Letters to the Editor

After returning from a holiday abroad, I found yet another set of totally useless road humps while driving back from the local airport.

I say useless, because the humps are the type which could be straddled by most cars passing over them, their only purpose being to clutter the lanes, and possibly cause unnecessary risks to motorcyclists who dona notice them in the dark -- especially at this time whilst they are completely black, being devoid of the usual arrow markings etc.

And we have the ongoing speed-camera battles, adding to the list of 'traffic calming' measures up and down the land.

Contrast this to my recent holiday destination, where there are no obvious humps, chicanes, road-narrowing barriers or cameras etc.

Coupled with the fact that the locals (especially the taxis -- must be a worldwide prerequisite for the job), drive like lunatics, and then the hoards of-- regularly drunken -- tourists staggering about the place.

Surely a recipe for carnage! But no. No death and destruction on the roads anywhere to be found!

How can this be? Nothing to slow drivers down, telling them how to drive here, negotiate there, funnel them through that way or this!

They are left to their own common sense, that's why!

We don't need the roads cluttering with all manner of devices, suggesting the 'best way' to negotiate a stretch of highway and signs every five yards disfiguring the roadsides and lanes.

It's time all these safety schemes were dumped wholesale, and let's have the roads cleared of the mountain of money-wasting and best-part-useless trash that masquerades as safety measures.

If other countries can get by safely without them so can we!

Oh, and please, no statistics proving me wrong, as we all know what you can show with statistics -- and what they can do with them!

Mike Smith,

Westburn Grove, Keighley

SIR - According to your article last week June Field finds life hard with a bus stop positioned about twenty yards away from her house.

I think this is ridiculous as the new buses used by Keighley & District are so quiet that if you are not paying attention at a bus stop you might miss one.

There must be goodness knows how many hundreds of thousands of people living in the Keighley area and only one complains of the noise of the buses. What does this tell us?

I suggest that the Keighley News concentrates on people with something worthwhile to say.

JAKE REID

North Dean Road, Keighley

SIR - I refer to your report of June 25, on the Cononley Gala.

As Chair of Governors of Cononley school I would like to take issue with the sentence -- 'Sadly, Glenys Lofthouse, Head of Cononley school, declined to be put in the stocks, no matter how good the cause may be'.

There are two issues here.

Firstly, I feel it would have been most inappropriate for the head of the school to have participated in this manner.

Secondly, Glenys Lofthouse willingly gave her Saturday to support the Gala. She spent considerable time prior to the day organising a walking tableau of Cononley children for the procession in which she also took part.

She organised, with the deputy head, the country dancing display by the school, and was later asked to assist with the sports which she gladly did.

I feel her commitment gave quite a lot to the good cause of that day.

MARION RANKIN

Chair of Governors,

Cononley School

SIR - I would like to take issue with Frank Pedley's statement of fact that the 1974 re-organisation 'tore the heart out of the democratic life of the town'.

While undoubtedly the Borough Council's decision not to carry on as a Town Council, in hind-sight did cause severe injury and has left lasting damage. The heartbeat was always there and grew stronger, resulting in the formation of the Keighley Town Council in 2002. The very concept of such a Town Council put Keighley on the BMDC agenda, as it had not been in the intervening years, and things started to get done in Keighley.

The Town Council has to work with the situation as it is now, not as it was 30 years ago. We have had to negotiate for the use of Keighley's regalia, try to assure the future of the Town Hall, Library, Market, leisure facilities, parks etc. These are things that a Town Council, set up in 1974, would still have had in its possession.

KTC is having to build up the links within the town and try to retrieve the sense of community in Keighley and make sure that Keighley's views on larger plans are heard in Bradford and beyond.

Ideas that have originated in KTC have been taken up and acted upon by others. Much background work is being done on projects which will come to fruition in the future. KTC is currently working on the requirements that will give us 'Quality Council Status' which with it will bring the opportunity, and more importantly the money, to again take responsibility for and run services within the town.

Perhaps in time we can take the best of the old and add in better things -- our current Town Cllrs are certainly more representative of the people of the town, and being non-political we can make decisions in the town's best interest rather than having to follow political dogma -- and hopefully the resulting Council will be better than the original.

Having known Cllr Harrison, through his daughter Moira, I would like to think that he and his like would have supported and encouraged my fellow Cllrs and I in our efforts to revive our town.

Cllr Joyce Newton

(Keighley Town Council)

Valley View Close

Bogthorn

SIR - Many years ago the Daily Mirror used the slogan, "Five million readers can't be wrong". My wise father used to shake his head and mutter darkly, "Oh yes they can!".

Likewise it cuts no ice with me that four thousand people voted BNP recently. That doesn't make them right. They are quite properly dismissed as racist.

The BNP claims that it is not racist, but conveniently supplies its own definition of this term which does not preclude an official policy of racial discrimination. Indeed, if the word 'ethnic' is substituted, discrimination becomes a central plank of the BNP's policy.

The BNP also says "A free press is vital to the health and vitality of the country." Well, Mr Andrew, that's what you've got in Keighley. A free press.

You can buy it or not. You can read it or not. You do not, thankfully, have the power to choose the editor.

Sadly Mr Andrew does read well enough to spot the notice at the top of the 'Opinion' column.

It says 'Opinion'. This should be sufficient warning to any reasonably advanced reader of what it's likely to contain.

Every newspaper has an opinion column. It's often called a 'Leader'. Few newspapers are as unbiased or restrained as the Keighley News. If the barbarians take over it will be the first to fall.

George Speller

Hill Top Road

Keighley

SIR - In last week's letter page Peter Drake says he has kept lurchers for lots of generations.

Could I ask Peter Drake how many generations has he exactly lived for? Is there a hidden significance to him being a bricklayer and a tax payer? It seems a bit unfair on his dogs to leave them, if hunting is banned and he leaves the country!

What codswallop the defenders of hunting speak. As the letter last week so rightly pointed out, this is a question of a few people moaning on about themselves.

Times change, society becomes more enlightened and civilised. Just because Mr Drake can't go hunting up on the moors in the middle of the night, his lurchers won't become a redundant breed. Are there no more Irish wolfhounds or Basset hounds?

It is the same old tired excuses we hear about people being unaware about countryways, how there are much more important issues and how there is this silent majority.

Why don't we go the whole hog and bring back dog fighting and bear baiting? In fact, perhaps we could pass a law declaring that time should stand still and that we shouldn't recognise the 21st century. Better still, we could introduce cat hunting, whereby people on motorbikes could chase domestic cats through the streets before they are cornered and ripped to shreds by the bikers' bare hands.

That sounds nice doesn't it? Of course it doesn't, but how is it different from hunting foxes one at a time to keep the population down?

Antony Silson

Skipton Road

Keighley

SIR - It occurred to me recently that many of your readers will have an old mobile phone or printer cartridge tucked away in a drawer at home or at work.

What they may not realise is that their unwanted items can benefit the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.

Old mobiles and empty printer cartridges can be recycled and the proceeds will be used to help fund vital research into the early detection, diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer as well as providing support for sufferers and their families. With 38,000 new cases of lung cancer being diagnosed each year and 80 per cent of those diagnosed not surviving longer than 12 months, lung cancer is the biggest cancer killer in the UK.

But that's not all. Recycling is environmentally friendly too (mobile phones and printer cartridges take hundreds of years to biodegrade). So you can help the Earth and support a very worthwhile cause too!

Please help us continue our vital work with lung cancer sufferers and their families by donating old printer cartridges and mobile phones from home and work.

For details just call 08712 50 50 50, visit our website www.recyclingappeal.com /roycastle, or simply drop your unwanted items in the post to: Roy Castle Recycling Appeal (EL), 31-37 Etna Road, FALKIRK FK2 9EG

Janine Drew

Fundraising Manager

SIR - I have become more and more annoyed and disillusioned when switching on the television to be told "the programme contains strong language."

This is a real "turn off" for me -- and I am sure for many more of the older generation.

However, I think I have heard it all now. I was in the Keighley Shared Church, on Sunday, July 4, for the impressive civic service to mark the election of the new Lord Mayor of Bradford, when not only one but two visiting men of the cloth chose to use "strong language" when addressing the congregation.

This I consider to be highly unacceptable, particularly in the House of God and because the young people of the uniformed organisations were present -- or is it that even the clergy have been brainwashed into thinking that "anything goes" these days?

If so -- how very sad.

MRS I M SUTCLIFFE

Black Hill Lane, Keighley

SIR - The results of a study released by the Department of Transport show that while the overall number of fatalities following the installation of speed cameras were down 40 per cent -- roughly a hundred people a year -- at sections of road and traffic lights covered by cameras, a quarter of cameras had made no difference to accident rates and that of 1,793 sites examined, 384 registered an increase in the number of people killed or seriously injured in the year following the installation of cameras.

West Yorkshire was reported to be near the top of the list of areas with the highest proportion of questionable camera sitings. This is hardly surprising if we consider, for example, the five new speed cameras recently sited on Halifax Road, heading out of Keighley.

The survey also showed that income from camera fines was £68.8 million in 2002-03 and that after the deduction of £54.3 million in operating costs, the Treasury received a windfall of £14.6 million. An earlier report by the Home Office showed 1,411,300 motorists were caught by speed cameras in 2002 - a fivefold increase since the introduction of cameras in 1996.

These are very disturbing figures. While Conservatives welcome the reduction in fatal accidents attributed to well-placed cameras, the alarming increase in deaths and serious injuries at many other sites is a matter of serious public concern.

Earlier this year ministers rejected calls for a review of camera sites. These latest statistics highlight the human cost of such complacency.

Robert Collinson

Conservative Parliamentary

Candidate for Keighley