Letters to the Editor

SIR - With regard to the High Royds Development, and as a Leeds city councillor I was in attendance at the local workshop organised by Aireborough Ward CIT in conjunction with the representative of the Ravens group who is to develop the site mainly for residential purposes.

My main concern has been like everyone else living locally, the volume of traffic using the A65.

I understand from Mr Gough (representing the city council's Highways Department) that there are no details of any up to date traffic study carried out by the city officers on that aspect. The highways. preliminary study conducted by the developers, and fundamentally for their own use, is inadequate for public opinion.

If there is to be any public consultation process regarding volume and speed along the A65 and other minor feeder road such as Thorpe Lane, Guiseley, the Highways Department should be able to offer more reliable information to us for further consultation with the local councillors and the public.

There was some interactive discussion with the representative of Ravens Group along with some member of the public. Most concern was raise regarding medical and dental services.

I am pleased to hear there is some positive interest in both from various practitioners. There is to be room for three dentists, possibly a nursing home. Local GPs will provide medical care even though an over-simplified suggestion of one practice taking on another partner to cope with the increased population seems unrealistic.

We should not be misled here because the majority of the properties may be occupied by local movement and residents who need not change to another general practitioner. The population is unlikely to swell immediately and I gather that development will not complete until 2009.

From the developers I am pleased to hear that this development will contain affordable housing according to the current Government legislation, with one bedroom flats for the elderly people.

I started my medical career in Yorkshire, having a junior post at this hospital. I am pleased to see this development taking place to preserve the glory of this local architecture and the green space.

However I shall remain a little sceptical regarding the culture of 1.5 cars per household and within that culture fewer people using their vehicles in the site in comparison to the rest of this city.

I hope in the years to come we are not saddled with a huge traffic problem in this locality, in particular with the future expansion of Leeds-Bradford Airport. This is the second biggest development after Seacroft and I urge serious public consultation on highways and the traffic issues.

Coun Dr M Thakur

Majentta Farm,

Mall Lane,

West Carlton.

Facts on base

SIR, - Gordon Bradley cannot be allowed to go unanswered as he responded to my false assumptions with a catalogue of misinformation.

I and my friends, did not steal any documents from Menwith Hill. We borrowed them. A receipt for their return was obtained from Menwith Hill on October 6, 1993, 15 minutes before the broadcast of the Channel 4 Dispatches programme 'The Hill' which revealed that Otley peacewomen regularly entered the base and discovered information.

At this stage it was too late to obtain an injunction to stop the broadcast. To commit a crime of stealing, under the Theft Act 1961 a person has to be permanently deprived of their property. The British Official Secrets Acts cannot be used to charge anybody with exposing Menwith Hill's secrets because they are the United States secrets.

Was the information 'planted'? The Menwith Hill authorities used hand-carried pieces of paper to transmit messages round the various departments, because they could not trust electronic systems. (Nobody is more aware than they of how easily they can be bugged, jammed, infected, etc). They were dumb enough to leave the papers out for the dustbin men to collect. Menwith Hill was not established in order to protect Britain.

The agreement signed in December 1951, to allow this US Signals Intelligence spy base, was a response to the defection of Burgess and Maclean to the USSR.

The US Intelligence Services could no longer trust and co-operate with the UK and wanted to separate operations. (They did not then know that they were penetrated and compromised).

The reasons why it was sited at Menwith Hill are because a) the location is perfect for the interception of communications from Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union and b) the hill is solid clay, which is water retentive and excellent for earthing the antenna systems.

My father was wounded in the 1914-18 war and invalided home. One of the reasons for my peace commitment is the hope that my son will never have to go to war. Perhaps future generations will be able to paraphrase Kipling and say: "The reason why we lived was because our mothers told the truth'.

Anne Lee

Women with Hill Women's

Peace Campaign,

PO Box 105,

Harrogate.

Family appeal

SIR, - I am trying to find some people in your newspaper area that might have known of my great-grandad and great-grandma and their family who lived in the Otley area. His name was Abraham Harper born in Guiseley in 1858; his wife, Mary Hannah Harrison, born in Harewood or Weardly near Harewood in 1879. They both died at 3 Croft Avenue, Otley, him in 1926 and her in 1937 and are buried in Otley Cemetery along with their daughter, Annie.

They had a son, John, born at Harewood in 1880, daughter Mabel, born at Kearby cum Netherby 1881, another son, Joseph born 1885, died 1886 at Crow Lane, Otley, and lastly a girl called Annie born 1892 at Burley. She died at 13 Courthouse Street , Otley in 1902.

In the 1880s Abraham and Mary lived at Chapel Hill, Kearby cum Netherby. He was a farm labourer, and at Crow Lane Otley and at Stocks Gate Farm, Burley as a farmer in 1891, and at 13 Courthouse Street Otley as a baker and then at 3 Croft Avenue, Otley.

Their eldest, John (my grandad), married Agnes Baldwin from Weardly in Harewood in 1910, they lived at 41 Strathmore View, Leeds, where my dad was born in 1911 and also George and my uncle Jack in 1913. They then moved to Osmondthorpe Lane, Leeds.

Abraham's daughter, Mabel, married a man called John Flesher, born 1878 at Otley at Primitive Chapel, Station Road, in 1906. John's dad and mum George and Jane and eight sons and daughters lived at Cross Green, Otley. After 1906 I don't know anything.

I hope someone out there has some photos of Abraham and Mary Harper and Mabel and John or Annie and some information about John and Mabel's children if they had any, or grandchildren. Please get in touch.

John Harper

14 Rookwood Avenue,

Kippax,

Leeds.

Store 'bad news'

SIR, - So the majority of councillors think Sainsburys will be good for Otley do they, or is it a that Sainsbury's are not offering enough sweeteners to get them all to agree?

The only reason they want Sainsbury's is because it will save them money by cleaning up a neglected part of town. It will be no more good for Otley than creating a golf course on the side of the Chevin.

Ninety per cent of supermarket shoppers go shopping in the evenings or on Sundays. How many small shops are open after 5pm or on Sundays to benefit?

The other ten per cent, after buying their groceries at the supermarket, will meander into town and browse round the charity shops, if, in fact, that's what Sainsbury's shoppers like to do. Then there is the proposed road system. Haven't there been enough alterations to the roads already?

In the town centre alone there are more pelican crossings that the North Pole. How many more can they fit in?

Not to mention the deterioration of the roads by the articulated lorries that will pound the roads seven days a week, therefore leading to more road repairs, and frequent visits by the duo 'Bodge it and Scarper', creating more congestion in the town centre and keeping shoppers away form Otley.

Mrs Allen

Hollingate

Otley

Food for thought

SIR, - I was at the meeting of the Otley Town Council Planning Committee which discussed the proposed Sainsbury's supermarket.

I won't say anything about Sainsbury's contemptuous and sloppy presentation of their revised plans to build in a proposed conservation area, but I will talk about the main issue: Do we need another supermarket in Otley!

Sainsbury's thought they might create about 200 full and part-time jobs, but they weren't sure. I'd bet that were they to get planning permission and also take over Safeway's there would be a net loss of jobs to the town.

We could lose Safeway's, a baker, a chemist , a greengrocer, perhaps even Netto, a butcher and of course the abattoir.

In return we'd get more traffic, more noise, more pollution, a hideous building and more processed, pre-packed, tasteless food. Is this what we want?

Christopher Trow

3 Queen's Terrace,

Otley.

Bus route protest

SIR, - As a resident of Chevin End, i.e. West Chevin Road, I was distressed to read in your paper last week that our link with the 'Outside World', the W33 bus, which has been our lifeline for several years, is being taken out of service, no longer running over West Chevin but is going to run along the main A65 corridor bringing them into our overground network status as quoted by First Management.

Several residents of Chevin End do not run cars, mostly the elderly, and the thought of the expense of a taxi wherever we need to shop, see the doctor, go to a post office or join in any midweek church activities is too dreadful to contemplate.

I have already written to Charles Donnelly, marketing manager at First Bus, and put our case before him, and to our MP, Chris Leslie, and hope you will give our cause a little space in your newspaper.

Edna Johnson

20 West Chevin Road,

Menston.

High Royds name

SIR, - I propose that the name of the new development on the High Royds site could be either Fairfax Park or Cromwell Park, as there are historical associations with both. The roads could be named after the various wards which had names of the dales.

Mrs D Foxton

15 Buckle Lane,

Menston.

War in Iraq ' not in our name'

SIR, - As you read this we have already gone to war with Iraq. A war where thousands of civilians and soldiers will lose their lives, millions will be made homeless and displaced, hundreds of thousands needing medical treatment.

We have gone to war with a country that we have helped to arm, by selling equipment and parts, by helping to build chemical plants. War, on people who have since the last Gulf war, suffered a 12-fold increase in cancer deaths, probably due to the use of depleted uranium by our troops. A statistic compounded by the fact that Britain and America have denied drugs, through sanctions, that are standard in our hospitals to treat these condition. We have also denied Iraq's import of decontamination equipment.

It confirms for me that this war is not intended to save the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, but is, as we all know, politically and economically motivated primarily by a bunch of men in the US. This war is not fought in my name, nor that of anyone else I know.

Penny Redwood

3 Cambridge Terrace,

Otley.