YP Letters: Stop waffling and act on air pollution

From: Paul Brown, Bents Green Road, Sheffield.
What can be done to cut congestion?What can be done to cut congestion?
What can be done to cut congestion?

WORLD energy production for the year 2014 was 12,674 million tonnes of oil equivalent.

Whatever the form of the energy production, the end result is this amount of heat being released into the atmosphere by whatever process uses the energy.

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All forms of energy usage create additional pollution due to fuels consumed and the processes used to put this power to some practical use.

The plan to force us to change to electric or petrol electric hybrid cars is only tinkering at the edge of the problem, and will not make any significant change to the contribution made by energy use to the overall problem of global warming.

Global energy production is increasing by about two per cent per year and the plan to force the motor industry to completely reinvent its production processes is unlikely to compensate for more than one year’s increase in energy production.

Our roads will continue to be a traffic jam or a car park or some combination of both unless public transport can become a pleasant means of travel rather than the option of last resort.

From: Philip Crowther, Leeds.

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BOTH Leeds and Bradford have big ideas but miniscule amounts of money to further their urgent need to move away from crowded, inadequate road systems and potholes. That can only be achieved by good public transport.

Some new trains will appear on the London service and refurbished trains on the TransPennine route by the end of the year, but locally, little progress will be made without wholesale electrification and increasing line capacity, and that will not happen until Government opens its eyes and pockets.

As for buses, we have a service designed primarily to serve shareholders not the general public. So politicians, stop waffling and act.

From: George Walker, Moorcroft Road, Sheffield.

IT is agreed that many health conditions are caused by fumes being spewed out by petrol and diesel vehicles and having spent a few days in the centre of both Sheffield and Leeds it is obvious why.

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There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of buses crawling round the centre of both cities.

Surely it is the time for all of Yorkshire to make a radical decision to improve public health for everyone.

Plan to ban all petrol and diesel buses in the whole of Yorkshire by 2025 and insist on only electric powered ones. Then go further by promoting only those vehicles made in Yorkshire like the ones from Tadcaster. This will not only improve the health of the county but give a massive boost to the local industry, creating jobs and improving the economy.

Come on – let’s be brave and radical.

Cuts led to homelessness

From: Martin J Phillips, Leeds.

THE Government has announced plans to spend £100m to end the misery of homeless people forced to live on the street.

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Somewhat ironically, this is a similar figure the Government said they hoped to save when they made draconian changes to the benefits system in 2012.

Those changes are directly responsible for the massive rise in homelessness as the new system meant that many disabled people, even though they are still deemed unfit to work, have had their benefits stopped.

From: Terry Morrell, Willerby.

AFTER the Second World War, the housing shortage was solved by local councils building ‘prefabs’.

If the Government focused the many financial initiaves into similar building projects, the initial shortage could be resolved. Inner city ‘brownfield’ land is available for numerous small schemes.

From: AJA Smith, Keighley.

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DAN Jarvis claims that devolution is the key to the housing crisis (The Yorkshire Post, August 14). Like so many others in positions of authority he fails (or refuses) to acknowledge that reckless, uncontrolled economic immigration has been the 
major reason for the housing shortage.

What we really have is an immigration crisis not a housing crisis.

Only central government can put in place measures to halt immigration numbers not devolution.

Shut shops on Armistice Day

From: John Barstow, Member of Usdaw Executive Council.

FIVE senior peers including two senior former military officers have this month called for retail closure across the UK for Remembrance Sunday 2018 which falls exactly on 
November 11 (Armistice Day) exactly 100 years since the guns fell silent.

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The imperatives are to enhance the peace, decorum and reflection inherent in Remembrance Sunday and for more working people and their families to get the chance to partake in the Remembrance Sunday events in their communities.

Kate Hoey MP, with support of MPs across parties, has put down an Early Day Motion calling for this one day closure.

The Usdaw conference called for the one-day closure on a unanimous vote. A Tesco delegate reminded conference that Tesco owes its very corporate life to HM Forces. Jack Cohen the Tesco founder was rescued at sea by the Royal Navy in 1917.

MPs and peers would win huge respect by putting Brexit arguments aside for just five minutes and come together as one to legislate for retail closure across the UK for Remembrance Sunday, November 11 (Armistice Day), 2018.