Who should power be devolved too?

SOME devolution of power and wealth seems logical and desirable but not if it is to squandering and ineffectual and clueless councils.

The last thing we want in Yorkshire is more tiers of bureaucracy. We want an organisation that speaks for the whole of the county. That can unite city and country people. Promote the best of our products and industry at home and around the world. An organisation with a proven international reputation that worked with a frugal budget but generated millions of pounds for all its people.

We already have that organisation which is the envy of the rest of the country – Welcome to Yorkshire! Give them the cash.

From: David Bentley, Pickering.

NOW that York City Council has been shamed into making changes to its various committees, will we see them making a complete refund of the penalties erroneously charged on motorists using Lendal Bridge?

No doubt the Rotten Rump of the disgraced, and disgraceful, Labour administration will continue to wriggle like maggots on an angler’s hook. So I will not hold my breath.

From: G Wright, Fieldside Court, Tadcaster.

I HAVE returned, recently, from a vacation, which included visits to Lisbon, Athens, Istanbul and Burgas in Bulgaria. The capitals of Portugal and Greece had a depressing, despondent aura, with graffiti, closed shopping premises and those still trading with commonplace sales signs for commodities. The latter city had evidence of protests against the current regime.

Burgas, said to be the main commercial port of Bulgaria, contained one rust bucket of a ship loading up scrap metal, destined, probably, for China or India.

The only other commercial product visible in the port was another large pile of scrap metal. Istanbul, by contrast, was a vibrant, bustling city, with extensive commercial activity. Only one of these cities is not a member of the European Union.

On driving the length of Spain in the early summer, the number of boarded-up, for sale or rent commercial premises was alarming. The selection of new commissioners seems largely drawn, by a ridiculously undemocratic system, from a pool of politicians who have failed to make their mark in their own countries. They and their predecessors seem to be selected on the basis of cronyism or “buggins turn”.

One wonders if they will have the collective answer to the problems of the currently blighted countries of the EU?

From: Dave Roberts, Ontario Road, Scunthorpe.

DOES Ruthven Urquhart (The Yorkshire Post, October 25) not realise that he shares his “local BBC Radio station” – Radio Humberside – with northern Lincolnshire?

As far as the official regions of the country are concerned, Yorkshire has been expanded to include northern Lincolnshire as ‘Yorkshire and the Humber’. Do those in Yorkshire itself really want to put us living in northern Lincolnshire into no man’s land?

Diversion tactics

From: William Dixon Smith, Welland Rise, Acomb, York.

i SEE from his column that Nick Clegg has been talking to ordinary people and has learnt that ordinary people are fed-up with bureaucracy (The Yorkshire Post, October 24). Charles Dickens, it will be recalled, came to the same conclusion. Evidently, it’s high time something was done about it.

The trouble is, bureaucracy is bread and butter to bureaucrats, and they have always proved pretty resilient in resisting its reduction. This Liberal initiative is reminiscent of George Osborne’s “bonfire of the quangos”: a popularist diversion.

I suppose, considering the Deputy Prime Minister’s ludicrous interviews on the possible rehabilitation of footballer Ched Evans and the release of police killer Harry Roberts, that he has been warned to stick to non-controversial subjects. My suggestion is that if the Liberal Party hopes to be represented in the next Parliament, his colleagues should urge their leader to say nothing at all.

Population meltdown

From: Dr Brian Jordan, Huddersfield.

I SEE on your front page (The Yorkshire Post, October 23) a call for urban farms to avert an expected food crisis.

I recall participating, 50 years ago, in correspondence in your letter column about the dangers of population growth. That correspondence led to the formation of the Yorkshire Branch of the Conservation Society. The Society alas, was short-lived as the problem was brushed under the carpet for the next 50 years.

Now the population of England and Wales has risen from 46.1 million in 1961 to 56.1 million in 2011 and is still rising to an estimated 59 million this year – and England is now the most densely populated country in Europe. Schools are bursting at the seams, hospitals are approaching meltdown and young people seeking a home need more than ample supplies of both love and money. On top of which a food shortage now appears to be looming.

As for the world as a whole, one can only despair.