IT is shocking that the Monks Cross electric car charging station, or hyperhub, is still not open eight months after work was completed on the site (The Press, March 30).

You would have thought it was obvious that the hyperhub would need a suitable connection to the electricity grid if it was going to be used to charge electric vehicles, but the council clearly failed to get this sorted out in advance.

How are drivers going to feel confident about going electric when the council can't even manage to connect its new charging points to an electricity supply?

This is a perfect illustration of just how incompetent the ruling Lib-Dem and Green coalition actually is.

They may be filled with good intentions but are completely unable to implement practical solutions on the ground.

Danny Golding

Albemarle Road, York

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Standard of living rises are not cost free

I WELCOME the EU’s plan to create a greener circular economy to transform the way products are designed and manufactured.

The challenges of protecting the environment and biodiversity while simultaneously reducing the continent’s dependency of fossil fuels are huge. While rightly condemning the Government for the sharp rise in energy prices and the ever-increasing numbers of foodbanks, we must also acknowledge that the increase in our standard of living has not been cost-free.

Cheap fossil fuels and single-use plastics, profligate use of pesticides, and the culture of buying cheap clothes to wear once then throw way have come at a terrible price to the environment.

The European Commission estimates that its proposals will deliver energy savings equal to the EU’s entire use of Russian gas. Changing regulations to ensure well-made, durable and repairable products has to be a good thing. As a product designer, I have seen both the scandalous impact of green-washing by companies, even in Fair Trade, and the huge potential to do things better, to benefit producers and consumers.

It’s tragic that the UK is now an isolated spectator instead of being at the heart of the EU helping to shape a better future for our continent.

Christian Vassie

Blake Court, Wheldrake, York

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Thanks for the memories

WITH the closure of RAF Linton on Ouse over a year ago, the RAF presence in the Vale of York effectively ceased. The nearest active RAF station now is Leeming. Once it was a very different story.

However, when I was a primary school pupil and already interested in aircraft, my father would let me accompany him during school holidays around the Vale of York and East Yorkshire.

He worked as an agricultural engineer for the York firm of H Bushell & Sons. This entailed him visiting farmers with ‘poorly’ machinery and tractors.

I usually managed to persuade him to drive via an aerodrome or two and pull in for a few minutes. In those days towards the end of the war, and for a few years after, there was no shortage of airfields around York and towards the Wolds for me to ogle!

There must have been almost a dozen operational RAF flying bases then in our part of Yorkshire. They, as opposed to tractors etc, were always the highlight of my trips out with Dad.

The RAF (and its predecessor) was a significant presence in the Vale and beyond for over a century. Thankfully, much of that history is now recorded, commemorated and displayed at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, an airfield I first encountered when I was about five as passenger in a small Ford van!

Derek Reed,

Middlethorpe Drive,York

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