YP Letters: Make use of water to solve flood woes

Are lessons to be learned in Holland when it comes to flood defences?

TOM Richmond makes many valid points regarding flooding, perhaps the most important of which is to learn from Dutch experience. They are the experts, a politically unfashionable term, but they do have a great deal of practical experience (The Yorkshire Post, March 4).

However, their experience at dealing with the problems of steep-sided valleys, like Calderdale, is somewhat restricted.

During the Industrial Revolution, water was regarded as a valuable commodity to be harvested and used in a variety of ways. It provided the power for the factories and it was essential in the processes of textile or paper manufacture. The complex hydraulic infrastructure that they created can still be seen in many Pennine valleys.

The field drains led into culverts that carried the water into becks and a series of mill ponds retained by dams, from where it was channelled to the mill. Today, that infrastructure is neglected, so drains and culverts no longer function allowing water to run across the surface.

If we, once more, regarded water as an asset and looked for ways of using it constructively, we might be able to make it actually pay for the requisite infrastructure as it did in the past. A small example of this exists in the delightfully named Jumble Hole Clough, near Hebden Bridge, where a small hydroelectric scheme has used the dam for Cow Bridge Mill.

My local stream, Morton Beck, still has half a dozen dams and mill ponds that could be employed both to generate electricity and as a buffer to regulate the flow at key times.

Further lateral thinking may create alternative uses, but we do need to think constructively, rather than defensively.

Anglo-centric arrogance?

From: Ian Richardson, Beverley.

I FEEL I must take issue with much of your comment on the SNP (The Yorkshire Post, March 4). Your support for Theresa May’s criticism of ‘tunnel vision nationalism’ and the suggestion that Nicola Sturgeon should concentrate on her day job both smack of the kind of Anglo-centric arrogance that may yet destroy the union.

Scotland overwhelmingly rejected Brexit and the SNP would be failing in its duty to represent the best interests of Scottish people if it simply ignored that. Politics is fluid, anybody who really thinks the 2014 referendum has settled the independence issue ‘for a generation’ is incredibly naive.

Whilst I accept there are social and economic problems in Scotland and the SNP has to work hard to deal with them, it is vital to point out to those of us in Yorkshire, and particularly those even further south, that the SNP administration has delivered considerably more social justice than any UK government since 1950.

Snooty South not wanted

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

IF anyone from London’s Knightsbridge were to grace Leeds market, one would imagine that their noses would be so far up in the air that they would notice nothing. One would be wrong.

Twenty-odd years ago, there was a stall at the market’s bottom end – pots and pans, I think – with a sign in familiar green and gold font, proclaiming “’Arrods”. A humourless solicitor’s letter arrived and ‘Arrods were forced into submission.

Reader Andrew Callaway (The Yorkshire Post, March 6) neatly sums up the latest legalistic nit-picking with ‘Ritz’ and ‘crackers’. Is there some way we can help Brighouse’s eighty-year-old David to cock a snook at London’s pettifogging Goliath?

Use tech to stop mobiles

From: Allan Ramsay, Radcliffe.

A STUDENT dies of an asthma attack, and it’s said a ‘life was cut tragically short’, and there are calls for defibrillators to be installed on all public transport.

If we can have defibrillators on all public transport, then we can surely have a ‘call blocking’ system for mobile phone use in motor vehicles. Especially when we consider that year-on-year, there’s no-limit to the new technology built into new cars and mobile phones to make them more attractive, user-friendly and better protected.

Calling out for more builders

From: Mick Hammill, Regional Delivery Manager, Construction Industry Training Board.

THIS National Apprenticeship Week (NAW), we are calling on more young people from Yorkshire to consider construction as a future career. Construction offers a rewarding and fulfilling career, with six out of 10 company owners starting life as an apprentice.

Our research shows that Yorkshire and Humber needs 9,300 extra recruits in the next five years to meet demand. We can’t build the infrastructure and homes that we need without the skills and talent. We want to encourage more young people to take up apprenticeships and support the firms that want to take apprentices on.

Producing a new language

From: Eric Burton, Rastrick.

IT was a pleasure to read the letter from AB Nurton (The Yorkshire Post, March 2).

Re the item the previous day “Cumberbatch to star in new drama”, the second paragraph begins “The Sherlock star  will also executive produce Melrose...” Why not just say  “The Sherlock star will also  be executive producer of Melrose...” or is “executive produce” a new journalistic phrase?