Floodgates open to more bad behaviour

The landlord of the Commercial on Water Street had applied to extend his opening hours plus music to 1am at weekends and holidays plus drinking up time. Following the 2003 Licensing Act, responsibility for licensing pubs and clubs has now been passed to a panel of councillors and this meeting was the first of many.

The Commercial is in a highly residential area and several residents voiced their concerns at the meeting, including me. We were told that over 40 letters of objection had been received with no letters of support.

Inspector Franks gave a clear, balanced account of the difficulties of policing Skipton at weekends with limited resources but unfortunately did not object to the application.

I made it clear that I was very disappointed that the police had decided to sit on the fence.

In the Craven Herald (published on the morning of the hearing!) Chief Inspector Chelton stated: "We have an uphill battle on our hands. Anti- social behaviour is high on my agenda....since March there have been 167 incidents of violent crime including 91 assaults, 32 of threatening behaviour, 22 common assaults and four assaults on police officers".

These are frightening statistics and I am amazed that the Chief Inspector did not object to the Commercial's application.

Eventually in true British fashion, the panel of councillors decided that a compromise was in order, ignoring all the letters of objection and the voices of the local residents (many of whom have been encouraged to live in the town centre). They announced that the Commercial would be allowed to serve drinks and play music until 12.30am and clients would be able to continue drinking until 1am. I fail to see how this decision can possibly benefit Skipton and I believe that the panel missed a golden opportunity to make a real stand against alcohol abuse and anti social-behaviour (both of which cost the NHS - ie the public - a fortune).

The floodgates will now open as other pubs apply for extended hours licences. Do we really want Skipton town centre to resemble the Wild West?

Residents can help to preserve the character of our unique, historic town by writing to the Licensing Officer, Craven District Council, Granville Street, stating their objections to licence extension applications and by attending the meetings.

Lady Anne Clifford must be turning in her grave!

Malcolm Keighley,

Raikes Road, Skipton.

SIR - Anecdotal evidence of cars allegedly exceeding the 30 mph limit in the area is not sufficient reason for introducing a plethora of speeding tables or ramps or both devices, or for closing off the access to the main road above Greenacres.

Of more importance, the Greenacres circular bus service is a vital transport link for many old and frail people who should not be subjected to the pain of a rough ride over the humps or speed tables throughout the journey.

There is a small argument for a one way limit to the east of Princess Drive to deter all day parking of cars from the town.

An extension of the single yellow line road markings would have an equal effect on that section of the road without a one way limit.

D Boden,

Regent Crescent, Skipton.

SIR - I was interested to read of Betty Holgate's experience (Craven Herald Letters July 8) of being counselled by members of the fire service and paramedics after she had been stopped by the police.

They told her she had been driving at 36mph in a 30mph area when she was pulled into the Falcon Hotel as part of a police exercise.

There is no convenient hotel car park on the 30mph stretch of Station Road in Giggleswick, but I will gladly offer the limited facilities of our drive and lawn as a venue for counselling the many motorists who scorn to do a mere 36mph past our house: 40-50 mph, I reckon, seems to be the preferred rate along here.

George H. Kinder,

Station Road, Giggleswick.

SIR - I read with interest the article by Jack Lockwood in your issue of Victory regarding the RAF bomber that crashed very close to the Winifred's Cafe south of Bradley Lane End in April 1944.

Like many other schoolboys of that time we had a fascination for aircraft and the desire to leave behind the boredom of school in exchange for a more adventurous life in the RAF.

So, as soon as we heard that an aircraft had crashed so near to Skipton, we cycled rapidly to the site and saw the horrific scene that Mr. Lockwood described in his article.

The point of this letter is to confirm that the aircraft was in fact a Vickers Wellington and not a Halifax, a point that Mr Lockwood was not sure about. So I hope that this information helps to clarify the aircraft type.

The wreckage was scattered over a wide area and somehow a small piece of that fated Wellington aircraft found its way into my saddle bag and today it still hangs in my garage.

Perhaps this is the only memorial to those five young Polish airman who died so near to us and yet so far away from their homeland.

David Harrison,

Long Meadow, Skipton.

SIR - Keith Briggs and I are agreed on at least one thing: the damage to footpaths caused by the walkers who use them, especially in the Three Peaks area, is terrible ("Low Usage" Craven Herald Letters, July 8).

Everybody who visits the Dales National Park leaves an imprint. Let us be thankful, though, that the thousands of walkers who collectively have eroded the footpaths did not choose instead to exercise their legal right to take motor vehicles along the green lanes.

The challenge we face in handing the National Park on to the next generation is to make our own impact on it as small as possible, and it's surely obvious that we make a disproportionately large impact if we insist on taking our motor vehicles deep into the countryside.

The impact will be much smaller if we leave our vehicles where the tarmac stops and take to the countryside on our feet, our push-bikes, our horses, our wheelchairs.

Mr Briggs sneers at my qualification to speak about the Dales landscape.

I have lived in the Pennines for 34 years and scarcely a week has gone by when I haven't walked or cycled in the Dales.

During that 34 years I, along with many other visitors and residents, have witnessed the steady degradation by motor vehicles of the some of the finest features of landscape - especially those tracks that traverse open moorland and which, contrary to Mr Briggs' assertion, have commonly never, ever been surfaced.

But even if I had known the Dales for 34 minutes, rather than 34 years, I would have had ample time to realise that recreational motor vehicles, far from the tarmac, are inappropriate in a National Park.

Mr Briggs is right to say that relatively little money has been spent on bringing these tracks to the standard necessary for the passage of motor vehicles. But few would support the spending of huge amounts of public money to facilitate the very activity that the park authority, together with the public at large, wishes to prohibit.

Repairing the footpath up Ingleborough is one thing: turning Mastiles Lane into a route suitable for motor vehicles is quite another.

The Craven area committee of North Yorkshire County Council took the brave step, a year or so ago, to impose experimental traffic regulation orders on four of the most damaged green lanes.

If Mr Briggs has walked, or cycled them recently, he will have seen that although the rutting caused by recreational vehicles has not yet healed, the lanes are looking much greener, and he will have experienced the peace and tranquillity that has returned to them.

The experiment will soon be up for review. It is to be hoped that the Craven area committee will make the orders permanent.

Finally, Mr Briggs is worried about the future of trials competition riding.

When green lanes are eventually closed to motor vehicles, motorcycle clubs will have to make adjustments to traditional routes. They will, for example, need to use tarmacadamed roads to move from section to section.

But since trials are conducted chiefly on private land, not on public rights of way, organisers need have no fears about the closure of green lanes.

Michael Bartholomew

Chairman,

Yorkshire Dales Green Lanes Alliance

Civic Centre, Cross Green,

Otley.

SIR - Keith Briggs asserts that Michael Bartholomew has no right to have an opinion about the use of green lanes by trial bikes and recreational 4x4s because Mr Bartholomew is an off-cumden (Craven Herald Letters, July 8).

What then does Mr Briggs say to the farmers, landowners, business people and other residents of the Dales, as well as visitors whose patronage supports the Dales economy, whose communications about the damage, pollution and nuisance caused by off-roaders constitute the commonest form of complaint to the Park Authority?

Mr Briggs suggests that any encounter with a group of off-roaders is over in about a minute as this is how long you hear the noise of their engines as they approach and pass you by.

He is missing the point - it is not just the noise and pollution, but the degradation to the environment caused by these vehicles which has such a lasting impact.

Did Mr Briggs not read Mr Bartholomew's words carefully enough or was he guilty of "selective" reading?

As Mr Bartholomew pointed out, English Nature has learned that Blubberhouses Moor will take at least five years to recover from degradation caused by off-roaders. That is some minute.

Mr Briggs also wants to try enjoying a walk in the muddy, water-filled ruts left by the wheels of off-roaders - again the encounter is not over in a minute.

Mr Briggs's letter is a classic example of the mindset of the off-roading fraternity who are not interested in the environment, but only in their machines.

Mark Willingham,

Riverside Walk, Airton.

SIR - I am writing to say how splendid the roadside grass verges are. They are a credit to the workmen contracted by the council.

Credit should also go to the men who pick up the littler dropped by thoughtless people.

I am looking forward to the willow herb flowering later this month. There is quite a large colony near Elslack with about eight smaller colonies between Skipton and Barnoldswick.

A Shorrock,

Park Wood Drive, Skipton

SIR - I was surprised that your excellent supplement commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War Two made no reference to a significant and unique contribution to the war effort, and indeed to the entire post-war world, made in the Craven district.

Barnoldswick may not have been the birthplace of the jet engine (Frank Whittle did his early experiments in Rugby and Lutterworth), but it was the cradle and nursery which developed that lusty infant to fighting pitch, first by the Rover company and, from 1943, by Rolls-Royce.

All the jet engines used in action by the Allied forces in the war owe their origin to Barlick, and the majority of them were built there.

They helped reduce the menace of the flying bomb in 1944, and assisted in the final assault on Germany in 1945 by interdicting much of the north European transportation system.

Furthermore, designs emanating from Barnoldswick went on to be built under licence all over the world, and gave early experience of the new technology to the aviation industries of both the USA and USSR.

The jet engine (or aircraft gas turbine engine as it should more correctly be called) has enabled the development of air travel and cheap package holidays to a scale undreamed of before the war. Today only the smallest aircraft are powered by old-fashioned reciprocating engines.

The aerial photograph of Bankfield Shed on page 10 of your supplement was taken after the war, as the test-beds on the extreme left of the picture are all fitted with silencers, a luxury omitted in wartime, as many old Barnoldswick residents will certainly remember.

In those days we ran the engines round the clock, and at weekends as well, which must have been irritating, to say the least. All the more praiseworthy then, that the secret should have been kept so well.

Bob Hack

(A worker at Bankfield 1944-48)

Springfield Crescent,

High Bentham.

SIR - It was splendid to see so many pensioners at the Victory commemoration in Skipton on Sunday.

It reminded me of the treatment of pensioners by the present and earlier governments.

In Gordon Brown's Budget we were promised 'free' bus travel. Current concessions in North Yorkshire are considerably less than in neighbouring West Yorkshire. Here we are offered either a bus or rail pass (not both as in West Yorkshire). Even then the reduced fare is higher than that in our neighbours.

The buses entering our dangerous and derelict bus station are with notable exceptions old and dirty. Not least the buses from Leeds. Contrast this with the situation in Harrogate - new buses, clean and tidy bus station.

How do Craven District and North Yorkshire see "free" travel next year? Should there not be cheap 'off peak' taxi travel for those living in remote rural locations? Yes, I note the Little Red Bus service. Not everyone however has access or has the use of a car, old person or young.

Brian Ormondroyd,

Brindley Court, Skipton.

SIR - May I use the Craven Herald to send my thanks to the Cross Hills lady who offered my friend and I a lift home, last Thursday, on the day of the London bombs, after we had spent nine hours travelling up north, from central London to Keighley, only to find that last bus from Keighley to Colne had gone.

We were absolutely exhausted and prepared to get a taxi after our ordeal, but the lady said her husband was meeting her at Keighley (from Leeds) as she lived in Cross Hills (in fact she had been in a meeting and knew nothing of the London bombing).

In the event her husband kindly offered to take us all the way to Colne. All that day we had been fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time - unlike so many unfortunate people.

I didn't get their names only that they lived in Cross Hills. Thank you! Your kindness will always be remembered.

Mrs P Tilley,

Colne.