YEP Letters: November 22

Leeds farmers' market, Soggy bottoms and what consitutes a celebrity are some of the topics up for discussion in today's letters.

So much better where it was

Tammy Ward, via Facebook

It was much better having the market on Briggate, great amount of footfall and atmosphere.

Everyone in Leeds knows the actual market is closed on a Sunday so thinking people will walk past it into the back to visit the farmers market is quite unbelievable.

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I go to the Farmers market most months anddefinitely felt the difference the first and indeed second time since it’s been moved. There is no atmosphere.

The stall holders are all disheartened and it’s a massive shame.

Please move it back as I don’t want to see more traders boycotting it- too many have already gone.

Plans to move market are on the cards

Leeds Farmer’s Market could be on the move again as the council plans to review a decision to re-locate it to Kirkgate.

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This follows the boycotting of the market by some traders who were unhappy about moving from the popular location on Briggate to the Kirkgate area.

Our Facebook readers gave their thoughts on the market move.

Aiden Fryer, via Facebook

Why don’t they have it on Millennium Square or even the area outside Browns and The Light where the temporary city park was, it would get footfall off the Christmas markets for now as well as the ice rink in January and so forth.

Bob Peters, via Facebook

It was much better on Briggate.On Sundays the outdoor bit of Kirkgate Market is too quiet and remote.

Lianne Sykes, via Facebook

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Only doing it to save money because it costs extra to use the outside stalls.

Peter Kelly, via Facebook

Ask the traders!

Help a student this Christmas

Kimberley Brough, PR Manager of HOST

May we appeal to your readers to offer their hands for international friendship this Christmas? Our volunteer local organiser is urgently looking for invitations to offer to adult international students at university here, who would much rather experience Christmas in the homes of local people than on a deserted campus.

Adult students from across the world would love a warm welcome and to discover what this festival means to us.

Invitations for just three nights over Christmas are urgently needed from volunteer hosts, no matter their age, or how far they live from a university, and we will carefully match hosts with a student they would enjoy meeting. When current rhetoric is often so divisive at the moment, we can all do our little bit to help make the world a little friendlier.

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Please see www.hostuk.org for more information or call 020 7739 6292 to be put in touch with a local organiser. The contact for the Leeds area is Anne Ramsden on [email protected] or 01484 654994. Anne is based in Huddersfield but is responsible for South and West Yorkshire.

Mistake to build on this land

Dr Michael Lowry,Moseley wood Gardens, Cookridge

The video of a digger getting stuck in Moseley (Soggy) Bottom Cookridge (Yorkshire Evening Post November 17) whilst amusing is in fact a serious illustration of the state of this site. The site is a bog and should never have been approved by Leeds Council.

The government is certainly culpable both in its ignorance, and over-willingness to build at any cost without thinking through the effects on green spaces, local infrastructure and now especially flood risk increase.

Meanwhile in Leeds alone there have been (since the 1980s), and still are brownfield sites left untouched because they are less attractive and more expensive to develop.

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LCC has been instrumental in the approval of this development against all evidence provided by residents (some of whom are professionally qualified to comment) that the site is unsuitable. That evidence includes the testimony of an eminent specialist and High Court Expert Witness in Hydrogeology. The current issue is that if LCC had insisted on proper industry standard investigations (which they didn’t do) then this would not be in progress.

Cookridge Residents Action Group have plenty of material to demonstrate the way in which LCC have ridden over the overwhelming high quality and factual objections from residents, in favour of Taylor Wimpey who they have admitted to being afraid of due to the costs involved of appeal against approval. Money talks!

We can’t even laugh about it

Carol Lee, by email

If the possible future consequences were not so disturbing it would be hilarious!

I am referring to the photo of the JCB that is submerged in the mud at Soggy Bottom, Cookridge!.

Sorry but I have to say : we told you so!

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For three-and-a-half years residents of Cookridge plus an eminent hydrologist have been warning planners about the ground at Moseley Bottom not being suitable for the development of 135 houses by Taylor Wimpey. B

ut would they listen?

Apart from the existence of a sub-artesian aquifer the ground is a soakaway for the sloping hills of Cookridge .

The land is only suitable for the habitats of the ones that have lived there happily for past centuries i.e the deer, the foxes and all the other wildlife .

There’s a lot in a name it seems

DR Michael Lowry, Moseley Wood Gardens, Cookridge

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a river is defined as: ‘A large natural stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea, a lake, or another river.’ Moseley Beck (Cookridge Leeds 16) this morning flows with vigour towards the River Aire which it helped to flood in December 2015 and January 2016.

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The Environment Agency don’t recognise Moseley Beck as a river, despite the fact that one would need 25 foot long legs to straddle it.

As a result the EA won’t get involved in requesting the necessary investigations into water sources on Soggy Bottom because yes, you guessed, they only deal with rivers! Therefore Leeds City Council and Taylor WImpey (who plan to build over 200 houses on this bog) have an open door through which to pour additional flow into Moseley ‘River/Beck’.

Remember that LCC have yet to insist on, or receive ANY data from TW re the current run off of water from the site, and yet they MUST NOT do anything to increase that run off. So how will that be evidenced?

Established flood maps show just how much of a flood risk the ‘beck’ presents to the Soggy Bottom site, but being a beck and not a river this is apparently of no consequence.

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This odd situation and play on semantics has contributed partly to the current free-for-all on the site. LCC and no doubt TW knows the position of the EA on becks and rivers, and unsurprisingly allows the ‘beck’ to be a beck and thus be outside of the remit of the EA.

Now if it has four legs, a tail and barks, it’s a dog, not a budgie. What a farce.

Who are these celebrities?

Alan Thompson, Bramhope, Leeds

Could somebody please explain what a celebrity is?On watching that jungle fiasco on TV I can’t believe they class those people as celebrities.What they really are is people who cannot get any work and need the money. Plus they are frightened of being forgotten.

First to be voted off must be Carol Vorderman, who has the most terrible laugh ever.

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And I am sure the only people who think Ant and Dec are funny are the cameramen.

Can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t tell a decent joke but good at reading an autocue.

I would willingly pay these two £30 million to get lost.