YP Letters: Rail failing young and old alike

From: Nick Harvey, Stonegate, Hunmanby.
Should more TransPennine express services serve Hunmanby?Should more TransPennine express services serve Hunmanby?
Should more TransPennine express services serve Hunmanby?

HUNMANBY Railway Station has seen a 90 per cent increase in rail passengers over the past 10 years through the involvement of the village in creating a pleasant station environment and promoting the train services. It was the highest increase for local stations between Hull and Scarborough.

The largest group of users are young people under the age of 25, followed by older residents, often using the train to go to health appointments.

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To both these groups, an improved hourly train service from May 20 should be a great boost to accessing work, education and hospital. But as the train timetable is currently drafted, it will not provide these improvements, with train arrivals in Scarborough being poor for work or hospital, a lack of connections to TransPennine Express services to get to York or Leeds, and three trains not stopping at Hunmanby.

Those under 25 already are often in part time, zero hour contract work, and do not have the protection of the adult minimum wage. Few can afford to run a car.

Hunmanby has some of the highest levels of chronic illness in the country, with high numbers of residents requiring to travel to hospitals for treatment.

What about Filey? The lack of a connection at Seamer will have a negative impact on tourism.

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The new railway timetable has to be finalised by February 25. There is time for it to be improved to meet the needs of the Scarborough district.

Figures that shame force

From: Christine McDade, Morton on Swale.

YOU report that, after inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, that North Yorkshire Police, together with one southern force, are inadequate in recording crimes (The Yorkshire Post, February 15).

The figure is given of 9,200 crimes unrecorded, which include rapes, domestic abuse and sexual offences. That figure represents one in five crimes going unrecorded. What a dreadful indictment of the force.

North Yorkshire Deputy Chief Constable Lisa Winward states that steps are being taken.

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She also states that all calls are logged and nothing is ignored. Certainly they are ignored, when crimes are not recorded as such.

Tree habitat faces the axe

From: Mr P Lockwood, Adelaide Road, Sheffield.

I READ with interest and pleasure your article regarding evidence that the extremely rare White-letter Hairstreak butterfly is breeding again in Scotland for the first time in 130 years (The Yorkshire Post, February 15).

It is ironic that Amey, the company employed under a PFI contract with Sheffield Council, has a plan this year to prune and eventually fell a Huntingdon Elm in the city, one of the rare survivors of Dutch Elm Disease and which is home to this very same butterfly.

Scotland celebrates while Sheffield Council destroys.

Drought-hit nation in need

From: Nigel Boddy, Fife Road, Darlington.

AS Britain continues to obsess about Brexit, a crisis is happening in South Africa of which we all seem unaware (The Yorkshire Post, February 16).

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Water supplies for Cape Town are running low partly due to poor maintenance, and partly due to a prolonged drought.

The need for water engineers and drilling equipment to find new supplies is now urgent. Other major communities are also soon to be in difficulty. Are we going to help our cousins and friends at this time?

The election of the new president (Cyril Ramaphosa) has arguably come 20 years too late for both him and the country. I seriously doubt South Africa will ever find anyone capable of filling Nelson Mandela’s shoes.

Pioneer of liberalism

From: Michael Meadowcroft, Former Liberal MP, Leeds.

I WAS glad to see the letter from Betty Craven (The Yorkshire Post, February 15) mentioning the pioneering role of the Yorkshire woman Margaret Wintringham as the second woman MP ever to take her seat in the House of Commons having been elected at a by-election in Louth in 1921.

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I hope that there isn’t a deliberate policy to avoid mentioning that she was a Liberal MP, as was her husband before her, whose death caused the by-election?

Margaret Wintringham’s biography was included in a recent publication “Mothers of Liberty – Women who built British Liberalism”.

Wrong side of the border

From: Justyn Thyme, Dronfield Woodhouse.

REGARDING the picture of the Corn Law Repeal Monument in Dronfield in Picture Post (The Yorkshire Post, February 13), Dronfield is not in South Yorkshire, as stated, but in Derbyshire. It always has been and will remain so if we have anything to do with it.

Send convict back home

From: M Whitehead, Chapel Allerton, Leeds.

YOU reported that a criminal from Romania had been committing fraud to the tune of £15,000, and we are now supporting him in one of our presumably elastic-sided prisons.

Why can he not be sent back home to serve his sentence in one of their prisons which, I am sure, wouldn’t be as comfy as ours?