YP Letters: SNP's lack of respect for Parliament

From: John Eoin Douglas, Spey Terrace, Edinburgh.
SNP MPs walk out of the House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions after the party's Westminster leader Ian Blackford was kicked out of Commons sittings for the rest of the day after repeatedly challenging Speaker John Bercow.SNP MPs walk out of the House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions after the party's Westminster leader Ian Blackford was kicked out of Commons sittings for the rest of the day after repeatedly challenging Speaker John Bercow.
SNP MPs walk out of the House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions after the party's Westminster leader Ian Blackford was kicked out of Commons sittings for the rest of the day after repeatedly challenging Speaker John Bercow.

I WAS appalled at the wanton disrespect shown by SNP MPs to the Mother of Parliaments with their recent mass walkout in pursuit of their narrow nationalism, and at the support shown for this by the so-called Scottish Parliament.

Nationalists must realise that “mother knows best” and that Holyrood always was, and always will be, subservient to Westminster and the interests of England and the UK as a whole.

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Despite recent building programmes, Edinburgh still has a dearth of student flats and tourist accommodation. Perhaps this might be a more suitable use for the Scottish Parliament building than as an adventure playground for revolting Scots?

From: DS Boyes, Leeds.

THE EPITHET ‘senior’ as applied to Labour MPs for Leeds West and Central (The Yorkshire Post, June 13) confused me!

Rachel Reeves was disloyal to Jeremy Corbyn by refusing any Shadow Cabinet post, while Hilary Benn betrayed Jeremy Corbyn by siding with the Tories in a Commons debate so was sacked from the front bench.

If that’s what ‘seniors’ get up to, I dread to think what ‘juniors’ do.

Roads are ‘death traps’

Fom: Allan Ramsay, Radcliffe Moor Road, Radcliffe.

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THE GRENFELL Tower inquiry has identified that the tower was a “death trap”, and that even if one life had been lost, it would have been one too many.

But wherever an avoidable mistake claims a life, isn’t it always ‘one death too many’? Aren’t motor vehicles often turned into death traps? And not by mistake or bad design, but by bad and lawless/criminal driving. Cutting corners to save money, or exceeding speed limits to save time, and make money – what’s the difference?

When the Highway Code was launched in 1931 there were just 2.3 million motor vehicles in Great Britain, yet over 7,000 people were killed in road incidents each year. Haven’t countless improvements since been made – to roads, vehicles and drivers – to eradicate road death? Still we have some 2,000 deaths a year.

If Grenfell Tower was a ‘death trap’, then every cycle lane that runs adjacent to a parking lane is also a death trap.

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Who in their right mind demands that cyclists – sometimes riding at a legal 20mph to 30mph – ride in the ‘door zone’, and risk being catapulted into the path of a speeding/drunken driver, by an opening car door?

With millions of potholes, sunken grid covers, and loose dogs, as well as dogs on extended leads on cycle paths, isn’t a bicycle a ‘death trap’?

Cycle helmets might protect cyclists’ heads if they hit the road or a windscreen, but not if a 40 tonne truck runs over them.

If buildings can have fire alarms, smoke detectors, and sprinklers, to make them fireproof, why haven’t motor vehicles got speed limiters to make them speedproof

and foolproof?

Why families are driven out

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From: Daniel Vulliamy, Chair, Driffield & Rural Branch Labour Party.

CONGRATULATIONS on your coverage of the immense problems with attracting and retaining young families to rural Yorkshire (The Yorkshire Post, June 9). The urgency was well evidenced.

An approach that is sometimes useful in examining a social engineering problem is to ask ‘How could we make the existing social problem even worse?’

Applying this analysis, the answers might be to close small rural schools; do nothing about the creeping closure of rural pubs, banks, post offices, shops and other facilities vital to communities; slaughter mobile library services; fail to insist on and enforce affordable social housing provision within planning proposals; allow the steady removal of ‘uneconomic’ bus routes; stand by as rural hospitals, ambulance provision and other health service cuts are disproportionately concentrated in rural areas; support Brexit, despite knowing it will destroy UK agriculture and associated employment as well as the environment and actively designate an actual majority of small villages as ‘unsustainable’, with all that implies.

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I cannot speak for other parts of Tory-controlled rural Yorkshire, but Conservative-run East Riding of Yorkshire Council scores 100 per cent on this list, and then wonders why young families stay away.

Obviously, the ‘Noddy’ economics of Government austerity dictate expenditure cuts (though nothing like as severe as those imposed by George Osborne and Philip Hammond on our large urban centres), but I haven’t heard a single bleat against austerity by my council leaders.

So rural locations become ‘graveyards in waiting’ for all but the very rich.

Let’s put the blame for the growing crisis where it lies, with Tory Government and myopic rural Tory councils.

Race brings city to halt

From: J Tate, Lincombe Bank, Leeds.

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AFTER all the hype and fanfare over the triathlon in Leeds, I have one or two points to raise.

Why when there is a road race, cycle race or any other walk of race, is it always in the same areas of Leeds?

Every time, from Roundhay to Headingley and all in between, the disruption to the bus network is horrendous and we are virtual prisoners in 
our homes.

With all the excitement of 75,000 spectators to the city, how much did Leeds Council make and what did everyone spend their money on?

Will we see a reduction in council tax for all the profit made? I doubt it.

I just wonder if all the inconvenience is worth it.