YEP letters: December 1

Black Friday is all media hype

R Kimble, Hawksworth

I WAS interested to listen to a chief executive officer bemoaning Black Friday.

He said it’s no gain for staff as they get no extra pay for the increased workload, neither the staff in stores nor in warehouses and that delivery staff get no extra either.

Discounts are a sham as many items aren’t actually worth the discount percentage anyway in real terms.

Nobody really benefits it’s all media manipulation on social websites and store websites

What do you think? Have we embraced Good Friday in the UK, or do we prefer the January sales to pick up a real bargain?

We are not Nimbys but we do care

George Dilworth, Morley

DS Boyes’ comments regarding air pollution were very interesting. Here’s another interesting point about emission levels of engines over the past few years.

The latest directive from Europe on such levels is Euro 6. Euro 1, was in 1992, and since then we have seen pollutants drop by 96 per cent. All well and good, fantastic even. But what has increased is the amount of carbon dioxide that is thrown out. This is due to the increase in the horse power of engines - the more air drawn in, the more gas is pumped out.

As regards local initiatives like the 2 plus 1 at Armley Road; any saving on so-called “Greenhouse Gasses” is doubtful, when all the traffic in the outside lane is standing with engines running, including lorries, which, along with their owners, are penalised for just doing their jobs.

Mind you, this is only when the traffic lights at the end of the dual carriageway are turned on and working.

It’s not about being a NIMBY

Mrs Carol A Gannon, Flats Lane, Barwick in Elmet, Leeds,

ENOUGH is enough. I have to disagree with Liz Goodwill’s recent letter accusing residents of Wetherby and surrounds of being “nimbys”.

You only have to drive or walk around such places, to realise just how many housing developments have sprung up over recent years.

Wetherby in particular has had development after development, Spofforth Hill is only the latest. I have yet to hear anyone complain that their house price may fall. The vast majority are concerned about the continued eating into precious greenbelt/farmland/woodland. Continually top of the complaints list in Wetherby is the traffic congestion in town and lack of parking, so of course every development makes the situation worse.

Not far from my home there is a suggested development of 5,000 homes, again it would be destroying green fields and woodland. Another issue that many raise is that for all the developments that do get the go-ahead how many include affordable housing for the next generation ? The answer is very few.

Naturally everyone wants to protect their own “backyard” and they should have the right to do so but brown field sites should be used first before greenbelt is decimated -as the saying goes, once it is gone it is gone. Yes, we will always need new housing, but not at any cost.

Marxism is not in itself evil

T Maunder, Kirkstall

I WOULD like to point out to George Marsden (Opinion 23 Nov) that it is not “Marxism” that is evil but the people who manipulate its central principles to exact power over people. Indeed, Marx himself said that “Marxism” did not exist - it’s a term coined by others.

One of the features of Orwell’s “1984” is that it was people who turned “Ingsoc” into a force of oppression, as was “Big Brother” a human creation. Many politicians have a deep need for control over others and some political theories lend themselves to being perverted by someone inherently psychopathic like Stalin.

In no way would Marx have condoned his activities such as pogroms or others later using psychiatry as a force of social control.

It’s worth saying that there has never been a truly “Marxist” or “Communist” country anyway: read The Manifesto by Marx and Engels and find anything that approves of, or recommends, oppression, pogroms or sending people to Siberian salt mines

Blair is back in the frame

Chris Sharp, by email

The Blair person has reappeared!

He admits he didn’t hold a referendum on Europe because he thought he would lose He doesn’t want to go back into politics because of the hostility towards him. It seems he isn’t playing unless he’s winning.

His latest offerin , to form a party, partly funded by the millions this “socialist” has made since leaving office, to keep us in the European Union borders on treason.

The upside is the clowns he seems to have picked as running mates, Clegg and Milliband .

They have never won a thing in their careers. Oh ,l forget myself Milliband knifed his brother in the back to ‘win’ the labour leadership and Clegg won the leadership of the Lib-Dems and we all know where that led.

They deserve each other but what have we done to deserve those three on the scene again ?

Incompetence is UK downfall

Alex Gillies, by email

By 2020 the UK will have borrowed £2 Trillion, to invest in IT, science, broadband and other Industries of the same ilk.

The North-West received £43 Billion from the Government for Infrastructure, whilst Yorkshire received £9 Billion. Leeds spent £80 Million on various designs regarding trolleybus/trams and never laid one single length of track. Sheffield were on course to open its tram/train connection from Sheffield to Rotherham in 2014, then 2016. The engines and livery have been delivered, manufactured in mainland European countries. Alas Network Rail will not deliver its completed contract until 2018. The Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers on trials and no aircraft to serve them until 2020. Coal-fired power stations are to be axed by 2020 and the Government has just signed our nuclear energy building to the French and Chinese Governments. Don’t Panic!

Rachel Hartshorne, of Leeds Green Party, believes by installing solar panels on council houses and wind turbines around the Leeds city that will supply clean energy to power electric vehicles around the city’s infamous road network. It’s energy to power heavy industry, factories and heating homes that is at the top of Leeds citizens’ priorities.

Is there anyone at the helm of our Government, councils or industries who is really qualified to make the correct decision to propel the UK back from the brink of ruin? The writing has been on the wall since February 14th 1971 when a pint of beer was one shilling and 11 pence, costing 10 new pence next day.

The UK has been left high and dry by all party career MPs, a get-rich-quick stock market, Brokers, banks and plain old incompetence in the jobs market.

We of a certain age have been there before, our Government owed billions of pounds after the war. We the workers paid every penny back with interest and had started to have a few extra bob in our pockets and purses when we were lied to by Heath, Wilson, Callahan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and they are still lying to us.

They’re even changing the voting boundaries to get the vote all political parties want, scrapping Brexit. So much for Democracy.

Rat-runs don’t help road safety

A Hague, Bellbrooke Avenue, Leeds

I READ that Leeds Council is to make a section of Kirkstall road safer for cyclists and pedestrians, where incidentally a cyclist was killed recently.

As a regular cyclist I use this road every week and the worst near-hit I experienced this year was on that section, where too many streets are used as rat runs.

Making these no entry on Kirkstall Road would make it better for cyclists and walkers.