Who can fill 
the shoes 
of Hague?

My MP, William Hague (Cons majority 23,336), will not be standing at next year’s 
election. The established 
parties just now are clearly under
threat from Ukip, so who 
stands as replacement for Mr 
Hague?

Why, Hampshire-born Rishi Sunak. Head boy at Winchester, Oxford degree, global investment businessman, one-time analyst with Goldman Sachs, service in Conservative Central Office. Splendid.

Just the chap to impress those people up in, where is it? North Yorkshire. Oh, and insist Nigel Farage is a no-hope, rabble-rousing upstart, a fruitcake, obviously.

Due respects to Mr Sunak, but his emergence makes my voting choice much simpler, and Mr Farage’s wolfish grin becomes, if possible, even wider.

Parents, stand
together...

From: N Bywater, 
Morley, Leeds.

The number of parental fines in England for children’s poor school attendance has risen sharply since the Government ban on term-time holidays was introduced.

Almost 64,000 fines have been issued since the law changed in September 2013, a rise of about 70 per cent. A case that went to court in East Devon involving a seven-year-old girl going on a skiing trip to Sweden resulted in the parents paying £140 court costs and a 12-month conditional discharge.

Similar court cases around the country are costing local authorities thousands, yet the judges give parents very light sentences. Stand together parents, don’t pay the fixed penalty notice, and this crazy law will collapse.

Wealthy should
be admired

From: Malcolm Nicholson, Barwick-in-Elmet, Leeds.

We have heard so much about the benefits of the mansion tax from Labour and the Liberal Democrats. In order to raise more tax, may I suggest that in addition to mansion tax, those successful people who are company directors or owners of factories be additionally hit with a wealth and job creator tax.

Then we will have no incentive to get out of the house and can all be reliant on state handouts.

Those who own and live in bigger properties have worked hard and already paid taxes to get what is rightfully theirs. We should be admiring those who have prospered and learn from them, not constantly looking to penalise hard work and job creation.

Mark this man
with pride

From: Nick Bosanquet, Bishophill Senior, York.

Last Saturday in York Minster, a wreath was laid on the memorial to Yorkshire Admiral Christopher Cradock and candles lit. With 1,600 crew, he was lost at the battle of Coronel off the Chilean coast on November 1, 1914. Many of the crews of HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth were reservists from the North.

He had been given an impossible mission of stopping a powerful German squadron with a squadron of old, poorly armed ships. He made a brave challenge.

The inscription on the memorial has words from the Book of Maccabees: “If our time be come, let us die manfully for our brethren and let us not stain our honour.” Yorkshire should be proud of Admiral Cradock and those who lie with him.

Airport must
get act together

From: WP Johnston, Baildon, Shipley.

What a shambles at Leeds
Bradford Airport.

A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Amsterdam on a 9am flight. In the space of two hours there were 15 flights leaving Leeds Bradford, which must account for 3,000 passengers.

The airport had increased its passenger holding space to accommodate all those persons wishing to travel but who then had to wait up to one-and-a-half hours to get to the embarkation area.

The surly security officers didn’t help.

I have used airports regularly and have never experienced such a situation and will be hard pressed to use this airport again until they sort themselves out.

Wake up over energy future

From: Dr Bev Wilkinson, White Grove, Leeds.

Owen Paterson, the former Environment Secretary, is a voice of reason when pointing to the madness of the Climate Change Act which Ed Miliband signed us up to in 2008, clearly without any grasp of the implications for Britain.

Gradually moving away from fossil-fuelled generation of power is one thing, but dashing headlong into a draconian shutting down of reliable plants before securing viable, affordable alternatives is plain irresponsible.

If we could be convinced that our industrial competitors were on the same track it would be bad enough, but we see new coal-fired power stations still under construction in Germany and elsewhere producing reliable power at a fraction of the cost of our intermittent and unreliable alternative sources.

We need to wake up before we reach the edge of the cliff with the few remaining hapless lemmings.