AV system if and when the referendum is held.

From: Alan Chapman, Beck Lane, Bingley.

From: Robert Bottamley, Thorn Road, Hedon, East Yorkshire.

I READ your article, "Top job hope for Shadow Schools Secretary who confounded critics", (Yorkshire Post, September 26) from the perspective of someone who supports no political party,

Its central assertion – that Ed Balls had fought "a strong campaign in the leadership contest" – was, I submit, entirely unsupported by reality.

In the first round, Mr Balls obtained only 11.8 per cent of available votes – just 4.4 per cent more than Diane Abbott, the first of the five candidates to be eliminated.

The next candidate to be rejected was Andy Burnham who received 10.4 per cent of the votes available in the second round. Mr Balls increased his share to 13.2 per cent – this time, a mere 2.8 per cent ahead of the eliminated candidate.

With three candidates remaining, Mr Balls then managed just 16 per cent of the final vote.

On what grounds, then, can it justifiably be claimed that Ed Balls (who, incidentally, retained his seat in the Commons only by the skin of his teeth) fought a "strong" leadership campaign? Self-evidently, even his party colleagues didn't find it so.

Veterans of an unsung conflict

From: Andrew Ellis, Park Avenue, Misterton, Doncaster.

SEEING almost daily reports of the tragic loss and maiming of our heroic troops in Afghanistan, I give great respect to our men and women doing their duty in a war against terrorism, at the request of their government.

But in recent years I have learnt much about my own father, and his experiences as a young man (18 years) sent halfway around the world, his previous longest trip having been to Blackpool from his home town of Sheffield. He was conscripted into the RAOC and, after basic training, sailed from Liverpool to Egypt and later

to Palestine.

He has told me that as a kid growing up in Shirecliffe, Sheffield, a trip to visit relatives in Beighton on the outskirts of Sheffield, seemed like a trip to the ends of the earth.

My father was one of up to 100,000 British troops, largely raw young conscripts, who were sent to Palestine between 1945 and 1948, as part of a peace-keeping mission

which was largely played down by politicians.

Figures are not clear but I have read that more than 370 servicemen lost their lives in this conflict. This does not include the numbers of Palestinian police.

My father plays down his role in this conflict because he was not a frontline soldier, but I feel that these young men and those who paid the the ultimate price should not be forgotten.

I will not comment on the conflict itself and the rights and wrongs of the influx of Jewish settlers in Palestine, I think we all know that the conflict still continues over 50 years later.

I would like to put a call out to all veterans of Palestine to join my father, and probably more than 150 of his fellow Palestine veterans, who will parade in honour of their fallen comrades, as they do each year, at Eden Camp, Malton, North Yorkshire. This will take place on October 16.

I understand that the Palestine veterans' association is based and administered from Eden Camp.

Birds of prey under threat

From: Peter Robertson, Regional Director, RSPB Northern England.

I WOULD like to respond to some recent correspondence generated by your coverage of the RSPB's Birdcrime report.

Adrian Blackmore, Moorlands director of the Countryside Alliance, challenged the RSPB's claims (Yorkshire Post, September 20) about North Yorkshire's position in the league table of crimes against birds of prey.

However, I can confirm that North Yorkshire is the worst county in England for confirmed crimes against birds of prey. This shameful position is not the result of a one-year blip in data; rather, it comes from a review of crimes against birds of prey between 1990

and 2009.

In his letter (Yorkshire Post, September 22), A Mitchell, of the National Gamekeepers' Association, implies that the bird of prey populations are all thriving.

This is unhelpful when the hen harrier is on the Red List of Birds of Conservation

Concern because of a severe decline in the UK population between 1800 and 1995, without substantial recent recovery.

Natural England, the Government's adviser on the natural environment, has stated that "persecution continues to limit hen harrier recovery in England".

I am pleased that he does not condone the illegal killing of (in Mr Mitchell's words) "these magnificent birds" but believe that it would be more helpful if both he and Mr Blackmore would actually condemn this criminal activity.

It is perhaps worth reminding them that of the 141 convictions relating to bird of prey persecution offences recorded by the RSPB, 98 individuals (70 per cent) had game bird interests and 95 of these were gamekeepers.

A travesty of justice

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

WE are blindly walking towards the administration of justice by professional judges and consigning lay magistrates to history.

Few people are aware (or care) that, under Article 280 of the Amsterdam Treaty, we are required to bring in to being Corpus Juris, a criminal code drawn up in 1997, to create a single harmonised judicial system throughout the EU, based on Inquisitorial (Napoleonic) law.

An exasperating feature of EU politics is the way in which policies and laws of a controversial nature are slowly insinuated into our lives in the hope that few will notice.

The proposals by our Government to further emasculate magistrates' courts is yet another stealthy move to comply with the Amsterdam Treaty since it is a re-run of a similar exercise carried out

in 2001.

Meantime, magistrates' courts have been deliberately denuded of work by "out of court disposals". For example, figures for Northamptonshire in 2009, obtained by their Magistrates' Association, show that 4,345 cases have been dealt with by the police including 607 of actual bodily harm, 400 assaults, burglaries, sexual offences and threats to kill. This is a travesty of justice, these offences should have been tried in magistrates' courts.

Childhood memories of red glow as a city burned

From: Elizabeth M Crabtree, Fairfax Road, Cullingworth, Bradford, West Yorkshire.

REGARDING Margaret Claxton's letter on the bombing of Hull (Yorkshire Post, September 13). She is so right that it was by no means the only city targeted in the North of England. Manchester (my home town) because of its port, wide canal and industry, was also a prime target.

Two days before war was declared, all the children (whose parents agreed; most did), were put on a very long train and taken to the Lake District (Ulverston for our school). We were billeted round the village (the WVS did the driving, as they were known then – I think the "Royal" was added because of their contribution in the war).

We were lodged with a couple who were very kind to us (although they had no children so it must have been a bit of a culture shock for them), but like many of the "evacuees" we went home for Christmas and never went back.

I also remember the red glow in the sky as the city burned, then going to see the devastation and empty spaces later.

Thankfully, I think even with all the disagreements, Europe is now too connected in many ways for it to happen again.