Letters ot the Editor

SIR - Picture a summer day, fresh air, good company, and pleasant surroundings. These are the images which came to mind when I decided to visit Shipley Glen after a gap of approximately 15 years.

The reality was somewhat different. It was a pleasant summer's day and I was in good company but was dismayed to find the state of neglect of the surroundings.

No longer the idyllic playground of rocks and mounds for children to run, jump and generally play safely, but a mass of overgrown vegetation with the rocks virtually hidden.

I appreciate that further over the Glen towards Bingley the land has been looked after and is in a better state but the land near the top of the Glen has been sadly neglected.

I noticed that the Glen Tramway is still running. What impression will tourists get if this is the sight which greets them as they walk towards the moors?

Pictures from my childhood have been replaced by the state of The Glen 2005.

J Ogden, Bridge Street, Horbury, Wakefield.

Robbing the thrifty

SIR - I have read your article about Bradford Council wishing to claw back surplus money from school accounts (T&A, July 7). What is wrong with good management?

Surely if these schools can manage their money and save some for future expenses they should be complimented.

If I have a few pounds left from my pension at the end of the month, should the government be able to take it back to give to someone else? Surely not! Yet this is what our Council is suggesting to these schools.

This is not robbing the rich to give to the poor. It is robbing the careful managers to give to others.

The same idea seems to apply in other walks of life where people who have been thrifty and saved for old age are denied the benefits of those who have spent all their money.

I was taught as a child to cut my coat according to the cloth. If I couldn't afford something I had to do without.

What a difference 50 years has made.

J Drake, Wensley Bank Terrace, Thornton.

Cannon truths

SIR - Mr Kerry is wrong in assuming that the Leeds-Liverpool canal was not useable until 1816. The Leeds to Gargrave and Liverpool to Wigan sections were in use by 1777, at which point the Canal company ran out of money and work ceased until 1790.

The Bradford Canal was opened in 1774, four years before the Low Moor Company was founded. The cannons would therefore probably have travelled from Low Moor on wagons along the trackway to the staithe at the bottom of Leeds Road (there were 25 miles of this trackway powered by stationary steam engines at the height of the company's fortunes) where they were loaded on to the canal boats in the canal basin at Forster Square.

They would then have been taken to Selby to be loaded on to a coaster for shipment to the navy by way of the Aire and Calder Navigation and the River Ouse.

Among other places, Low Moor ordnance was also used at Waterloo and in the Crimea.

G C Hutton, Oakdale Drive, Bradford.

Stop criticising

SIR - With regard to your headline "New head for failing school," (T&A, July 2) when will you stop running down Immanuel Community College?

With the appointment of a new head you could have been more positive. In your penultimate paragraph you refer to the school being one of the fastest improving schools in the country. A more positive headline could have been used.

Our sons have had four years of excellent education with many dedicated and committed teachers.

Last year's Key Stage 3 SATS and GCSE results were a great improvement over previous years. This was down to the hard work of both the existing staff and the pupils.

Immanuel is a good school and I'm sure there are some disruptive pupils. I am equally sure that most schools in Bradford also have a small number of similarly disruptive pupils.

Our sons and their friends do not experience Beruit or Hell when they go to school. They go happily every day and enjoy being there.

Please forget the past and look to the future with one of Bradford's many good schools.

This would make everybody involved with the school a lot more appreciative of the T&A's support within the community.

Clive Grimshaw, Killinghall Drive, Bradford.

l EDITOR'S NOTE: The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and we can only repeat news as it emerges. We did wish the new head well in our leading article and we will report improvements as we are made aware of them.

Crayfish alarm

SIR - Last weekend I was witness to the capture, simply by fishing net, of many crayfish in the River Wharfe at Kilnsey.

These were being caught by children and were, at the end of the fun, returned to the river unharmed.

It wasn't until I arrived home and was able to check in the pages of the T&A that I found they were unfortunately the red-clawed American Signal crayfish.

So it would appear that the problem is much more widely spread than just in the Aire in the Silsden area.

Stuart Williams, Crook Farm, Glen Road, Baildon.

Same old claims

SIR - So Stuart Baker (T&A, July 4) thinks Tony Blair will be able to negotiate a fairer budget. He obviously thinks as Chirac and Schroder do, that we should give up our rebate without a cat in hell's chance of getting them to agree to an overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy.

He bandies the same old unsubstantiated Labour claims that we would lose 3.5 million jobs if we left the European Union. Other economic experts have refuted this argument, which is Blair's main one for our ever-closer integration. If we came out we would save billions of pounds per year, some of which could be used to create more jobs in the UK.

And what's this £28 billion loss in trade? Oh yes the rest of the Union will raise tariffs against us and not expect us to retaliate and lose billions of trade too.

In any event, when we first voted to join, we thought we were joining a free trade area not a federal political one. Blair should advocate a complete unravelling of the EU and the Commission and get the whole of Europe in a new kind of EFTA.

P E Bird, Nab Wood Terrace, Shipley.

Nothing's changed

SIR - On Thursday, July 7, I had the misfortune of having to travel into Bradford city centre twice.

Over the years I have read about the regeneration of Bradford; however I have not yet witnessed any improvements whatsoever.

There are still groups of hooded youths patrolling the streets and market areas who seem intent upon intimidating people, there are still shops which are boarded up with graffiti upon them, and drunks and drug users wandering the streets begging for money for their next fix.

Until these elements of society are tackled by the authorities, namely the police who are a very rare species in Bradford, I don't see what difference all of the Council's efforts and taxpayers' money is going to make.

The old saying seems aptly fitting to Bradford, "you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear".

It is with great sadness that I say this as when I was a small child my grandmother used to take me shopping in Bradford every weekend. Now my grandmother is too afraid to enter the area alone.

Andrew Norton, Clara Drive, Calverley, Leeds.

MRSA concerns

SIR - I read recently a suggestion that all visitors to hospitals should shower first at home to avoid transporting germs or MRSA into the wards.

Surely if things like MRSA can be carried on someone's body so easily, why doesn't the Health Authority ban nurses and doctors from leaving the hospital in their uniform or work clothes?

I'm astounded at the sight of nurses standing at bus stops or walking home in full uniform. Sitting on seats on buses and taxis where people have sat in their dirty or soiled workwear too.

No wonder we have such a huge problem with MRSA. It's not rocket science, is it?

Jenny Sampson, Rossmore Drive, Allerton.

Can you help?

SIR - I have a new great-grandson, Joshua Robert. I remember hearing on The Good Old Days a song Joshua, Joshua.

I wonder if any of the readers could help with the words of the song, or better still, could any one do a tape of it for me?

My grand-daughter would like to play it for our new baby.

Veronica Farnell, Market Street, Thornton.