Witness to bureaucracy at work sees threat to local inn

CONTINUING on from the article, and letters, about the removal of the advertising signs relevant to the Old Mill Hotel on the outskirts of Langtoft causing loss of trade, it would appear that the Highways Department of East Riding Council is determined to also close the Ship Inn in the centre of the village.

While in the Ship Inn having my lunch the other day, I witnessed bureaucracy at work.

Two officials arrived at the inn to instruct the landlord to remove his advertising boards; two planters that have graced the entrance to the inn for years past; and instruct that he must not have hanging baskets below a given height.

Within the letter of the law, I accept the planters constitute an obstruction of the footpath and that advertising boards probably do not comply with regulations; however they have been in use for many years without comment or incident.

Just like the Old Mill, how does the Ship Inn survive without advertising its presence to passing trade – especially at a time when all public houses are struggling to survive?

The village having already lost its shop and school, the loss of its local inn through too rigid compliance to rules would be disastrous. Surely common sense should apply?

As an 84-year-old widower who uses the inn for meals and social company my life would be drastically affected if the Ship Inn was to close; as will all village residents when they come to need a wedding reception, birthday celebration, funeral gathering etc.

From: David Stephenson, West Hallam, Derbyshire.

MY wife and I are Yorkshire expatriates living in Derbyshire, but whenever we visit our home county we buy the Yorkshire Post.

Last Friday we set off for a weekend in Whitby and we bought the newspaper in Selby.

The headline (Yorkshire Post, April 22) seemed awful. A terrible shortage of work for the young people of the county, especially those living in rural areas.

The hotel where we stayed employs about 25 young people in all kinds of housekeeping and hospitality jobs.

Not one of them was English. None was Scottish or Welsh or Irish. The people to whom we spoke came from Latvia, Hungary and Poland.

The week before we were staying in Nidd and all of the staff we met were from mainland Europe with one from Malmo in Sweden.

If 10,402 of Yorkshire’s rural young people want to work, they could do worse than consider hotel and hospitality jobs.

If I were cynical, I might think that they don’t want to work.