YEP Letters: February 7

Check out today's YEP letters

Design shows no imagination

Roger Cliff, Bramley

Here we go again, a prime site like the former YEP site, with west to east traffic passing just yards away.

Poor design, no imagination, built like Lego with no shape. We all want to see the site developed, but the City Plans Panel should have thrown this design back in their faces, and said you can do a lot better than that.

Make the majority believe Labour policies

James Kirk, Middleton

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I am proud to be a supporter of Brexit. My vote to leave the European Union was down to personal preference based on my own judgement.

The benefits of ‘Leaving’ (for me at least) outweighed the benefits of ‘Remaining.’ I didn’t for one second believe that there was a magical formula on hand to make a smooth exit possible. Why would I?

David Cameron only allowed the vote to take place because he personally believed the people would choose to remain. There was never a team of government officials feverishly working away behind the scenes to come up with an exit plan. Nor were Labour in any way prepared themselves.

What I did hope for was a unity of minds to work out the best deal for this nation. Not the division and petty squabbling that has emerged since the result was announced.

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I get the concerns of the people who wanted to remain, but do they really imagine the best way to get those who voted to leave to show empathy is to insult them.

Labour MP Richard Burgon (YEP Letters February 2) pointed out his frustrations at some of the comments made since the result and he would like see a united effort to get a better deal for Britain. No issue with that! Yet Mr Burgon is as guilty as the next person for the nit picking that goes into his letter, and fails to view his own party the way the working man views it. He makes a point of Theresa May being unelected as Prime Minister, we as voters have no say in the election of a party leader, we vote for the party, not the person.

If Mr Burgon believes in democracy as he claims then he should be aware that same process was used to put the Conservatives in government not an individual.I am a Labour supporter, not a Labour voter, I do not recognise this bunch of career politicians who seek to play the social justice warrior when it suits them.

If Mr Burgon truly believes Labour stands for the interests of the vast majority of people, has it not dawned on him that the Conservatives were put into government by the majority who did not share those interests the Labour party stood for. As Brexit is negotiated, Labour will put jobs, the economy, employment rights, and the environment first, he states. Very commendable, now make me and the majority believe it! Right now Labour couldn’t pour water out of a Wellington boot if the instructions were on the heel. If you want to set yourself up as a champion of the people, then act like one, and strive to make the world a better place for everyone. Sort out your party first Mr Burgon or I suspect it will be a while before it is in any position to sort out any deal for the country.

Accept the public’s vote

M Meeson, Leeds

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In reply to Kamran Hussain, (YEP Letters, February 3). So Mr Hussain would like another referendum on the proposed new agreement with the EU, presumably, if this did happen and he did not agree with it he would seek another referendum and so on?

By a majority of over 12 million, Mr Hussain has personally found out that most of them did not want a hard brexit, how he found this out is unbelievable. The referendum result was a vote to leave the EU and the Single Market, to end uncontrolled migration, to be able to trade worldwide without restrictions imposed by the EU, to be governed by UK laws and to build our fishing industry to back to how it used to be.

If Mr Hussain and the Liberal Party had their way we would have referendum after referendum until it suited their way of thinking, rather than the 12 million majority that this referendum has thankfully given the United Kingdom.

Clean up city’s streets

Gary Wilson, by email

I wholeheartedly agree with the letter from Paul Seifert, “Time for the city to look after its assets” (YEP Letters February 3).

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I am not an idiot to think that it is easy to run a city council and its budget with the need to prioritise all the works while struggling with the extreme cut backs being imposed by the government.

But by not looking after the city’s assets by cleaning roads, gutters and clearing leaves or pruning shrubs and trees then I’m afraid it’s not just the look of the city that’s being let down.

Does the council not realise the impact this has to the drainage system, flooding, it’s quite simple - when my sink plug hole has food debris in it then the water will not flow away....clear it, genius!

By having more road sweeping are we not only improving the environment and city but providing much needed employment.

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Surely having people visiting the area and seeing it clean and tidy some visitors would probably return and even spread the word that our city is a good place to come and visit.

It is not just the central area that needs keeping clean but all of it as a lot of visitors are investors looking at the transport links and do actually drive around and see the squalor. If anyone travelling abroad goes to a dirty country they always come back saying I’m not going back there it was a dump. Welcome to Leeds.

Campaigners shouldn’t relax

Coun Tom Leadley, Morley North Ward, Leeds City Council

Dr JP Dickinson (YEP Letters January 24) rightly pointed out that objecting to paying for improvements at Headingley Stadium by selling green belt at Tingley and Weetwood for housing didn’t mean objecting to improving the stadium.

It was the attempt to claim that building houses on the two sites would be legitimate “enabling development” to raise funds for the stadium which provoked opposition. As will have been noted at the March Leeds City Plans Panel meeting, a number of councillors doubted the enabling development argument.

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There seemed to be no legitimate link at all to Tingley, which was several miles from Headingley and never had been used for sports or games, and the link to the much closer land at Weetwood was tenuous, as although notionally it still had designated playing pitches from its Tetley’s Brewery sports club days, in fact they had been out of use for many years and had become overgrown.

Long before either of these housing sites had been mentioned, Morley Town Council’s formal response to the City Council’s draft Planning Core Strategy in April 2012 had said that policy support for enabling development associated with sporting and cultural venues should be expressed only in general terms; actual venues such as Headingley Carnegie Stadium shouldn’t be named; to do so made the policy seem to favour those venues even before planning permission for enabling development had been sought.

Unfortunately the MTC comment wasn’t heeded, and Headingley Carnegie Stadium was named as being a favoured beneficiary of enabling development in paragraph 4.7.10 of the adopted Core Strategy in 2014.

Having got so far, Leeds Rugby, Cricket and Athletic Club must have thought that it would be home and dry with the housing sites it put forward in 2016; legal opinion seems to have differed.

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It is odd that one of the two sites turned out to be on Morley Town Council’s own doorstep at Tingley, but, we didn’t know that in 2012; a case of smelling the rodent long before it appeared.

Rebuilding Headingley stadium in time for the 2019 cricket season will have to be done against the clock, and won’t have been helped by the enabling development false start, but, no-one can say that they hadn’t been warned.

Although early house-building at Tingley and Weetwood proved to be a false hope, it is likely that both will be back later, so interested campaigners shouldn’t relax or disperse.