'Why did we allow our chocolate companies to be bought by foreign buyers?'

The multinational corporate take-overs have not served York well.

Why have we allowed our blue chip York chocolate companies to be taken over by foreign buyers who then move production to cheap labour areas or asset strip?

Terry’s and Rowntree’s were world class thirty years ago. Terry’s 1767 and All Gold chocolates, the chocolate orange and the York shop were superb products.

It went downhill after all the corporate jiggery-pokery first by Sir Charles Forté, United Biscuits then the American Kraft company.

The Swiss have never allowed take-overs like Rowntree’s as they prohibit such moves by law.

There was never enough re-investment in both these sites as the old buildings do not meet current food hygiene standards.

There’s more money turning York factories into flats or selling land. Doesn’t help the staff.

Keith Massey, Bishopthorpe, York

What future will our young people have?

I refer to the front page news in Thursday’s Press (Nestlé plans to axe York Kitkat jobs, April 29).

In the 1970s/80s my father Leonard was a manager in Terry’s factory in York.

But he could already see the writing on the wall regarding the huge workforce then employed in the factor.

For every machine and automated process installed in the factory 80/ 100 people lost their jobs. The same thing happened with the other large workforces - Rowntree’s/ Cravens and the glassworks in York, and the huge car factories throughout the country.

In my youth the factories were a good source of employment for the less academic kids starting out in employment.

Now the only employment open to them locally is in the service industry (decimated by the pandemic) - or else claiming money on today’s equivalent of the dole.

Without the ethics of getting up and going to work, many youngsters are going to fail in life.

It’s not the loss of 98 jobs that’s worrying, it’s the lack of a future for many youngsters.

DM Deamer, Penleys Grove Street, Monkgate, York