Letters to the Editor

SIR - Phil Boase advocates the "need to get back to the days of no calculators until children have mastered mathematics by brain". Why do we need to get back to those days? From a purely utilitarian viewpoint, skills in using calculators and computers are a gateway to gainful employment. Real-world problems are far too complicated to work out by hand.

As for keeping children down a year because they are unable to remember multiplication tables by rote, this was just part of the process by which the intellectual and social elite were separated from the others: those like Mr Boase (and myself) to go on to grammar school and the majority to leave school at 15 to work in a factory or other low-paid job.

Well, those factory jobs went during the 1980s and we can no longer afford to have a large section of our workforce unskilled or with only manual skills.

Finally, why is it a stupid idea that losers are upset by losing? Why should we have an education system that creates losers? Surely we should be aiming at an education system that creates successful people - different kinds of success certainly, but not winners and losers.

Alan Barnard, Avondale Crescent, Shipley.

Empty the skips

SIR - I've just seen a picture of Maurice Hyndman (T&A, October 20) recycling officer for Bradford Council holding a bottle and telling us to recycle.

I take my bottles, cans, plastic, etc to the skips in Bingley by the law courts. The other week every bottle skip was full to bursting. They were like this for over a week.

There must have been 1,000 bottles all left by the skips because they were full.

So, Mr Hyndman, get the skips emptied then the public can recycle.

Derek Kendall, Windy Grove, Wilsden.

Not so loyal...

SIR - Ken Patchett suggests (T&A, October 13) that I shouldn't mention that the Tory candidate for Shipley at the next General Election failed to get elected for the Conservatives in Colne Valley in 2001.

While I clearly touched a raw nerve, it is surely important for electors to know some of the histories of the contenders for Parliament.

There was obviously no local Tory willing or able to challenge Chris Leslie for the Shipley constituency, so they had to cast the net further afield.

This particular Tory candidate professed all sorts of undying loyalties to Colne Valley as a candidate there, quickly dropping them like a stone when he upped sticks and bought into Baildon with the hope of wriggling into local affections.

Sadly for him, local people saw through the last Tory and I suspect they will see through this one too.

Coun Vanda Greenwood (Labour, Windhill and Wrose), City Hall, Bradford.

Can this idea

Sir - The proposal by some supermarkets to replace the tin cans they have always used for beans, soups and meats with cardboard cartons will be damaging to the environment, apart from any health considerations.

Such cartons, as with those for milk and juices, are made from long paper fibres from virgin wood pulp and have no recycled content and there is only one mill in the country that recycles the cartons for this high-quality fibre.

Our cartons will have to go into landfill sites as they can't be collected locally for recycling and so the council will have to pick up the disposal bill. They will decompose at depth to produce methane, a serious climate change gas.

Tin cans have been recycled for years and are collected in the district but I suspect that the rise in price for steel and tin plate because of the demand from China is driving supermarket policy and they put short-term profit before any commitment to reducing waste.

I do hope that Bradford customers will leave the cartons on the shelves and only buy properly canned goods.

Keith Thomson, Heights Lane, Bradford.

Blind to the truth

SIR - Your article of October 20 entitled "Youth jobs left vacant in drive to save £1m" shows how blind or at least short-sighted our councillors can be.

The words of our past Chief Constable, Harry Ambler, come to mind most strongly: "The incidence of youth crime is always in inverse ratio to any youth provision in any given area."

The first area to suffer in any financial cuts has always been youth so it's no wonder crime and hooliganism has prospered and no doubt will again. A penny off the youth is a penny on the police.

Albert E North (chairman, Thornton Community Council), Ings Way, Fairweather Green, Bradford 8.

A great welcome

SIR - The Disability Discrimination Act is now in force and I would like to place on record our thanks for the support that Gerry Clifford and his excellent staff gave us by enabling us to visit St Georges Hall for a standing concert (Whitesnake on October 17) for the first time since I became disabled.

We first went to a concert at this beautiful hall in the early 1970s and have been many times since until I lost a leg in 2001. We now feel reassured that we will be able to come to standing events and still see perfectly thanks to the installation of an excellent wheelchair lift and viewing platform at stalls level.

The viewing position was excellent and all the staff were extremely friendly and helpful. We couldn't have asked for a better reception. It made our evening complete.

Right from our initial conversations over the phone Gerry made us feel welcome - not always a regular feeling when you contact small venues or try to access services, I can assure you.

We both look forward to visiting St George's Hall many times more in the knowledge that we'll be made welcome. Perhaps you will draw your readers' attention to these brand new facilities.

Mike Piercy, Fulneck Close, Fixby, Huddersfield.

UN is finished

SIR - The UN says it hasn't enough reserves to increase its forces in Sudan yet despite tens of thousands of the inhabitants killed and over a million displaced, they shun the word genocide. So nothing is done and the situation worsens. One gets the feeling of deja vu (remember Rwanda?).

The UN says America won't get involved in Sudan but have too much influence in Israel while the Secretary General's rhetoric and his optimistic view that the "road map" will eventually succeed is nothing but a ploy to obfuscate the reality of the situation in the Middle East.

Despite the UN's presence the status quo is on a mark-time basis.

Now Kofi Annan spouts that the war in Iraq was illegal and that he privately told world leaders this before the conflict. It was never heard in the public domain.

Methinks the UN is a has-been!

D Rhodes, Croscombe Walk, Bradford.

No change, please

SIR - The right to buy, affordable rents, a good repair service, homes brought up to standard ... those are all the things the tenants voted for and what we expect from Bradford Housing Trust.

So, like Mr Kendall (T&A, October 18) it saddens me to think at this early stage Mr Parmer needs to suggest the right to buy needs to change.

Let us hope affordable rents, a good repair service, homes brought up to standard and local offices to deal with local problems do not go, because the above will affect everyone.

We need Mr Parmer to look at other ways to save money.

J Tyne, Mayfield Rise, Wyke.

Test of opinion?

SIR - "Hundreds of T&A readers have voted . . ." (result of Odeon poll, T&A, October 19).

All six hundred and eighty-nine! Hardly a fair representation of the half-million or so people in the Bradford Metropolitan District, the main circulation area of the T&A, is it?

Kenneth A Webster, Abb Scott Lane, Bradford 6.

l EDITOR'S NOTE: We've never claimed it was a scientific poll, merely a way of helping BCR test public opinion. But as you said in your letter of February 14: "The T&A should run a public vote on the future of the Odeon . . ."