YEP letters: December 23

Can we afford City of Culture bid? Why supermarket offers don't help those living alone and someone agrees wholeheartedly with regular Feedback contributor R. Kimble - it must be nearly Christamas!
Leeds Headrow and Town Hall at nightLeeds Headrow and Town Hall at night
Leeds Headrow and Town Hall at night

Can we afford to join Culture Club?

Phillip Bell, Bramley, Leeds

Yet again our beloved council, led by Judith Blake, have set their stall out to waste more tax payers’ money with another harebrained idea by applying to become the 2023 UK European Capital of Culture.

How many millions will this latest scheme finish up costing cost us?

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I’m not sure what the 800 council workers, who face the threat of losing their jobs, will think of this latest debacle in what in truth is further proof, if we need it, of the council’s endless self promotion. Come on Leeds City Council, wake up and smell the coffee!

Are we right to go for a bid? Let us know what you think about Leeds being a City of Culture.

Ernest Lundy, by email

While understanding that supermarkets like to move goods from their shelves in bulk, do they realise that their method of selling so many items, say three, four or five, for a fixed price, does a disservice to people either living alone, such as pensioners not wanting or able to purchase goods in quantities, or others on low incomes such as one parent families etc.?

Furthermore, any who may be able to afford such quantities may not have enough fridge space, and will of course be unable to consume good bought by this method soon enough for safety. Whatever others may say think of this, supermarket owners are being very short-sighted by using the practise.

For once, I can agree with him

Barbara Hayes, WWF member, Markham Avenue, Rawdon, Leeds.

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AT last! R Kimble has said something I agree with! (‘Sad World Without Animals’ (YEP December 12).

Let’s keep Britain working

B Duffy, by email

There were two items on the biased BBC News that I found myself watching, only to avoid the dreadful political and economics editor Robert Peston on ITV.

The first quoted the outgoing Ofsted chief spelling out how white working class children were being left behind. It stated that children in Manchester and Liverpool had three times the amount of money spent on their education as children in Yorkshire. Is this because the lame duck MPs like Rachel Reeves and Hilary Benn are too busy with outside interests to fight for their constituents? If the sheep-like voters of Leeds keep electing these tame MPs because ‘my father voted Labour,’ how do they expect the city to progress?

The second item featured the CEO of William Cooks stating that they were producing millions of pounds of steel and iron materials, yet not £1s worth was being used by a British manufacturing company! This tells you that we should be investing in manufacturing jobs for the UK.

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Time to start up the coalmines and steelworks,now we’ve thrown off the shackles of the EU. Take a leaf out of Mr. Trump’s book. Keep the work in Britain!

Basic teachings for patient care

R Kimble, Hawksworth, Leeds

I WAS angered to learn in the news about the death of a child because of poor standards in sepsis management and the need for staff to receive further training. What ? This is really as basic as ensuring patients are adequately hydrated and have their hygiene needs met.

These are two other issues I often see staff being criticised for failing to do. What are they teaching people these days ?

I did my RMN from 1971 - 1974 and these basic activities of daily living and aseptic procedures and standards were taught in Week 1 of Introductory Course.

Looking to Russia with interest

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Councillor Tom Leadley, Haigh Moor Road, West Ardsley, Wakefield.

Well-founded or not, claims that Russia interfered to try to get Donald Trump elected, or to hinder Hillary Clinton’s campaign, probably show that the politically inexperienced isolationist was the Kremlin’s preferred candidate.

As Syria might have gone too far already, his first real foreign policy test could be in the Ukraine. If Mr Trump recognised Russia’s annexation of Crimea, or even agreed to a partition line drawn further west to hive off Ukraine’s Russian speaking districts, we would be back to the 1930s and the infamous sell-out of Czechoslovakia, whose German-speaking Sudetenland was given away by Neville Chamberlain to achieve “peace in’ our time”.

We do not know whether Donald Trump would sacrifice a distant land about which some of his supporters will know little and care even less, but, those in the Kremlin may believe that it’s worth trying to find out.

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Brexit should find favour in Russia; perhaps a pattern is beginning to emerge. An inward and backward looking United Kingdom, with Scotland and Northern Ireland trying to break away to stay in Europe, would weaken the whole continent. Particularly since 2004, many East Europeans have come to know Britain well, especially England.

If their home countries come under pressure from the east, they will expect our support. If that support is needed, it is to be hoped that it will be quick and decisive enough to nip trouble in the bud by diplomatic means, rather than needing large-scale mobilisation and deployment of troops.

In Britain we’ve never had much quarrel with the Russian people, but, its governments and its sports administrators have been somewhat different.

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