YEP Letters: June 1

Leeds setting standard for cycle highways

Jaimes Lewis Moran, Seacroft

It’s unbelievable how blindsided people can be in regards to CityConnect’s cycle highway, especially when they forget how it benefits more than just its target audience - cyclists.

For instance, Mobility scooters. Any person on a slow mobility scooter should not under any circumstances, be forced into riding on roads with fast moving traffic.

Then there’s everyday walkers, including groups of parents with children beside them, or otherwise in prams (I saw three separate tribes together last month - near York Road) I’ve even attempted to use it as a commuting skateboarder last week (splendid experience too I might add!)

What’s stranger is how people seem to forget (or indeed overlook the fact) there used to be a one mile plus stretch of cobblestone pavement on York Road leading away from the bridge near town, which I might add existed for many decades until you guessed it, CityConnect showed up with an effective solution.

We also forget that cycling infrastructure on this scale (in the UK) has been overdue since the 70s, and in case you don’t know Leeds is actually setting the British standard for cycle highways.

This is both a privilege and a burden! In fact we’re currently being watched by numerous cities because they want to do the same only without our many teething problems... and even if you don’t like to admit or see it, there is a growing culture for cycling in Leeds - therefore we should encourage it!

Views on city transport

D Angood, by email

Now we have had the personal views of some of our local politicians, how many are going to join forces and get behind whatever proposals and plans materialise?

Will we see a united and concerted effort from all to ensure an efficient, reliable, accessible, affordable integrated transport network is the result? Will they endeavour to ensure funding for such an on-rolling venture is available?

Buses alone will not solve the problem no matter what the rhetoric of First bus is. They will be part of the solution but the summit next month has to look at the necessities of a system and the best way of meeting them.

There will be many suggestions ranging from a mag-lev monorail to moving pavements and a lot will be judged impractical for one reason or another.

Whichever scheme that is finalised and adopted has to be open to scrutiny, criticism and further discussion, not just from the “experts” but the population as a whole.

There will always be a difference of opinion towards any plan and there will always be effects upon land buildings and people. The justification of those effects has to be the benefits accrued by the majority.

Will the WYCA and other concerned parties have the courage and foresight to accept suggestions by others and allow them to be subject to discussion and appraisal by any constituted panel and by the citizens. Let’s hope their vision is not once again focussed upon a one track scheme.

Campaign has been hijacked

Bob Lawrence, Cross Gates

It is a great pity that Nigel Farage has not been heading the ‘Leave’ campaign right from the start because without him, we would not be having this referendum at all.

Instead, the out campaign has been highjacked by Tory backbenchers who are struggling to counteract the disgraceful scaremongering of Cameron and co, who are literally trying to terrorise the British public to a point where they dare not vote out.

They have not given us one reasonable and constructive reason why we should stay in the EU. All they have done is tell us we are going to be poverty stricken for an indefinite period and trigger Armageddon if we leave. That is the level of respect they have for the British public. We are a strong powerful country and I believe the EU will be thrown into panic if we leave. They would react like all bullies when confronted with resistance and immediately adopt a reasonable attitude in negotiating the way forward for both of us. I believe there is no special relationship with the EU, and we are not at the centre of the decision making. If we surrender to Cameron’s obnoxious bully boy tactics, it will be the first time in British history that its people have given in to intimidation without a shot being fired.

We will be seen in Europe, and on the world stage, as a nation who has been cowed into submission by its own Prime Minister, and will be given the appropriate lack of respect. It will be interesting to see who is mentioned on the honours list from the Remain side next time round.

House prices out of control

Robert Kay, Chapel Allerton

Project Fear’s latest warning that house prices will fall should we leave the EU is all the more reason to vote for Brexit.

Young people have no chance whatsoever of getting their foot on the property ladder unless they can afford one of George Osborne’s £250,000 “affordable homes” with the help of the Bank of Mum And Dad. It is also an admission that house prices and rentals have spun out of control due to landlords and estate agents capitalising on the relentless flow of economic migrants from the EU and the manufactured housing shortage caused by the Right-To-Buy scheme depleting Councils and Housing Associations of sensibly priced tenancies.

Stay in and fight

John M Collins, Alwoodley

Dick Lindley (YEP Letters, May 27) and Derek Barker (YEP Letters, May 28) both seize upon Boris Johnson’s almost universally condemned reference to the EU as similar to Hitler’s Europe and Napoleon’s Grand Empire and endorse it with enthusiasm.

Mr Lindley writes of a “new Germanic empire” “stretching from the Urals in the East to the Atlantic in the West” and Mr Watson of “trying to recreate the Roman Empire in which an elite few treat the plebs like sub-humans”.

I suspect that most of your readers, like myself, regard this as typical Boris nonsense and scaremongering twaddle. But what if they are right and there is a deep-dyed conspiracy to create the “Fourth Reich” (to quote Mr Lindley) by stealth?

Is that not among the strongest arguments to remain in Europe and use all our considerable power and influence to prevent it? Throughout our history Great Britain has stood against those who would seek to dominate Europe, whether Hitler or Napoleon or Louis XIV or, in the time of the first Queen Elizabeth, Philip of Spain.

If there is anything in what Messrs Lindley and Watson say, the answer must be not, as they suggest, to get out and run away, but stay in and fight.

Trieste group

David Griggs, by email

Thanks to newspaper editors up and down the country the British Element Trieste Force Association has recruited 23 new members and seven associate members over the past year. This Association was formed in 2004 for ex-servicemen who served in the Free Territory of Trieste from 1945 and 1954. In addition to the veterans, average age 85, we welcome family members as associates, some of whom spent time in Trieste as children. Photographs and memories are published in a quarterly magazine and regional meetings are held. The 2017 annual reunion will be in Cardiff in March. If you are interested in joining call me on 01665 589289, email [email protected] or write to Suilven, Ellingham. Chathill. Northumberland NE67 5HA.