Yorkshire needs better 
foreign links

HARROGATE Chamber of Trade & Commerce strongly supports Tony Hallwood’s plea (The Yorkshire Post, July 23) for improved international connectivity to Yorkshire for both business and leisure travellers.

Tony has done a great job in building up our European connectivity but we really need better international links.

Harrogate has the best UK combination of conference and exhibition centres both indoor and outdoor, coupled with many hotels and restaurants within easy walking distance.

While specialising in medical and agricultural events both large and small, we also attract thousands of leisure visitors to the many large attractions 
all around Harrogate District.

While we are now well-served with flights to most of the major European cities, we lack connectivity to North and South America, Africa, India, Australasia, the Middle East and the Far East in particular.

These long-haul destinations will never justify regular direct flights from Yorkshire, so we desperately need to enhance our connectivity through London Heathrow as the main hub airport for business travel to and from the UK.

This can easily be done initially through mixed-mode operation of the two existing Heathrow runways which would give a 20 per cent increase in operating capacity, pending construction of a third at Heathrow. This new runway could be shorter than the existing runways in order to accommodate most of the short-haul European and domestic traffic, leaving the existing two long runways for the larger aircraft used mainly for long-haul flights.

Tony is also right to stress the need for a rail connection to Leeds Bradford Airport, which this chamber has campaigned about for many years.

We have just published on our proposals for an LBIA Airport Parkway Station, which could be served every 15 minutes seven days a week by the soon-to-be-electrified Leeds-Harrogate-York line.

This will greatly improve connectivity to the airport by train from all over North and West Yorkshire – without the vast cost and delay inherent in the alternative proposals for a dedicated direct tram-train link which would only serve Leeds, and not North Yorkshire.

Memories of
heroes wanted

From: Graham Branston, Emmott Drive, Rawdon.

ALONG with hundreds of others concerned about our national history, I have been involved in researching and putting together a display about the First World War on behalf of Rawdon Local History Group.

It shows images and information about various aspects of the war and there are reprinted newspapers from a century ago and a “Book of Memories” of all local men who fell in the war.

If anyone has a memory of a relative or perhaps family friend who was killed, we would like to record it for posterity.

Rawdon Community Library is now run by local volunteers and the display can be seen from the beginning of August, to coincide with the declaration of war.

The library is open from 10 am to 6pm on Mondays, Wednesday and Thursdays and from 10am to 1pm on Saturdays.

Contributions towards the running cost of the library are much appreciated.

Let’s have plays
not adaptations

From: James Robson, 
West End, Kirbymoorside.

IT was heartening to read about the money provided for refurbishment of York’s venerable Theatre Royal, but the list of forthcoming productions is depressing. It shows, if anything, that artistic director Damian Cruden subscribes to the usual “bums on seats” mentality so prevalent in English theatre since the accountants moved in.

No Damian, a theatre should be putting on plays, not adaptations of novels – powerful new plays with something to say about the human condition and maybe even the state of England.

This is not the creative way forward for a big regional theatre. Wake up and smell the Ouse, Damian.

Less lucky
workers

From: Malcolm Toft, 
Windsor Avenue, Silsden.

AS one of the nearly one and a half million people on zero hours contracts, I agree with the comments made in Len McCluskey’s article (The Yorkshire Post, July 23).

In the piece, he speaks of the lucky ones who receive telephone calls when they wanted for a day’s work.

Others just get a text and sometimes spend over an hour dialing to get a shift booked. This sometimes after they have worked a night shift.

From: Eddie Peart, Broom Chase, Broom Crescent, Rotherham.

DAVID Cameron is going to bring in laws to make it harder for the workforce to strike.

A few weeks ago many thousands refused to go to 
work and went to Royal Ascot instead.

Nothing was said about that. In my early working career I often asked the boss if I could have a holiday so I could go to Royal Ascot. Each time I was refused due to pressure of work. However he went instead.