Letters to the Editor

My family know Pam very well and we have become increasingly distressed by the escalating mental and physical abuse that she has been subjected to by a few residents of the Braithwaite estate.

Pam Sutton is the most caring person that I have met and her two girls, Jilly and Jane, are a credit to her and, because of the circumstances, a testament to her tenacity under adversity.

The cruelty displayed by these people is appalling in itself, but to be inflicted on someone dedicated to giving disabled people a loving home is barbaric. Is this how base sections of society have become?

There will always be cruel and hurtful people, but our society expects protection and support for the victims.

I am astonished that the authorities, that are both empowered and expected to protect people like Pam Sutton have allowed the situation to reach this level.

For context, I live and work in a city where human tragedy is common place and violence is institutionalised but zero tolerance is enforced and the results are manifest.

I have worked in more than twenty countries and witnessed inhumanity on a terrible scale but even with my experiences the situation developing in Braithwaite shocks me. The commonality is the tolerance of inhumanity. The blame extends beyond the local police force being understaffed and the solution requires more than rhetoric from Social Services. Social issues such as this are solved by society, by the elected and the electorate, by those with authority and those that authorise. One person only has one voice.

There are means to give volume and passion to that voice. It should become a chorus and not a fading echo.

I respect the Keighley News for giving the plight of Pam Sutton publicity and it must continue. The issue should remain exactly that and only by relentless journalism will the people of Keighley unite and say "enough is enough".

Dr Christopher Snee

New York

SIR - After reading the article in the Keighley News on Friday March 9 I feel that I have to reply to the remarks made about cancer patients being treated like cattle at Airedale General Hospital.

I don't know who or what the lady was referring to, for I was a cancer patient at the same hospital and could not have had any better care or treatment if I had gone private.

The doctors, sisters and nurses were all excellent and I shall always be grateful for the care and attention I received whilst in their care.

Macmillan nurses do a good job, that I can't deny. They are very good visiting patients during their recovery after leaving hospital, but should not interfere whilst the patient is in the care of the hospital staff. After all, they are the experts.

H HARGRAVE,

Brackenbank, Keighley.

SIR - David McKay's letter of March 16, 2001, drawing attention to standards in public life by members of parliament is important.

In highlighting conduct below that expected of our representatives he asks where our MP Ann Cryer stands on this issue. I think that anyone who has dealt with Mrs Cryer, of whatever political persuasion, knows where she stands. In attending her constituency business she is hard working and straight forward, and she has shown courage in demonstrating an independent approach on matters of principle.

On financial propriety she has been fastidious in complying with regulations.

In casting his vote at the forthcoming general election, whenever it is called, I am sure David McKay and all constituents can be sure that Ann Cryer's integrity is beyond reproach.

JOHN COPE,

Chair, Keighley

Constituency Labour Party.

SIR - I refer to Malcolm Halliday's response to Damian Mills' letter concerning the future of the Banks Lane site of St Mary's First School in Riddlesden.

I wish that Mr Halliday's defence of the Church of England had been more fully balanced and a little less selective.

Early public awareness of the impending 'redundancy' of this site - as well as the St Mary's Road site - depended largely upon 'rumour control'. No sound foundation for substantial representations from interested or affected parties existed until the two sites were offered for sale as suitable for development.

The St Mary's Road site specifically was advertised as requiring to be sold with remarkable speed.

No convincing explanation for this has ever become public, beyond one that reflects adversely upon the motivation of the Church of England and depends, once again, merely upon informed conjecture.

The land of the Banks Lane site is demonstrably unstable, and this is a matter of immediate concern to those whose houses stand along its lower boundary.

In early May 2000, the residents of the upper arm of Westfield Crescent came together to assemble comprehensive evidence supporting their concern, so as to speak with one voice.

This letter is not the place to deploy that body of evidence; suffice it to say that it has been presented to everyone from Lord Healey down through the strata of national, regional and local government, as well as the Diocesan Council, its solicitors and agents.

The case has met with support and has been described as 'cogent, impelling and persuasive'. It was not possible to alert the provisional purchaser till later, owing to the secrecy (why?) that surrounded his identity! The residents group discovered the purchaser before the Bradford Diocesan official responsible for the management of their properties knew it!

The residents group was dismayed when an appeal against a tree preservation order was made by the Bradford Diocesan Council, and not by the property developer involved, to the Keighley Planning Office on the grounds that it stood in the way of site development. Clearly the site sale is dependent upon grant of planning permission and is not yet final. The group's satisfaction in that the application was turned down was tempered by the inescapable conclusion that the Church of England is more concerned to advance its financial manoeuvres than it is to protect the reasonable well-being of more than a score of its Riddlesden residents.

Mr Halliday's third paragraph smacks of 'spin'; in any case, it might be inferred that he regards the advances of the Riddlesden War Memorial Institute as dilatory and, on that basis, unworthy of consideration.

Scarcely a Christian posture! In making his case for the service to be provided for Riddlesden children he is pushing on an open door; no one has suggested otherwise. Is he, therefore, suggesting that the Church's concern for its Riddlesden inhabitants has thereby been exhausted? Probably not, but his assertion that the C of E has provided a 'significant ... cash grant' towards the Primary School is irrelevant and does not answer Mr Mills' claim that a further £50,000 will be the cost of the proposed developer's provision of a church meeting room. Why does it make sense to prefer this heavy capital outlay to an arrangement whereby St Mary's needs could be answered at a price that would be spread and absorbed within its running expenses and that would, simultaneously, support a community asset that is devoid of commercial, profit-making motives?

Does he not think that such an arrangement would also enjoy "... wide support among the congregation"?

DAVID W MIDGLEY,

Westfield Crescent

Riddlesden.

SIR - As part of the national 'Get Angry Campaign' this group is joining with other interested patient groups in demanding proved medication for Multiple Sclerosis sufferers.

Multiple Sclerosis patients are not getting drugs that could help them. For instance, the University of Milan has recently stated that research at 29 hospitals in Europe and Canada has shown the drug Copaxone reduces the brain damage caused by Multiple Sclerosis, but still this government, as did the previous administration, declines to approve this medication.

'Why not?' is the question that sufferers of this illness should ask of all forthcoming Parliamentary candidates.

All answers, or any lack of response from the representatives of the people, will be published on our web site multiplesclerosis@multiplesclerosissupport.freeserve.co.uk.

We ask that all those interested in furthering this action telephone 643393 or e-mail: multiplesclerosissupport.freeserve.co.uk for details.

DAVID SAMUELS,

Chairman, Multiple Sclerosis

Support Group.

SIR - I feel our market is thriving and to pull a healthy building down is stupid.

I cannot think of our market not being in the same place and if moved trade would go down and unhappy people would be behind these shops, just because a supermarket is greedy.

Leave our market where it is and people happy in our market shops and cafes knowing their livelihood is okay. Good luck to them all. I hope you win.

IRENE HOLDEN,

Kennedy House, Keighley.

SIR - On Wednesday MAFF reported that it could not cope with the backlog of carcasses to slaughter in Cumbria, and yesterday the highest number of outbreaks was recorded.

And what is the Government's response? 100 troops for Cumbria and Devon, two weeks too late and a plea from Michael Meacher that Councils in unaffected areas open up footpaths! No wonder we get criticism from the Irish!

This was a crisis as soon as the first outbreak was confirmed, and the best way to deal with a crisis is with extreme measures quickly in unaffected areas to stop the spread. I urge the government to deploy more troops to do the job needed and not just 'co-ordinate' and local councils including our own to not lift restrictions on use of footpaths. No amount of compromise will work. Farming, rural businesses and people in general will not return to normality until it is eliminated.

The government should stop worrying about image and get the job done. Who cares when the election is?

SIMON WINPENNY,

Goose Eye, Oakworth.

SIR - Last week you reported that green top milk is to be prohibited during the foot and mouth epidemic, in case dogs and cats drink it and breathe on farm animals. This is, of course, rubbish.

The real reason is that the civil servants (in all Ministries) who make most Government policy, want to wipe out small businesses in favour of the national and multi-national conglomerates with which they feel more at home.

In 1997 they tried to ban green top milk but, unusually, ministers listened to the people they claimed to be protecting (from drinking natural milk) and green top continued.

Now they are trying again, on the back of the current crisis. Without any parliamentary discussion they have banned it, associated it with foot and mouth and will hope that when the disease has been driven out, so will the small-scale producers of green top milk.

Nick Brown will then have two causes to celebrate - resumption of the live export trade in farm animals (the only object of the current slaughter policy) and nobody allowed to drink milk made in a cow rather than in a factory.

DAVID PEDLEY,

Colne Road, Oldfield.

SIR - The Panorama documentary shown on BBC television on March 17 certainly opened the floodgates revealing Blair's government's neglect of England's largest county, ie Yorkshire.

No department seems to be responsible for the after-effects of Britain's worst floods, so as leader of a democratically elected government Tony Blair must take responsibility.

Even now it's not too late to nudge his paymaster Gordon Brown and tell him to compensate all those people who lost their belongings in the floods.

During the war new military ports were built at Cairnryan and Faslane in the West of Scotland and as a sapper in the Royal Engineers I was involved in knocking in sheet piles with a steam hammer.

These sheet piles acted as retaining walls to form a dock area, which is what Yorkshire needs to control the flow of flood waters. We sappers must have done a good job because Faslane is now used for atomic submarines while Cainryan serves the ferry boat to Ireland.

Britain is not a poor country and many of the Yorkshire flood victims went to war and made it possible to feel pride in the prefix 'Great'.

Our so called leaders in London must never be allowed to forget we are the people, the most important asset this country has.

CHARLES MEACHER,

Rosslyn Grove, Haworth.

SIR - Testimony films is making a follow-up series to Some Liked it Hot, the postwar history of the British on holiday.

A new series - Living in the 1950s and 60s will be going out next winter.

Wanted for the new series - fond and funny memories of our changing lifestyle in the 1950s and 60s.

How the old world of rationing and freezing cold houses was revolutionised by the 'never-had-it-so-good' years and modern homes.

If you went through it all and can remember the 50s and 60s, please write to Nick Maddocks, Testimony Films, 12 Great George Street, Bristol BS1 5RS, mail@testimonyfilms.force9.co.uk.

NICK Maddocks