LETTERS ROUND-UP

I had to chuckle, as I’m just back home after a 200-mile car journey from Suffolk, some of it through lashing rain on the A1.

The car is a good servant for many long journeys, but can be a bad master if used inconsiderately as an instinctive “first choice” for short distance urban travel.

We should perhaps be thankful many suburban residents chose to get the bike out of the garage rather than the car for local commuting. Also for those residents on our periphery who elect to use the Park&Ride services for the final leg of their commute.

Car sharing, and short term hire from City Car Club are other ways of making best use of our city’s road capacity.

The debate is not pro or anti car, but about making informed travel choices for each individual journey that we make.

Lifestyle choices about where to live and work are too often made on the basis of car ownership and use. But local authorities cannot facilitate that choice by expanding road capacity ad infinitum.

Paul Hepworth, Windmill Rise, York

THE NHS together with the BBC employ thousands of managers costing taxpayers millions of pounds in salaries and pension contributions.

Local government employs many civil servants to manage. Overall the combined expense runs into billions of pounds.

For this substantial investment are not the public entitled to enquire of politicians why is the BBC allowed to be so ultra biased?

Why the NHS requires many to contribute so little, while the sharp end of the service loses out?

Why local councils need to engage expensive consultants to decide the obvious?

Perhaps local Members of Parliament from The Press area of circulation may wish to respond.

Peter Rickaby, West Park, Selby

PHILIP JOHNSON (Letters, August 19) misses the point. Museums and galleries are not shops, they are cultural and educational institutions.

Most were originally provided by public bodies and their contents donated by generous individuals anxious for their fellow men and women to be able to enjoy the privileges of the wealthy.

Local authorities were frequently chosen to be guardians because they were public bodies financed by the public purse.

It may be regarded as a failure of the system that hitherto publicly provided educational opportunities are having a price placed on them.

It is not just a matter of whether or not to charge. It is also how much, if it is temporarily unavoidable. We are not all well-heeled.

But above all children, our future citizens, must be encouraged to explore ideas - and not always accompanied by (paying) parents.

As one who owes so much to these opportunities in his own childhood, I am making a deeply felt plea.

Leonard Robinson, Fairway Drive, Upper Poppleton, York

ON August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered receiving terms it would have accepted several weeks earlier.

The delay gave the USA the opportunity to test the atom bomb. Hiroshima had been deliberately excluded from earlier raids so that the effects could be more accurately monitored and on August 6 the ultimate war crime was committed.

The apologists for that atrocity claim that the terror instilled within the Japanese nation served to end the war – the absolute definition of terrorism.

Japan too committed terrible war crimes but the case is that no matter how evil the military machine of any particular nation becomes, we cannot seek revenge on a gullible civilian population by pretending that they are guilty by ignorance and association.

The targeting of civilians is defined as war crime. If the use of such evil, indiscriminate weapons as those used upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be excused then the Hague is redundant and Tony Blair is free to continue as Middle East peace envoy.

Roger Westmoreland, The Oval, Pocklington

RE Emma Clayton’s article on scattering of the late parents’ ashes (The Press, August 18), I have the same problem with my late husband’s ashes, which reside in their urn in the vegetable rack in the back wash house. He seems close at hand in there.

My late brother died at his home in Marbella. We could, with difficulty, have brought them home to England, but decided to scatter him in the lovely gardens on his complex.

We poured the ashes into a plastic bag, making sure there were no holes in it. We went out at dusk, said a little prayer and at 10pm laid him to rest.

The ground was rock hard. How we wished we had a push hoe. We were in hysterics in case anyone saw us. We must have come up on the CCTV, but nothing was said.

He would have been amused too.

Pamela Z Frankland, Hull Road, Dunnington, York

WITHOUT a doubt the support for Jeremy Corbyn has caught many by surprise (Letters, August 19), just as I can remember the election of the 1946 Labour Government was unexpected, not least by Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party.

Then as now commentators did not sense the public’s frustration with the political establishment’s failure to use its power to set and collect taxes in order to control the economy to the benefit of the British people. In a mixed economy such as we have in this country, business has an important role to play in generating the wealth, which can be taxed to furnish the government with the means to provide the vital services, which we all depend on.

Unfortunately for decades now successive governments have seen their purpose as being to help corporations to grow by slashing taxes and encouraging tax avoidance, thereby emasculating their own political power to act in the common good.

Without the power of tax revenue the goings-on in Parliament are seen as pointless, as Corbyn’s support indicates.

Maurice Vassie, Deighton, York

WITH reference to Matthew Laverack’s letter “We’ve got it wrong over student housing” (The Press, August 22).

I was talking to a lady from Lincoln and she said the same thing is happening there, more and more student housing schemes but residents not so lucky.

Maybe one good thing will come out of it, when they have sufficient student accommodation all the private student-let homes will be available to families again.

Only time will tell.

Maureen Robinson, Broadway, York

SO we had over 88,000 visitors to the races (The Press, August 24).

I am sure that this made a huge difference to the revenue of the city of York tourist trade.

Can we have extra litter bins in the city when we have such a high influx of people visiting?

Surely it is cheaper to empty bins than to sweep the streets.

Put the bins in temporarily and perhaps they will remain there?

Anne Church, Severus Avenue, Acomb, York

IT is with great concern I write regarding the migrant crisis.

I am not a xenophobe, but I wonder how many Islamic State terrorists are getting into Europe using the guise of refugee.

I do suspect a Trojan horse strategy is quite possible.

Were this to happen, we could one day find ourselves overwhelmed by radical Islamists attacking us from within.

Remember, they are a death cult who have no qualms about dying for their cause.

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