We have been told that the reason shops are closing down is because people are shopping online.

Well considering the largest age group are people over 65 years I am not surprised online shopping has taken off. The shops are not age friendly. They have no chairs for you to sit on as you try to find something that you can actually get over your head.

I went to a couple of popular clothes shops in our local shopping arcade which had sales on. As I walked round masses of rails with dozens of clothes on them, I realised I was wasting my time: the sizes were all well below what I needed, plus there were no chairs and I was beginning to panic as my leg and back were beginning to give up on me.

I had to sit on a low shop fixture and noticed the staff and customers kept looking at me. I felt like shouting that it was either the fixture or the floor.

The second shop was exactly the same. I had to give up and go back to the car and drive home where I could sit down and go through my clothes catalogue in comfort.

Come on shopkeepers, be more elderly friendly, after all the over-65s are the people with the highest disposable income of all age groups.

Ann Cruickshank

(previously from York),

Salendine Nook,

Huddersfield

Wildfires were rife on island of Cyprus

In the days when Britain administered Cyprus, every summer the island was plagued by forest fires which were put out with the assistance of work gangs from the local gaols.

Everyone knew that the fires were started by the prisoners’ relatives but as all parties achieved something - healthy forests, happy convicts and wives and good behaviour assured in the gaol - the policy was tolerated over many years.

I wonder if anyone from Strangeways is involved with Saddleworth Moor?

A V Martin,

Westfield Close,

Wigginton, York

Our MPs won’t offer support on fracking

Removing all public oversight by removing planning laws from fracking exploration wells has effectively made drilling legally on a par with putting up a conservatory.

A grateful shale gas industry will doubtless be generous donors to Tory party coffers.

Then there comes the business of fracking proper, which has to obtain government permission.

However, the word is that ministers will phrase a blanket permission not for each well, but covering an area, for example Ryedale.

Thus companies will be free to explore and frack without restriction anywhere in Ryedale with no public scrutiny or accountability to planning rules.

The proposed scale of extraction runs at a new well fracked every day for a decade to reach their targets.

The ensuing earthquakes will be small but damage properties, anyone close by will find themselves deep in negative equity.

Local MPs like Kevin Hollinrake and Julian Sturdy voted for fracking and now will find themselves powerless to support local communities even if they wanted to.

The Tories are the lawless fracking party which residents would do well to note.

Chris Clayton,

Hempland Drive, York