YP Letters: No such thing as a free bus for the young

Do you support Labour's plan to extend free bus travel to 16 to 25-year-olds?

JAYNE Dowle (The Yorkshire Post, April 16) tells us that Labour’s free bus travel plans for 16 to 25-year-olds ‘could save 13 million young people up to £1,000 each every year’, and ends by saying that ‘this would be a small price to pay’, having told  us that the money (13 million  x £1,000) would come from Vehicle Excise Duty.

There is no such thing as a ‘free bus pass’. I consider mine to have been earned on the back of 50 years’ income tax contributions.

On the facing page is yet another letter about the potholes drivers have to negotiate, with ‘estimates that there are 14 years’ worth of repairs’ in the pending trays. I remember an idea that councils should use pre-made ‘lozenges’ to drop into road cavities quickly and effectively.

Even if this apparently splendidly economical idea were adopted, how much of the nation’s road fund revenue would there be left to fund 14 years’ worth of catch-up repairs, if £13bn were taken to pay for young people’s ‘free’ bus passes? It doesn’t look to me like ‘a small price to pay’.

From: Hilary Andrews, Leeds.

NORMALLY I have some agreement with Jayne Dowle, but her agreement with Jeremy Corbyn’s idea of free bus passes for the young is flawed in that  it only mentions the amount  that it could possibly save a young person.

It fails to note the amount that it would cost all of us taxpayers to cover the cost of such an enterprise. All of Corbyn’s schemes have this flaw.

Mad to risk a world war

From: Dr David Hill, CEO, World Innovation Foundation, Huddersfield.

WHEN you take all the innuendos concerning the so-called chemical attack in Douma away, the decision that we have to take military action to show that we in the ‘wise West’ need to tell Assad to stop using chemical weapons, is sheer madness.

Indeed, if our politicians will risk a nuclear world war between the West and Russia (probably backed up by China, as they ordered one of their largest warships into the area just before the missiles rained down on Syria), they have not the sane intelligence as a normal human in my humble opinion.

Indeed by risking lighting the fuse of a major war like no other, they are not in my mind the people who should be leading this country. If everything had gone the wrong way, there would have been no people or no nation to see anymore after the event of nuclear Armageddon.

Thousands are being killed and injured each month in Yemen, including a large number of children. Therefore a second question has to be solicited is, where is the West’s sense of proportion? There appear to be double standards on a colossal scale, and why?

Migration’s real impact

From: AJA Smith, Wainmans Close, Cowling, Keighley.

DAVID Brown, Head of Migration Yorkshire (The Yorkshire Post, April 17) claims that “migration is a part of our everyday lives and on the whole has benefited and enriched Yorkshire”.

The House of Lords, Economic Impact of Immigration Report 2009 found that competition from immigrants has had a negative impact on the low paid and training for young UK workers, and has contributed to high house prices.

Furthermore, the report also rejected claims made by ministers that a high level of immigration was needed to prevent labour shortages as “fundamentally flawed”.

In terms of the cultural enrichment of Yorkshire, I  am presuming Mr Brown  would be referring to the variation of national dress,  music and ethnic foodstuffs  not ritual slaughter of animals, FGM, sharia law, forced marriage, subjugation of women and ghettoisation.

Uniform approach

From: Ian Smith, Bradford.

SURELY we all agree that cleanliness in any medical environment must have  a high priority, then respect every effort to ensure it’s  a safe one (The Yorkshire Post, April 16).

So should we accept that hospital staff are apparently permitted to wear their uniforms to and from work – and use public transport, or shop en route in them? Can’t uniforms carry potentially infectious diseases in to or out of hospital?

Verse war of the roses

From: Charlie Garth, Bedford Street, Ampthill, Bedfordshire.

WHILE visiting the pretty town of Helmsley last week, I spotted a postcard in one shop which said “Yorkshire born and Yorkshire bred, Thick in th’arm and Good in Bed”.

Growing up in neighbouring Lancashire, we were taught our own version of this which went “Yorkshire born and Yorkshire bred, Thick in th’arm and Thick in th’ead”.

Which is correct, I wonder?

Uphill struggle

From: Jarvis Browning, Fadmoor, York.

MY best memory of a Ford Anglia – like that fondly recalled by Harry Gration in Saturday’s motoring pages – was on my  way to Thirsk Station in the late 1960s going downhill at Sutton Bank on my bike, when the unfortunate Ford Anglia had  to deposit three passengers at  the first hairpin bend, before  it could proceed any further  up the hill, which it did, but the three passengers had to slog it out on foot!