Why tenants must use their votes

I became involved in the transfer process because I wanted to help make a real difference to the service that I and other tenants receive. For too long now we have had to be satisfied with housing which, quite frankly, substandard.

I want to see better homes, better living conditions, and a better environment for all tenants and their families. We have paid enough over the years and have the right to expect decent homes.

A change is desperately needed. I know some tenants feel safe with the council and the idea of a transfer goes against their principles. However, the reality is that we need to do something know, or our homes and services are only going to get worse.

Apart from improving our homes and services, transfer is about giving tenants the power to have a real say in decisions about their homes at a local level. Local people would run local homes,id it goes ahead.

For years we have complained that we do not have a say in our homes. Now we are being given a golden opportunity to decide what happens to them.

I've certainly filled in my ballot paper - don't waste your vote.

GERALD GOLDSBOROUGH

10 Dale Court,Fieldway,

Ilkley.

SIR, - With breathtaking candour, Bradford Metropolitan Council has decided to reinvent the city as a potential 'European Capital of Culture', no doubt with a view to obtaining vast amounts of European funding. For us denizens of this once great city, it is more akin to a suspension of belief.

In this aspiration to intellectual enrichment, it seems greasy curries and riotous street parties have become cultural icons and the brutal Philistinism of the 1960s viewed with nostalgia in the council's desperate attempts to attract any developer.

The proposed demolition of the former New Victoria art deco twin domes and the imposing Provincial House, to be replaced by 21st century 'gin palaces' have a contemporary similarity to the destruction of Swan Arcade and Kirkgate Market.

In spite of the authority's best efforts, architectural 'gems' survive, but one must ask where else would a fine collection of Victorian buildings such as Little Germany have languished so forlornly for so long. Even for Saltaire, we must thank a 19th century philanthropist and a lone 20th century visionary.

The cerebral ethos is further debased by the use of culture as a descriptive analysis of the social, artistical and literal development of modern day Bradford.

Where the Brontes, almost deified in japan, are hardly acknowledged in the place in which they were born, where the life force project attracted no-one, where the Bradford Civic Theatre teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and the concert halls and art galleries, for which the city's mentor, Glasgow, is renowned, pale in comparison.

The cultural cornucopia is replete with ironic evocation.

A city where an effective curfew operates for all pensioners, where old ladies can no longer carry handbags, where racial divisions and hostilities run deep, where filth and litter compete with greengrocers' detritus in their domination of the streets, where 'no go' areas exist which police avoid and car drivers are fair targets, where churches are attacked. where boarded windows, foul-mouthed tirades and expectorating youths accost the visitor, where true Bradfordians do not admit they live, where educational achievement is evaluated on the achievement of actually attending school, where students no longer come as they once did and where visiting a casualty department at hospital requires a badge of courage.

This is Bradford, European Capital of Culture entrant, 2003.

ALAN K BIGGIN

Bostoks Boyce Welch,

Chartered Accountants,

The Business and Innovation

Centre,

Bradford.

SIR, - Recently a friend expressed the opinion that in the near future the internet will be our only source of information. When we watch TV we'll do so over the internet.

When we want to find a plumber to fix that leaking pipe it will be through the internet that we'll make contact. No more leafing through a medical encyclopaedia to discover what it is we're suffering from, we'll simply type in the symptoms and the internet will respond with the diagnosis and the recommended form of treatment.

Newspapers will be a thing of the past. Gone will be days of leisurely thumbing through the Observer on a Sunday morning, instead we'll have a slice of toast and marmalade in one hand and a mouse in the other, we'll be clicking rather than flicking.

An icy shudder ran the length of my spine at the thought of his prediction being correct and the conspiracy theories in which I'd taken a vague interest since reading Orwell's 1984 set alarm bells ringing.

Imagine the internet being our only source of information! Now imagine who controls the internet. And if you can stretch your imagination just a little further and contemplate for a moment how, if we don't have 'hard' proof - in the form of newspapers and books - the information we receive one day could be seen as equally truthful yet completely contradictory the next day.

Let me illustrate this point, if I may. Few people would doubt that the general public have a short memory; for example, when the Labour Party were in opposition we never heard them talk about all those years under Thatcher when she was constantly helping the poor by increasing social security benefit. Yet six weeks after Labour came to power Tony Blair said that over the past 20 years social security benefits had been steadily increasing, and this is where it would stop!

When I heard him say that my heart momentarily stopped, I was so taken aback. But no-one said, "Hey, Tony, you never said that when you were in opposition".

Likewise we now have a Conservative party which is are bending over backwards to help the poor and frail. "What about our public services?" "What about the trains?" "What about democracy?" they cry. Well, to start with, it was the Conservatives who made privatisation into a philosophy. Towards the end of their reign they adopted a view which now might be described as Sir Edmund Hilarian - "Why did you privatise this industry?" they were asked. "Because it was there!" And often that was the only reason.

Looking back a little further it was the Conservatives who warned us of the evils of democracy - rule by the mob, as they referred to it. At elections when people say to cynics (such as myself), "Oh, but you must vote, people fought for your right to vote", are they also aware that it was the Labour Party fighting for our right to vote and it was the Conservatives who were desperately trying to prevent us from achieving it?

But now when we hear the Conservatives witter on about democracy we don't even bother to take it with the pinch of salt that such remarks most assuredly deserve, because we are oblivious of the facts - and one blatant fact is that for the greater part of British history the Conservatives have been very much anti-democracy.

Winston Smith, the main character in 1984, spent his working day manipulating facts - or fictions! Today Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Eurasia and Oceania are allies. However, tomorrow Oceania is at war with Eurasia. It has always been at war with Eurasia as indeed its allies, Eastasia, have been!

How easy it would be to cover the trail without the encumbrance of newspapers and books. We simply log on and change the facts. And no-one is the wiser.

So it's understandable that some believe the Labour Party has always favoured a policy of privatisation; that the Conservative Party has always been the champions of the oppressed, and why some people are so gullible that they really believe the Liberal Party when it says it will increase income tax by a penny (if necessary) to save our welfare state (even though they've been saying it since tax was 33 pence in the pound and their measly one penny increase would hardly take it to 34 pence today).

Equally, we might be forgiven for thinking that Britain has always been at war with the Taliban or that Britain had no role to play in reinstating Sadam Hussain in Iraq - but we have newspapers and books to tell us a different story, at the moment, anyway. Beware.

SHAUN VINEY

Nelson Road,

Ilkley.

SIR, - It is with regret that I have to write once more to correct the claims made by Diana Wallis. This time the issue is the hours of work in Britain (February 14).

Britain is a trading nation and as such has to compete with its global competitors, something we still manage to do very successfully despite the current Government's policies. An investigation by the OECD, IOD and IPD into the issue of working hours and their impact reveals the following:

(1) Average hours of work in Britain are less than the USA, Spain, Finland, Portugal, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. They are roughly equal to those worked in Canada.

(2) British workers are found to be largely satisfied with their work, freely work long hours and consider themselves very committed to their job.

(3) People who work the longest hours tend to be paid more (they are largely professionals, managers, administrators and craft workers).

(4) Evidence is clearly that heavily regulated labour markets damage employment and increase long-term unemployment.

(5) The current UK level of unemployment is roughly half that of France and Germany (the arch exponents of the drive to increase labour regulation across Europe).

(6) The number of British employees expressing satisfaction with their jobs is significantly higher than their counterparts in Germany.

It would appear to be no coincidence that the largest economy on earth (the USA) has the lightest labour regulation, the lowest unemployment and the highest wealth. This country is being increasingly burdened by labour regulation.

If we wish our economy to become as sclerotic as the French and German, then regulate more. If we wish to thrive and prosper, let's keep a light touch on regulation and leave employers and employees to do what they are good at and what they enjoy.

Better that than rising long-term unemployment and a stagnating economy. If our economy suffers then we cannot afford to spend more on health care (but that's an issue for another day).

I would respectfully suggest that any future letter you care to publish from "The land of Green Ginger" carries a suitable health warning.

TONY ARMSTRONG

Panorama Drive,

Ilkley.