YEP Letters: September 9

I’ve been interested in comments made about grammar schools and how good they were/are. I went to an all boys one in the 60s which was supposed to be the best school in my hometown and it was hell. The top 30 ‘clever’ boys were placed, after the first year exam results, into the A stream from the second year onward. The other streams were B, G and H; the latter was for those who passed the 13 plus. A stratification was therefore quickly put into place, which reflected, in part, the outside society. I was rather proud of being called a “nihilistic, radical Epicurean” by one teacher (even though I had to look up what Epicurean meant when I got home). The headmaster wore a particular style of moustache which seemed very appropriate to many of us!

Not good memories, some of them.

Terry Maunder, Kirkstall

I’ve been interested in comments made about grammar schools and how good they were/are. I went to an all boys one in the 60s which was supposed to be the best school in my hometown and it was hell. The top 30 ‘clever’ boys were placed, after the first year exam results, into the A stream from the second year onward. The other streams were B, G and H; the latter was for those who passed the 13 plus. A stratification was therefore quickly put into place, which reflected, in part, the outside society. I was rather proud of being called a “nihilistic, radical Epicurean” by one teacher (even though I had to look up what Epicurean meant when I got home). The headmaster wore a particular style of moustache which seemed very appropriate to many of us!

Not good memories, some of them.

Have I not contributed enough?

Terry Dunwell, Leeds 14

Everyone is entitled to their opinion but the scathing attack on OAPs by K and D Ingle (YEP Letters, August 25) takes the biscuit.

They yet again harp on about being willing to pay half a token fare on buses yet they are under no obligation to travel free so why don’t they pay?

The Ingles say free travel should never have been brought in and that it is funded by the taxpayer.

Well, if thousands more pensioners paid tax for many more years than them and this will have gone towards the family alloweance claimed by themselves and Mr Keer – or isn’t that a freebie?

Is it only OAPs that get so-called freebies that are a drain on resources?

K and D Ingle allude to ‘anyone who doesn’t want to make their contribution to things does not deserve to use the service’.

Well I served in the Forces, as did thousands of pensioners, many of who fought a war, and I would ask, do you not think that is contribution enough, or is financial contributions the be all and end all in your eyes?

Passes are a lifeline for some

Jim and Carol Butters, by email

So K and D Ingle want to stop freebies once and for all. We should like to meet them face to face and ask them why they think we are deplorable.

Let’s look at the facts. We saved for a private pension on which we pay income tax, we also pay full council tax (out of which bus passes are funded) –hardly scroungers.

We love our bus passes and realise we can go out for lunch using our passes thus keeping an extra car off the road whilst also contributing again the economy.

We are fortunate but there are also pensioners living on basic state pensions for whom these passes are a lifeline, without which they would become isolated and probably depressed, becoming a bigger burden on the National Health Service.

Are this couple old enough to receive a bus passes and if they are, are they not pleased that the don’t need it?

Have they ever heard the word compassion?

We never asked for free passes

Mr C W Allman, Farsley

I’d like to know why N Keer and K and D Ingle can write letters degrading pensioners like myself.

We did not ask for free bus passes or heating allowances, etc.

The Ingles said it is coming out of the taxpayers – I still pay my tax 13 years after retiring, just like many others. So what is he on about?

He is a fit pensioner, by the sounds of it, but things just hit you when you get older.

Let’s see what Mr and Mrs Ingle and Mr Keer are like when it hits them.

We need more protest, not less

John Appleyard, Liversedge

For the past fortnight I have been listening to BBC Radio 4’s Matters of the North presented by Melvyn Bragg exploring the history, culture and character of the North of England and its beautiful landscape.

The North was the centre of the Industrial Revolution, the workshop of the world with its railways, artists, engineers, innovators, canals, coal and the textile industry.

Despite all this success less than two per cent of the population were entitled to

vote and when 60,000 workers and their families held a peaceful demonstration at St Peter’s Square, Manchester, agitating for the right to vote, yeomanry attacked the crowd killing 11 people and injuring at least 140.

This was followed by the Chartists who organised mass rallies throughout the North of England and the rest of the country with their six point plan for voting.

In Bradford there were riots against the Poor Law, the suffragettes fought for women’s right to vote and the Trade Union Movement,Co-op and the Labour Party were created to fight such injustices.

The Labour Party was founded as a coalition as a way of working together to shift power from the wealthy to the poor and Melvyn Bragg noted that the rich don’t give up their power willingly.

Former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson said the ‘Labour movement is a crusade or it is nothing’. The likes of Labour leadership contender Owen Smith and his supporters who say Labour is not a party of protest have chucked in the towel and wouldn’t say boo to a goose.

The right to vote is under attack, the Government have made it harder to register to vote, they are set to introduce boundary changes in favour of the Tory Party and former Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg

said recently that David Cameron and George Osborne opposed the building of council housing on the basis that it encourages those tenants to vote Labour!

We really do live in the most class ridden society and we need more protest, not less.

Just what is intrusion?

John Downing, Wynyard Drive, Morley

In response to my query to the Government on the subject of ID cards (YEP Letters, August 25).

I was informed by the Home Office that the Government had “no plans to introduce a document (ID cards) as a proof of identity on a mandatory basis, in a commitment to restore personal freedoms and curtail unnecessary intrusion by the state into people’s lives.

Don’t birth, marriage certificates, passports, driving licences and company IDs fall into this category?

Be wary of the politicians

Dr Glyn Powell, Kellington

People who voted to exit the EU in June’s referendum

should be extremely worried by this government’s lack of action.

Indeed, it is apparent to myself that Theresa May’s hapless government is backsliding on quitting the EU.

Article 50 should have been invoked with Britain informing Brussels that we were leaving the single market.

This would have two main consequences.

First we could control our border and block migrants entering Britain from eastern European EU states.

Second we could explore trade agreements with economically vibrant states like Australia, China, India, Japan and others from South America and south east Asia.

Such arrangements would be more beneficial to Britain than remaining in the moribund EU single market.

The argument over a

points based migrant control system or allowing entry

only to migrants with job

offers is a deliberate distraction from the real issue of quitting the EU.

As neither method will enable the Tories to make

good on their election manifesto pledge to control immigration at a level of tens of thousands.

Net immigration currently stands at the ridiculously high figure of 330,000.

A figure that results in ordinary working class

people struggling to find employment.

The only answer to this is to quit the EU single market or at least put pressure on the EU bureaucrats to alter the free movement of people clause linked to membership of the single market.

In conclusion, people should be very wary of politicians when it comes to matters EU.

As the majority deeply resent the will of the people as expressed in the referendum with the least trustworthy being members of the present Tory government.