Letters to the Editor

SIR - In reply to Mr Bairsto, re airport smoking (T&A, December 9), he asks where I suggest people would be able to smoke and who would clean up the obnoxious mess.

I would suggest the present smoking areas could be utilised, with upgraded air extraction units, and the present cleaners could also be employed, with protective equipment if necessary.

The 'obnoxious mess' is no worse than the mess of urine and vomit left in shop doorways in the city centre after the weekend but no-one is calling for a ban on drinking.

Mr Bairsto's final point was that I should do the sensible thing and give up. I did, 18 years ago.

However, I do have a tolerance for others needs, something that seems to be lacking in the discussion re smoking in public places.

Derrick Hargreaves, Middlebrook Crescent, Fairweather Green, Bradford

Get cracking!

SIR - As I said in the letter of mine about the proposed canal (T&A, December 6), "just get on with it."

"We have to remember why the Bradford Canal closed." Mrs J Ashworth (T&A, December 6) does not see how the canal can be supplied with water.

Magellan have succeeded in building award-winning schemes worth millions across Yorkshire. They should know, and it's no skin off your nose, if they don't.

"Most Bradfordians could think of a better way to spend £350 million," says Ernest Spacey (T&A, December 6). It isn't Bradford's money, is it?

Kenneth A Webster thinks the money should go to the Odeon. But it's private money. The developers who trotted up the brass don't agree. It's their money.

If people want to save the Odeon, they need to find the brass.

People - Bradfordians - played bingo while the Odeon rotted. Enough said!

J Mawson, Grove House Crescent, Bradford.

Look at the facts

SIR - I feel Mike Priestley is giving a false picture about Gordon Brown and his so-called failure as Chancellor. I would expect higher standards of reportage from someone who has the privilege and opportunity to inform readers about economics.

If it is opinion then the byline should say so.

The facts are straightforward: the longest period of sustained growth in 200 years, the introduction of Working Families Tax Credits and the National Minimum Wage and record amounts spent on public services.

Mike may rail against the amount of money reaching front line services, but he knows full well that the rest went to redress two decades of deliberate under-investment in salaries and capital funding.

The Conservatives have little to say, beyond the insulting, because they have nothing really to add to the debate. Black Wednesday scuppered them as the party of economic competence.

Ian Parsons, Alexandra Road, Eccleshill

l EDITOR'S NOTE: Mike Priestley's North of Watford column, in which the piece you refer to appears, is one of the T&A's long-standing opinion columns and as such reflects Mike's personal view of the world and not the T&A's.

Tarnished talent

SIR - I would just like to say that it's a poor excuse when one abuses alcohol because of the pressure of being rich and famous.

There are plenty of people in the world who would have given anything to have the kind of lifestyle George Best had and it's hard to hear someone justify him drinking to such excess, even after a kidney transplant that could have been given to someone who wouldn't have abused it.

Yes, he was a great footballer in his time, no-one can take that away from him. However I will only ever remember him for all publicity he caused around himself because of his appalling lifestyle.

Being great and famous doesn't have to have a price tag. There are plenty of other people who are just as great as George Best and they are not all falling around drunk from morning to night.

Pam Cunningham, Sandringham Road, Clayton

Mass deception

SIR - The differences between Ann Cryer and Philip Davies over the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent are predictable, if misguided.

Despite many countries having them, no nuclear weapon has been used since 1945. Why not? It's the principle of 'mutually-assured destruction' - if I launch one at you, you will launch one at me. It's a lose-lose situation.

But this also works if other countries merely believe you have nuclear weapons, even if you don't.

So, by using its politicians' inherent skills of mass deception, the government merely needs to convince rogue states that we really have replaced Trident, and then they wouldn't dream of using their own bombs against us (that assumes no double-bluff and they've actually got some real bombs).

Let's face it, if NASA could use Hollywood techniques to convince the world that it actually put men on the moon in 1969, then just pretending to have a few nuclear bombs should be a doddle!

And then Gordon Brown would have even more of our cash to squander in his personal quest for continued office.

Mmmm - maybe we should buy those real new bombs after all.

Graham Hoyle, Kirkbourne Grove, Baildon, Shipley

Everyone a winner

SIR - Inexplicably two Conservative MPs recently talked out the Bill on providing electricity from micro-generators in our kitchens.

The size of a dishwasher, these units heat the house and the water and provide electricity with any surplus sold to the power companies so that household bills fall by a third.

If they were installed over the next 20 years when boilers need replacing they would make up the gap left when the present nuclear programme stops and there would be no need for a second generation.

The units don't use any more gas than current boilers so in effect the electricity comes free of carbon dioxide and everyone wins.

Keith Thomson, Heights Lane, Bradford

Dastardly crime!

SIR - How heartening it was to read that the newly-introduced Serious Organised Crime and Police Act was having an almost immediate effect.

A 25-year-old woman was convicted under Section 132 of the Act for standing next to the Whitehall Cenotaph and reading aloud the names of British servicemen killed in Iraq.

We should all sleep easier in our beds knowing that the full majesty of the law was brought to bear on this dangerous woman and her dastardly crime.

Peter Wilson, Thornhill Grove, Calverley

Unfair on fares

SIR - At present the senior citizens' travel permit entitles the traveller to concessionary fares on buses and trains within West Yorkshire.

What will happened when free bus travel becomes available?

It will be most unfair if people who find it more convenient to travel by train have to pay the full fare, or buy a National Rail Card just to get a third off for short local journeys.

I use my "bus pass" as often on the train as on the bus, and will not have gained anything if the concession is withdrawn.

Christine M Woodward, Nab Wood Gardens, Shipley.