YEP Letters: May 30

Moved by emotional human stories

Edna Levi, by email

I really shed a tear or two when reading some of the human information contained in the YEP May 28 edition.

I am sure by now that many people will have fallen in love with sister and brother Jessica and Harry and the phones will be ringing!

By the same token, let us all hope that little Abi will soon receive a new kidney – even though this could mean some other family having to make a sacrifice after what could be their own sorrow.

Finally the wonderful parents of little Reece, whom they lost through a brain tumour, what an everlasting tribute to his memory.

Skycraper plan at city centre site: your views

A transformation of Leeds city centre’s skyline could be one step closer after a meeting this week. Councillors will meet on Thursday to consider an application for two tower blocks near the First Direct Arena and a separate request for a sprawling homes and public space development on a vacant Kirkstall Road site. Unite Group Plc and RR Wing Portfolio Ltd want to demolish the podium building by the arena - which includes a Wetherspoons pub - and create 27-storey and 15-storey buildings predominantly for student accommodation on Merrion Way Tower House Street and Brunswick Terrace. We asked YEP readers for their views and here’s what some of them said on social media..

Christopher James Dilworth

This is a great pub. Why is there a need for two more skyscrapers? There are vacant offices and buildings all over Leeds.

Michelle Glover

Would prefer to keep it as a nice bar/eating area with a taxi rank for those of us who use the arena regularly.

Barbara Wilson

I think it’s disgusting. All Meanwood, Woodhouse, town centre, Burley, Kirkstall, Headingley, thousands of student flats yet still they take up all family houses in Headingley. In no time at all university will own Leeds.

Pete Mitchell

More student accommodation, great! How about making affordable accommodation for people who work in the city centre? £800pcm for a property, it’s absolutely scandalous.

Richard Edwards

Not sad to see the back of the Wetherspoons, as there are much nicer ones in town, and that building is a truly hideous Brutalist slab which no amount of refits have been able to soften.

However I would agree with those questioning the need for yet more student flats. Whilst moving them into the centre will help regenerate Headingley, Hyde Park/Burley Park and hopefully see some of the houses return to family occupation, the infrastructure at the top end of town us already at breaking point. Are the universities going to build another supermarket or subsidise more buses to take some of the pressure off the existing Morrisons and No1/56/6 services? I somehow doubt it.

As it is, Freshers Week is a nightmare for anyone who works at that end of town, and it’s been getting worse year by year.

Dean Rose

Even more student accommodation! How about using that money to improve the current slums of Leeds and its surrounding areas that need it?

Claire Rooney-West

What wind tunnels will the skyscrapers bring with them?

Respect the result

John R Wainwright, by email

By suggesting that Brexiteers are a threat to parliamentary democracy, Mike Harwood (YEP Letters, May 25) is wrong in so many ways.

When proposing the Bill to hold an in-out referendum, David Cameron said: “You will decide, and whatever your decision, I will do my best to deliver it” – and that Bill was passed in Parliament by 544 votes to 53. Subsequently, in their 2017 General Election manifestos, both the Conservatives and Labour committed themselves to respect the referendum result. Finally, and despite the referendum vote being deemed ‘non-binding’ Parliament nonetheless backed the Government’s European Union Bill giving the Theresa May the power to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty by 498 votes to 114. So clearly Parliament has been in control of the process throughout. The real threat to parliamentary democracy has come from all those MPs (past and present) who’ve spent the last 40-plus years giving away the powers they wield on our behalf to the EU over which we have no electoral control, which was a key reason for 17.4 million people voting to take back that control. The only people who should resign are all those MPs who were elected last year on a manifesto commitment to respect the referendum result, but who are instead devoting all their efforts to doing the exact opposite.

Ease burden on city hospitals?

Ann Dixon, Horsforth.

POPPED up to Wharfedale Hospital in Otley last week for a test. A superb facility – but totally under-used and a huge burden to taxpayers because it was built under PFI. Couldn’t more services be relocated there to ease the burden on the main hospitals in Leeds which can’t cope?

A revolution in waste disposal

R Spreadbury, Liversedge.

HERE are some ideas to address waste disposal, fly-tipping and littering, which seem to be blighting our area.

Make all waste disposal free. Create a charitable company for litter collection hotspots. Local councils to take back control of household waste disposal sites from the private companies who now run them, and who ever increasingly restrict what can be accepted at these sites.

A comprehensive school education programme, including visits from the council waste disposal team etc.

National curriculum topics could include civic pride and looking after the environment starts at home. Remove all bins from laybys and replace with signage “Please take your litter home. Thanks”.

What are your thoughts?