YP Letters: York travel centre offers valued service to passengers

YOUR paper recently reported that Virgin East Coast trains planned to close the travel centres in the stations they manage between London and Edinburgh; this would include my local station at York. This service is to be replaced by ticket machines and roaming staff.

I regularly use the travel centre at York Station for information and buying tickets. I value this service as the staff are so knowledgeable and helpful. Buying tickets is a difficult task as there are so many fares, restrictions on tickets and possible routes. Without advice, it can be very time-consuming to use the Internet to find the most appropriate route and fare. Ticket machines do not provide all this information.

I accept that an increasing number of people are using the internet to buy tickets. However, I believe that there are many people, like myself, who do not like using ticket machines. The queues at the York travel centre seem to confirm my belief as there are always people waiting to take advantage of the staff’s expertise for both planning their journey – and buying tickets.

From: Elisabeth Baker, Leeds.

FEATURED on your front page (The Yorkshire Post, August 8) was an article about the HS2 / HS3 controversy and, immediately below it, an item about the Perseid meteors.

This item referred to the meteors being “swift and (they) dash across the sky quite quickly leaving trains (sic) behind them”.

There is the answer! Harness these meteors and we could be in Newcastle or London in no time...

Mr Corbyn’s political CV

From: AW Clarke, Wold Croft, Sutton on Derwent.

I THINK that Terry Maunder (The Yorkshire Post, August 5) shows more than a little naivety when he declares that current MPs are useless because they have no qualifications for the Cabinet role they are given.

I submit that he will wait a very long time before we have a chartered accountant or a financial adviser as Chancellor or a General in charge of defence. Surely he knows that when given a job as a Minister in the Government you have an army of officials to guide you?

As for his admiration for Mr Corbyn, I wonder if he realises that that gentleman, who has been an MP for some 33 years, has not, as far as I can ascertain, ever done anything that did not involve politics in some way.

After leaving university early without completing his degree, he worked as a representative for various trade unions and as a councillor. Perhaps that record gives him a head start in Mr Maunder’s eyes?

From: Tony Armitage, Fulwith Road, Harrogate.

WHAT an excellent article by Bill Carmichael (The Yorkshire Post, August 5) on the discredited honours system, which hopefully our new breed of politicians will act upon.

Mr Carmichael should have pride of place on the front page of The Yorkshire Post in lieu of your generally negative headlines.

From: Hugh Rogers, Ashby.

WOULD-BE recidivist Remainers like John Cole (The Yorkshire Post, August 10) should remember that other marriage-related saying “marry in haste, repent at leisure”. This is something which over half the UK population has been doing ever since the shotgun wedding in 1975.

A breach of confidence?

From: Geoff Hibbert, Kirk Ella.

I HAVE serious concerns about the confidentiality between doctor and patient at St James’s Hospital in Leeds.

A few weeks ago I returned from holiday to find a letter from a consultant at the hospital – even though I have never ever attended the hospital. It was a detailed and not very encouraging report on a consultation between a surgeon and a patient.

It immediately became clear it was not intended for me at all – but for the named patient on the letter. Presumably the patient had not received the report, which outlined follow-up treatment.

I returned the letter to the chief executive, Julian Hartley, and expressed my concerns about the confidentiality aspect and asked why it had been sent to me, bearing in mind they had no reason to have my address. I questioned whether someone, for some unknown reason, had used this address to get treatment. I could not forward the letter to the person for whom it was intended because the only address was mine and he certainly does not live here.

My letter was completely ignored.

I wrote a second time and this time communicated also with the consultant named. Again I have received no reply. Even if they refuse to acknowledge what I believe is a fairly serious error, I have the right to know why my address came to be involved.

From: Dr Robert Heys, Bar Lane, Sowerby Bridge.

READERS disturbed by the article “Doctor tells of personal tragedy as he urges fellow medics to help spot the signs of abuse” (The Yorkshire Post, July 29) can be assured that the initials CSE referred to elsewhere than in that context are far more likely to reflect a youngsters’ achievement of a Certificate of Secondary Education than his or her experience of “Child Sexual Exploitation”.