YEP Letters: January 20

Expansion warrants new railway station

James Bovington, Horsforth

I read with interest of plans to develop a cinema at Thorpe Park in east Leeds, as part of a massive business development on the site creating thousands of needed jobs.

I trust that as the site is adjacent to the Leeds to York rail line a new station will be included in the development. This will complement another planned station at East Leeds Parkway on lines apparently scheduled for electrification.

We need more suburban rail stations. Within Leeds itself Kirstall Bridge and Armley Canal Road are possibles on the Airedale line and Osmondthorpe and Seacroft Hospital between Leeds and Cross Gates.

Of course White Rose desperately needs a station in order to take up to a possible half a million car journeys off the road once the centre’s expansion is complete.

There might also be a case for a station between Leeds and Bramley.

Making central area destinations like Millenium Square and the new Victoria shopping centre directly accessible to train passengers in the way that the Tyneside Metro serves Newcastle’s Eldon Square should be a major objective.

Rather than trying to squeeze yet more and more trains into the central station a cross city east west tunnel would create space at Leeds Station for national and regional trains and take thousands of passengers daily direct to the main passenger objectives with stations at Westgate, City Square and Eastgate.

However stations at White Rose and Thorpe Park would be an excellent start.

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Wake up to facts about EU

Derek Barker, Moortown

So it looks as though we may be having an EU in/out referendum sometime later this year.

I can’t help but think that Prime Minister David Cameron and his pro EU supporters are living in a fantasy world if they believe the outcome of the referendum will be for us to remain in the EU when you look at the way this country has declined since first joining the EU, and even before we were signed up to forming a political union with the rest of Europe, without the electorate being consulted in any way by any politician in this country.

Tens of thousands of people made redundant in fishing and agriculture, millions made redundant between the mining steel and chemical industries, hundreds of thousands made redundant in the textile industry of which I was one.

The EU have now announced that it will be illegal for an angler to catch and take home sea bass without facing ridiculously punitively out of proportion fines, so that’s another million or so UK anglers who will be voting to leave the EU.

Over the last 35 years our membership of the EU has adversely affected the lives of the vast majority of the people of this country, and I would estimate that at the most only 20 per cent of the people have benefited from our membership, who are the top wealthiest group of people. If David Cameron would only wake up to the fact that literally millions of UK citizens have had their lives and the quality of their lives seriously adversely affected by our EU membership he would be campaigning to get us out.

Older people taking the brunt

Ernest Lundy, by email

It was heartwarming to see the turnout the other day at St Mary’s Church, Beeston for the send-off of one of our old war veterans. A remarkable man!

But it led me to wonder if government and other agencies have really done enough for the generation that lived and fought through World War Two and in other conflicts since.

Oh yes (as one of those) we get a bus pass, winter fuel allowance, free prescriptions and glasses test. But very little else if we have any savings.

We pay rates in full, the same for dental treatment and glasses etc and if we wish to take a holiday are almost priced out of it by insurance costs.

It’s the same with car insurance, when, if we wish to stay on the road we are charged obscene prices for cover, even if, when aged over 70, many insurers refuse to take us on. Even if claims and accident free for years. Old age being the reason.

No wonder the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is cracking down on insurance companies.

Laws against age discrimination and pricing are constantly being breached.

To add insult to injury, if we happen to need nursing or residential care in our dotage, our assets and property can be stripped to pay for it.

In addition with interest rates on savings at an all-time low for over a decade now it is the older generations who are taking the brunt. It’s like a vendetta!

But perhaps the final insult comes when those providing insurance for the old, to cover the cost of funerals, have a cut-off point for those over the age of 70.

Apart from the odd occasion when some veteran or another passes on to greater things, those who make such a fuss at those times don’t seem to give a fig otherwise.