YEP Letters: March 10

Time to restart the clock tower

A Hague, Leeds 9

I support Neil Hudson’s appeal to restart the old Evening Post’s clock tower (YEP February 17).

I cycle past it every week and it was the only place in Leeds which gave us the temperature as well as the time.

The new owners told us two years ago it would be restarted, but it must have slipped their mind.

Travel problems of getting around Leeds

CV Barton, Burley-in-Wharfedale

May I raise a few points about the YEP February 24 special report ‘Cycling, driving, taking the bus or train - who wins?’

1. Did the race from Stanhope Avenue, Horsforth to the YEP Whitehall Road office take place during the school holidays? If so this would make the journey by car and bus much quicker.

2. The race did not include a motorbike which to be fair I think it should, although they produce the same pollutants as motor cars. I know at least one hospital consultant who uses a motorbike for work due to road congestion. I think this would provide some very interesting results.

3. Commuting by car. Parking costs do not appear to be mentioned. I understand Leeds parking costs of £14 per day are the norm.

No mention is made of the lack of exercise for the driver and the pollutants everyone has to breathe and the NHS costs of treating people suffering COPD etc.

If the driver had to find parking this would increase the door to door time, but would give the driver some exercise. Green credential of 5/10 must be wrong, surely it must be 0/10?

4. I understand the train journey was made when a train failed on the Harrogate line (this was rightly reported by the YEP). In the 80s and 90s I worked in Leeds and lived in Horsforth.

After trying the bus and the train I found the train was the quickest and most reliable transport, even with the dreaded unreliable, under-capacity racers.

Although still a car owner/driver I have found that anywhere within half an hour walk (two miles) of a railway station, using a train and walking is the quickest way about West Yorkshire.

May I suggest the race is repeated on several days so readers can get a truer picture of the travel problems of getting around the Leeds region, especially with snow on the roads, when road travellers flock to the trains?

Tapp into the inaccuracy

Philip Crowther, Bingley

I refer to the Life on Tapp article (YEP March 7) which needs to be corrected for accuracy of fact.

Blaise refers in a flippant manner to “…snowed for 12 weeks of the year….”, “.. which of course never happened..”. I suggest on his next snow day, Blaise Tapp puts down his double chocolate chip flavoured mocca latte, leaves alone Facebook for a minute or two and does some proper research befitting a journalist.

Since the 50s and 60s, weather patterns have certainly changed to the extent that seasons are now less defined resulting in the merging affect we now witness. Mild winters, wet summers. No one is saying they did not exist before, but the vicious winter such as 1947 and 1963 have not been experienced since those times. It is fact that the amount of snow in 1947, 1963 and 1979 as well as the freezing temperatures of 1963 lasted for months not weeks. Furthermore, the winter of 1985 had freezing temperatures continuously from January to March.

Blaise Tapp`s analogy with Winter Olympics is so juvenile it does not even warrant consideration.

What Mr Tapp should consider before before putting pen to paper – remember that stuff? - are a few factual observations.

There is hysteria around these weather conditions highlighted by the media. For instance naming pending weather Beast from The East. Broadcasting that train companies are cancelling services before the weather has even arrived.

I suugest Blaise contact ex-Holbeck and Neville Hill drivers and speak to them how they coped in 1963 with far worse than the four day event just seen.

As for driving, whilst volumes of traffic have grown out of all proportion to the infrastructure to handle the volume, TV footage of cars being pushed on level roads with front wheels spinning at 100 mph tells you all you need to know about driving skills today making matters worse than need be.

FACT -In the 50s and 60s schools did not shut at the threat of a snowflake, we turned up and carried on, walking both ways.

FACT – We went to work come hell or high water, no attendance often meant no pay. Isn’t it strange, nowadays, how the inability to get to work or school on two feet or four wheels suddenly turns into easy access to park for sledging?

FACT – no central heating, often outside loos, no one would wish that on anybody but then it was a fact of life.

FACT – we played out in snow and all weathers, no retreating to computers or other distractions.

Life was harder then, people were more stoic and tougher, there was nothing sepia tinted about it.

Let PM May get on with the job

P Rhodes, Leeds

WHY is it that former Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair are getting involved in Brexit?

Former Prime Minister David Cameron called for the referendum and the UK voted to come out.

I don’t remember John Major asking the UK to vote on Maastricht. Tony Blair did not give or listen to the UK on the Iraq war.

So let Prime Minister Theresa May get on with the job on getting the best deal for the UK.

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