YP Letters: Not everyone lives by school-term rules

IN regard to the ongoing discussion about taking children out of school to go on holidays, the powers-that-be who try to enforce the rules by giving fixed penalty fines for unauthorised leave have only ever worked in a nine to five, five days a week jobs (The Yorkshire Post, August 29).

Before I retired, I worked in the glass industry working a continuous shift system. My holidays were fixed by my employer so that production was maintained 24 hours a day.

My son-in-law now works in the same industry, and his fixed holidays fell inside of school term time.

He obtained a letter from his human resources manager stating that he could not take time off work outside of his fixed holiday. He was still issued with a unauthorised absence for his daughter.

If he has to wait for his holidays to correspond with school holidays, he could go up to four years before he can holiday with his family.

If every single day a child misses school is a major detriment to their education, could teacher training days be switched to the summer holidays rather than the first day of term?

Unhealthy ways to park

From: David Loxley, Hartoft, Pickering.

THERE is considerable concern expressed, almost on a daily basis, that some children in the UK are growing to be less fit and more obese than in the past. This is seen, rightly, as an unhealthy trend.

One suggestion is that physical outdoor activity should be promoted and encouraged. This advice is directed not only at parents but at the education system and, by inference, local councils; who claim that the health of our children is of great importance.

Imagine, if you can, my amazement to read (The Yorkshire Post, August 29): “An additional 132 car parking spaces could be built on land at County Hall. North Yorkshire County council is asking for permission to turn land next to its Northallerton Headquarters, currently used as a playing field, into a car park.”

Now we know, the health of our children is extremely important as long as it does not get in the way of council employees parking their cars.

An accent on dialects

From: Brian H Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.

YOUR supplement Country Week carries a feature in which readers compare their experience of Yorkshire dialect sayings. I am usually familiar with those from South and West Yorkshire but those from the North and East of the county are a mystery to me. The difference in accent between East and West is equally striking.

I sometimes enjoy the popular TV series Heartbeat which is set near Whitby. However, the only accent I have not heard on the show is that of North East Yorkshire. Such is the diversity of speech patterns across the Broad Acres that it is unreasonable to expect actors always to get it right so producers opt for a vaguely northern accent. I wonder what the good folk of North East Yorkshire make of it. Scousers, Geordies and Brummies are always more precisely portrayed.

In everyday life, I can’t help trying to identify strangers’ accents. As a rough guide in Yorkshire, if they pronounce words like “ride”, “light”, “side” and “white” in the same way, they are from the South or West of the county. If they pronounce the words with a voiced final consonant (eg ride) differently from those with an unvoiced final consonant (eg bite) they are from North or East Yorkshire. A good example of the latter is the late Paul Daniels from Teesside who coined a confectionary advertisement from a combination of “bite” and “size”.

Dealing with asylum camp

From: Dave Croucher, Pinfold Gardens, Doncaster.

SO now the French want asylum seekers to be able to apply for asylum in the UK while they are still in France.

Why is the pro EU French not sticking to their EU rules and insisting that the migrants apply for asylum in the first European country they entered?

If they don’t, they should be shipped back to where they first landed so that they can abide by EU rules and register there.

In fact they are not asylum seekers at all, they are illegal immigrants if they have not registered.

Fighting for Labour Party

From: Robert Reynolds, West Bank, Batley.

WHAT we see in the Labour Party is a fight for its heart and soul.

To the MPs who refuse to back Jeremy Corbyn, I say this: stop your pathetic whining, think about the people you are supposed to represent and back your leader – the man members democratically elected.

And to Jeremy Corbyn I would say this – purge your party.

Sadly, whatever the result of this election, the UK is still left with the same situation. Nobody, absolutely nobody, knows how to get out of the deepening mess we’re in.

I won’t drink to that clue

From: Jeremy Sample, Stackhouse, Settle.

I WISH to take issue with the compiler of Quick Crossword No. 8511 (The Yorkshire Post, August 29).

The clue to 8 across was “Slightly drunk (5)”. The answer published the following day was “sober”. If this is your compiler’s definition of sober, I would hate to be driving on the same road as them!