YP Letters: Drunks add to pressure on health service

Should taxpapers be expected to foot the bill for 'drunk tanks'?

YOU reported that there was a 103 per cent rise in alcohol-related crime in a 12 month period in Leeds city centre.

It is known that there is a problem of increased drunkenness and David Cameron, when Prime Minister, promised to address this with the introduction of minimum pricing for alcohol.

The NHS is considering rolling out supervised “drunk tanks” to major towns such as Leeds and Sheffield as part of a bid to relieve pressures on A&E departments.

Why should the NHS pay to look after drunks who are not ill?

Surely drunks should be given a fixed penalty notice or sent to holding cells and the cost met by the offender or by the police?

Labour’s left not in charge

From: Edward Grainger, Middlesbrough.

JAYNE Dowle really mustn’t swallow the political propaganda put out that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is all bad.

The moderates in the party still rule, despite the movement to the far left (The Yorkshire Post, December 28).

The Labour leader has been remarkably silent when it comes to criticism of the three Tories forced to resigned from the Cabinet in recent weeks, preferring to deal with the issues and the policies that would take us forward post-Brexit.

It’s reminiscent of exactly what Anthony Wedgwood Benn always advocated.

Nelson’s lions in Saltaire

From: Michael J Robinson, Berry Brow, Huddersfield.

YOU report that an auction  is due in March of bronze replicas of Landseer’s Trafalgar Square lions (The Yorkshire Post, January 2).

It may be of interest to readers that the stone lions adorning Nelson’s Column were in fact the second commission.

My recollection is that the lions originally produced were from North Yorkshire stone by a London sculptor named Thomas Milnes.

The lions were not accepted, for whatever reason, and a second production was ordered, this time carved by Sir Edwin Landseer.

These are the ones now in place in Trafalgar Square.

Not long after, Sir Titus Salt had the idea of sculpted lions to enhance the model village he was creating, and learned about the unwanted lions languishing in Mr Milnes’s yard.

Just the job, and these lions can be seen to this day on a stroll along Victoria Road, Saltaire.

Welcome advice?

From: Howard Rainbow, Stanley, Wakefield.

MAY I suggest Martyn Scargill (The Yorkshire Post, January 1) attends a local Driffield area NFU meeting?

I’m sure he would be made very welcome and he could inform his local farmers on how they can make their enterprises more profitable by growing flora and fauna and, at the same time, increasing the bird population, and miles of newly-planted hedgerows, and how to maintain the same.

City’s missed opportunity

From: Arthur Quarmby, Mill Moor Road, Meltham.

IT seems to me a great pity that the authorities did not seize the opportunity offered by Hull’s status as City of Culture to re-affirm the city’s proper title of Kingston-upon-Hull.

Those in power in the South would pay more attention to a distinguished title, rather than dismissing Hull as being just some dump up North.

Red card on parking

From: Mrs M Pattison, High Street, Knaresborough.

ON numerous occasions I have seen people going to Harrogate Football Club (which has no parking), using the car park at Harrogate Hospital. I wish they could be charged

double, as they block the spaces for genuine patients and visitors.

Language of certainty

From: Brian Sheridan, Lodge Moor, Sheffield.

SORRY, Trudi Russell (The Yorkshire Post, December 30), there is nothing wrong with “almost certainly”. “Fairly certainly,” however, would be wrong. You rightly say that one is either certain or one is not. To be almost certain is not to be certain, albeit very close.

Priest’s lesson

From: Iain Morris, Saltaire.

REGARDING Neil McNicholas’s column “A special delivery of modern ignorance” (The Yorkshire Post, January 1), I find it unbelievable that a parish priest cannot put himself in the shoes of a young man doing his daily job.

Police thanks

From: Mrs V Bedford, Pudsey.

MAY I say, through your paper, a big thank you to the police in Pudsey for locating my husband and bringing him home? After getting disorientated, he took a wrong bus. Thank you again lads.