YP Letters: The Sheffield Socialists who sneer at President Trump

From: Gordon Lawrence, Sheffield.
Magid Magid is Lord Mayor of Sheffield.Magid Magid is Lord Mayor of Sheffield.
Magid Magid is Lord Mayor of Sheffield.

THE radical young left-wing 
Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Magid Magid, is now banning Donald Trump from entering the city.

We have to go back to the 1980s for this kind of behaviour, when the ‘Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire’, in a spectacular example of self-delusion, declared the county a nuclear free zone. They must have thought that this benign act of comradeship with the USSR would persuade the Russians to redirect their missile launchers on to somewhere like Conservative headquarters or the Adam Smith Institute.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

I don’t think Donald Trump will be devastated, as intended, in not being able to parade along our tree-stump lined streets where there is now little shade in the current heat.

Possibly, Mr Magid’s ban is fractionally less imbecilic than it looks, though.

Such hollow posturing, revealing the clear symptoms of delusions of grandeur, has a purpose in demonstrating 
the man’s solidarity with the hard left.

Overt snubbing of the President of the United States, the arch-embodiment of capitalism, bourgeois values and the free market will go down well with such people.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But doesn’t it display the self-serving, self important, pretentious dogmatism of this representative of a famous city and his fellow socialists who are fixated in going to such nonsensical lengths in order to sneer at the president of the United States?

Free parking the answer

From: Joan Moss, Leeds.

IT is certainly true there are many empty shops in Leeds and Harrogate but go to Wetherby, Horsforth, Ilkley and Otley and these small towns are busy.

There are no empty shops. On the contrary they support a wide variety of shops including clothes, accessories, books, delis, even butchers and dry cleaners; they have a wide range of cafes and restaurants.

Go there any time of day and see people browsing, buying and relaxing with their friends over food.

The secret of these towns is obvious – free parking.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

All these small towns allow you to park for a couple of hours, the perfect amount of time to let you shop, meet and snack.

The short-term parking allows a good through flow of 
customers during the day and people visit several times a week and spend.

Compare Leeds and Harrogate where it requires a huge effort and cost to visit.

Hunt kept show on road

From: Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

JEREMY Hunt, the great survivor as Health Secretary, has moved on (The Yorkshire Post, July 10). His legacy will be a better settlement for health than many had expected and a real focus on patient safety.

He inherited a tangled mess of a reorganisation from his predecessor Andrew Lansley and he had to live with a succession of austere funding settlements which were never going to meet rising demand.

Given so little to play with, Hunt deserves credit for helping to keep the show on the road, but the Health Service – better in many ways – has also slipped back when it comes to meeting many of its core standards.

His successor Matt Hancock has one overwhelming challenge – how to help the NHS and the social care system to become sustainable in the face of rising demand and a severe workforce crisis.

From: Ron Farley, Camblesforth, near Selby.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

ON the question of the NHS needing to cut back on operations to save £200m, your correspondent EB Harris suggests (The Yorkshire Post, July 5) “they should start by looking into the foreigners they treat, costing untold amounts”. I advocated this in the Press years ago by referring to the following story.

In 1960, 58 years ago this month, I was posted by the RAF to Singapore, accompanied by my family. My wife was a regular shopper in the famous Change Alley – mostly in a small shop selling Siamese (Thai) silk for oddments to use in dressmaking.

The proprietor was an Australian lady whose husband, a Dutchman, was the Far Eastern head of a well-known Dutch baby food company. One day she asked my wife if she would look after the shop for her for three to four weeks as she was “going to England to have an operation on the National Health”. Never mind starting to look into it – stop it now – 58 years-plus is far too long!

My sweet memories

From: J Fearnley, Littlelands, Bingley.

I READ with interest your article, “Victoria’s sweet treat for Boer War soldiers” (The Yorkshire Post, July 7).

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

My great uncle, Therman Consitt Kitching, born in James Street, Bradford in 1879, died of enteric fever during the Siege of Ladysmith in February 1900, aged 20. He had run away from home to join the Army – probably under age – and loved working with the horses. His mother, Mary Consitt Kitching, died in Heaton, Bradford in 1936. She was born in Scalby near Scarborough in 1852 –her granddaughters, Joan and Margaret (my mother), found among Mary’s effects a tin of chocolate, just the same as pictured in your article.

Charm lesson

From: Philip Taylor, Lockwood, Huddersfield.

How to enhance the self-confidence and self-esteem of a lady – here is one technique. If the lady in question looks about 70, tell her she looks 49 and in reality she will turn out to be 60.