Manchester is not the giant of North and must not get ideas above its station

I READ with interest the story that an underground high speed rail station in Manchester would cost £10bn (The Yorkshire Post, March 6).

I read with even more interest the assertion that this was a row over whether the “North’s biggest city” should have such a station.

Manchester is certainly a large city but it is most definitely not the largest in the North.

Its population is around 600,000 compared with 800,000 for the population of Leeds. Add in the other nine boroughs, towns and cities that make up Greater Manchester and you certainly have a very large area with a population of 2.7 million – but it isn’t a city.

From: William Cook, Director, William Cook Rail Ltd, Cross Green, Leeds.

IT is good to see the region benefitting from investment in London’s transport infrastructure with Siemens’ construction of an assembly line for tube trains in Goole (The Yorkshire Post, March 10).

Many Yorkshire businesses already work tirelessly to keep the capital moving.

William Cook Rail, in Leeds, builds the couplers that connect tube trains together and in 2019 was named Transport for London’s SME Supplier of the Year.

I encourage Siemens Mobility CEO William Wilson to look for local suppliers of materials and components, rather than just putting together trains imported in kits.

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

IN readiness for the first ‘Yorkshireman’ budget since 1976, Sir Bernard Ingham cogently reminded us of Denis Healey “facing national bankruptcy and rampant union abuse” (The Yorkshire Post, March 11).

His reference to “the 2007-08 slump” generously skates over the rampant bankers’ abuse which brought that about. At the last count, my own RBS (customer, not shareholder) owed the country £45bn.

No doubt Chancellor Rishi Sunak could do quite a bit with that.

From: Christopher Clapham, Shipley.

THE last Labour government allowed immigration to get totally out of control in a way never seen before – this means we need more schools, NHS services, roads and general public services.

The problem is that thanks to out-of-control public spending by the last Labour government, the money has run out. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak had his work cut out with the Budget – however we cannot live beyond our means and saddle the next generation the massive debts.

From: Gerald Hodgson, Spennithorne, Leyburn.

IN 2008 the nation bailed out the banks on a huge scale. No banker has suffered any significant penalty for the disastrous, greedy and downright stupid decisions that led to the disaster. Since then, the banks have pursued other disgraceful practices such as selling people insurance they did not need, and could not claim on, and bankrupting viable small firms while purporting to give them special support.

Again, no-one in the banking industry seems to have carried the can for these practices which we can only hope have ended.

I hope the Government will make it clear that the coronavirus disaster is payback time. Many thousands of businesses and individuals are going to be hard hit by the knock on effects of this virus and we need to see the banks giving every support to the people affected.

From: Henri Murison, Director, Northern Powerhouse Partnership.

A NORTHERN Chancellor has given a Budget which makes a credible start towards levelling up – closing the North – South divide by investing in the infrastructure which will underpin the Northern Powerhouse. Ensuring those living and growing up here today can take advantage of the opportunities that will be created here is the challenge for the Comprehensive Spending Review.

From: Dr Kristian Niemietz, Head of Political Economy, Institute of Economic Affairs.

THE Chancellor’s announcements on housing misses the point. The crucial bottleneck of the housing market is land supply: we are simply not releasing enough land for housing development.