York roads needing repaired has trebled

I READ last week’s piece “York to spend £5 million on road and pavement repairs” with despair.

When it comes to reversing the huge decline of York’s roads, what the Liberal Democrat-led council are bragging about will barely register.

Since they took control of our city in 2015, the percentage of residential roads needing repair has more than trebled to nearly a quarter of all of them.

For main roads, this has shot up by more than five times.

In terms of numbers, in 2019, the road repairs backlog for all of York was thought to cost around £120 million.

Today, estimates are around £190 million. For grim perspective, this year’s council budget, for all of the services it’s supposed to provide, is around £135 million.

So - as the likelihood of seeing Liberal Democrats pointing at potholes increases as we approach next year’s local elections - it is worth remembering that those crumbling roads are like hundreds of others worsening under their watch.

Not owning this is bad enough - but for them to refer to cuts in national funding, without mentioning their five years in Government happily voting them through, is shameless.

Whichever party is trusted to repair our city in 2023, the starting point must be honesty with residents about exactly where we’re at.

Anything else only jars with what residents experience every day, and does little to address the decline of key services.

Cllr Kallum Taylor

Labour member for Holgate Ward

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Universal Credit is income

WITH reference to D M. Deamer's letter of June 11 regarding Universal Credit (UC) being classed as income, what else does he expect it to be classed as exactly?

When applying for government-administered services such as Legal Aid for example, UC is classed as income and taken into account when determining a person's eligibility for such assistance.

What can UC possibly be considered as other than income?

R Howarth

York

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Putin is another Hitler

UKRAINE is getting close to the tipping point where Putin could over-run it very quickly unless the rest of the world shows solidarity with Ukraine and help them to push the Russian soldiers back to Russia.

Putin is not going to back down as it means he would lose face and that is something he can never accept.

The rest of the world needs to wake up and see that Putin is another Hitler and will already be looking at the next country he can swallow up once Ukraine is his and its people are punished for standing up to him.

No wonder Norway and Sweden are applying to join NATO. They can see how vulnerable they are. As is Poland, Hungary and a number of other small countries close to Russia.

Putin is just another dictator who uses force and threats to intimidate everyone else into giving in to him and I know nuclear weapons are what we are all frightened of but it would be suicide for him and Russia to use them.

Let the world stand up to him like they did to Hitler and send him packing.

Ann Cruickshank,

Oxford Court,

Lytham St Annes

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