York Central redevelopment plan should be ledt in the sidings – Yorkshire Post letters

THE planned redevelopment of York Railway Museum and the area around it is highly controversial (The Yorkshire Post, April 25).

The Yorkshire Post says: Landmark York Central development offers county-wide benefits

York City Council announced one week that they wanted to be carbon neutral by 2030. The next week they passed the redevelopment scheme which essentially makes that impossible. Currently York is one of very few major cities in the UK with a working goods yard. The redevelopment of the Railway Museum area, ironically, takes that away.

York Railway Museum has a sister museum at Shildon. There you can see steam trains in operation if you want to.

Does York really need to replicate that experience in the heart of York city centre? If you want further tourist attractions in York, open a butterfly farm in one of the parks instead.

Some of the professionals involved in the scheme to redevelop the museum area are expressing their own private reservations to me. They don’t think the scheme is good enough.

They cannot speak out because of their positions. The lack of social housing is a major deficiency in the scheme. The ripping up of Leeman Road is just madness.

It is time to take this woefully inadequate scheme back to the drawing board. If the people involved with it don’t even believe in it, then why should we?

This scheme – as it stands – is simply not good enough for one of Britain’s most beautiful and important cities.

Get off your high horse

From: Shaun Kavanagh, Leeds.

WE still read (The Yorkshire Post, April 26) about Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, complaining about England not supporting Scotland, but what about the many millions being continually paid to Scotland by Westminster and the Treasury? Is that not supporting Scotland?

If Scotland actually achieved independence, it will not have an effective standing in the EU resulting in Scotland being a small cog in a large engine.

The lady needs to get off high horse and stop her continual bleating before she causes Scotland to lose the many millions of support that Scotland already receives.

Creating farm criminals

From: Paul Morley, Ribblesdale Estate, Long Preston, Skipton.

IN one fell swoop Chris Packham and his fellow well-meaning ‘idiots’ have turned all keepers of livestock into career criminals. By taking away the right to shoot birds covered by the general licence, we now all fall foul of Section 9 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 which, amongst other things, states that we have to protect our livestock from pain, suffering, injury and disease.

Whatever you do, you will be breaking one of these laws all the time. it should make for interesting court cases when your mitigation for breaking one law is upholding another. The legal profession will have a very lucrative field day!

Trump snub disrespectful

From: Bob Watson, Baildon.

SO, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the dreadful Commons Speaker John Bercow have declined to attend a state banquet at Buckingham Palace for US President Donald Trump (The Yorkshire Post, April 27).

How totally disrespectful but entirely typical of these two individuals. No doubt they would be happy to attend banquets for the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea, together with various despots who have ruled in Africa and South America.

These so-called UK leaders simply confirm that they are utterly unfit to lead.

Failing his constituents

From: Malcolm Nicholson, Barwick-in-Elmet.

LEEDS East MP Richard Burgon says that he should not have to swear allegiance to the Queen because he serves his constituents and not Her Majesty.

Many MPs, a lot of them Labour, voted in Parliament against their constituents’ wish to leave the EU.

Sadly, the clowns we pay to run this country’s affairs appear to be obsessed with their personal aspirations and agendas rather than with serving the electorate. If they were working in private industry and opposed their firm’s policies, they would be sacked.

Pumping out carbon at BBC

From: Bernard Goldstein, Alwoodley, Leeds.

I REMEMBER sitting in front of our black and white TV, watching him diving off the Great Barrier Reef. Then seeing him in glorious colour on the African savannah and nestling with mountain gorillas in the jungles of Uganda.

I am, of course, referring to Sir David Attenborough. However the man who is forever telling us to reduce our carbon footprint has spent 70 years jetting around the world visiting exotic places most of us can only dream about.

Wrong photo

From: Coun Elizabeth Nash (Lab), Hunslet and Riverside Ward, Leeds.

I DO wish The Yorkshire Post would use an up-to-date photograph of Conisbrough Castle and not the elderly one in Country Week (April 27).

English Heritage has done a wonderful replacement of the keep’s internal floors and roof. There are now exhibitions in the created ro oms and it is well worth a visit rather than just a glance at a ruin. Would that this could be done for Clifford’s Tower in York rather than the now abandoned visitor centre!