Letters to the Editor

SIR, - I am disappointed to read the considerable amount of negative comment in the Wharfedale Observer regarding the proposed expansion of Leeds-Bradford Airport and I welcome your invitation for further comment.

The whole of the West Yorkshire region, and Leeds in particular because of its development as financial capital of the North, needs an airport of international quality and importance and the most obvious way to achieve this is by development of the existing facility.

The benefits to the region would be innumerable in terms of increased prosperity, increased job opportunities, increased tourism and increased recognition as cities of international importance for Leeds and Bradford.

I recognise that expansion must be accompanied by improved road and other communication facilities but the costs of this would represent money well spent as opposed to the alternative proposal of spending vast sums developing Finningley into what is already doomed to be yet another 'white elephant' if it is allowed to happen.

I would call upon local councillors and businessmen to position themselves firmly behind the new proposals, and more often, before it is too late and this becomes an opportunity lost. I would also welcome a more positive approach towards expansion by the airport's chief executive whose recent comments on the subject are to say somewhat subdued.

Finally, can I point out that I live on Otley Chevin directly beneath the western approach flight path.

Gwyn R Jones

Thornfield,

West Chevin,

Otley.

Protests wasted

SIR, - On the afternoon of November 5, at about 3.15pm, I narrowly avoided a confrontation with a cement lorry. Where was this?, Boroughgate where a fatality occurred recently.

My problem occurred because the lorry I encountered was turning left, illegally at the lights having come up Bridge Street. There is no left turn there and there is a 'Green Man' on the lights for people to cross.

I have seen this happen several times before and have expressed my concern to the police but to no avail. Indeed, I feel I have wasted my time. Next time it may be a waste of life!

Mr P Hatfield

25 Pool Road,

Otley.

Means testing

SIR, - Five years after Leeds City Council abolished means testing for non-residential services for the elderly and disabled people, under pressure from Blair's Tory Government, they are now proposing its reintroduction.

In New Labour speak, like Orwell's 1984, and Alice in Wonderland, nothing is what it seems. Words can mean whatever you want them to mean, and exactly the opposite of what will actually happen in practice.

Care is now replaced by bureaucracy. Age and disability are taxable offences.

For example, 'fairer' charging means making the 'poor subsidise the poorer. (Harold Best MP). It means some people facing increases of 1000 per cent. Means testing is now 'minimum income guarantee' or 'tax credits'. Closing down 3,000 post offices is called 'reinvention'.

The cost of this means testing and collection will be £656,000 per year and require 19 additional staff to operate. This will yield just £2.5 million assuming the same number of paying service users remain, which it won't. For single people alone, there are 14 different rates of basic income support.

The system is so complicated no one will be able to understand the calculations. Imagine the mistakes, the appeals, the stress.

Having suffered the Thatcher period and18 years of Tory rule one now looks back wistfully when faced with Blair's ultra right wing policies. The word 'Tory' no longer is a description of the Conservative Party. They exist in equal numbers in both New Labour and the Conservatives and part of the great deception that is now politics.

Mr M Naylor

21 Grange View,

Otley.

Mother's wishes

SIR, - I would like to thank all the kind people who have sent cards and stopped me to tell me how much they will miss my mother, Mrs Babb, who died in an accident involving a lorry in Boroughgate in Otley.

I would urge all the residents of Weston Estate to try to make it a community again as my mum was trying do through the Forum meetings. She wanted the children to have a place to play safely and the old and the young to look out for each other like they did when she first moved onto the new estate in 1954.

I would also urge the 'powers that be' to complete the bypass, avoiding small communities, as I would not like any other family to have to grieve like us.

Although I do not blame the driver, as it was not his fault, I know for certain that if that lorry had been a car I would still have my mum.

Jacky Francis (nee Babb)

and family.

18 Meagill Rise,

Weston Estate,

Otley.

Good old days!

SIR, - Now that the Tories are at it again on the leadership front I was wondering if a return to Tory Government might change things?

Prior to 1997 we had a sound economy, low interest rates and inflation. Sleaze and spin doctors were unheard of. Horror stories and waiting lists were non existent in the NHS.

Teachers, nurses, no complaints there. Streets were crime free with a regular visible police presence. Our pensioners had never been as well provided for, the sun was out most days and pigs flew by regularly.

Hurry up you Tories, let's return to the good old days, ah the good old days.

F Dickinson

48A Larkfield Road,

Rawdon..

Spin doctors

SIR, - Can anyone remember Herr Doktor Josef Goebbels? He was the minister responsible for propaganda during Hitler's Nazi regime.

His job was to convince a gullible population that there was no real alternative to the existing government. Emphasis was placed on any good news and bad news was completely suppressed (or only released when some other story dominated the headlines).

Anyone who had the temerity to question the situation was totally ridiculed(or even worse).

Propaganda has since become a dirty word, but in this country today, there appears to be no shortage of 'doctors' who are practicing in exactly the same way as Doktor Goebbels.

C M Harper

Banksfield Avenue,

Yeadon.

Bends solutions

SIR, - At the recent inquest held as a result of an accident on September 24, last year which happened on Manor Park bends, the coroner made some commonsense recommendations which frankly should have been implemented years ago.

Reduced speed limit, speed cameras and all trees and shrubs completely removed along the field side so a clear view right across to both ends is provided.

How about a maximum speed sign at all bends giving the safest negotiable speed? I believe they have these in France?

I agree spending £5 million on a bypass is not the answer, but given that commonsense seldom prevails and this is given the go- ahead, why does Manor Park have to be access only, thus giving it private road status?

Drivers should have a choice. For example, we never use the Burley bypass, we always go through the village as we have always done. The Manor Park stretch is and should remain a public road.

Ann Taylor

18 Renton Avenue,

Guiseley.

Cycle thanks

SIR, - I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who kindly sponsored me on my recent 400Km cycle trek across Cuba.

It was challenging as we cycled up to 95Km per day in temperatures that reached 38C. Everyone completed the challenge and as a group we raised more £70,000 for the National Deaf Children's Society. Once again thanks to everyone for their generosity.

D R Shenton

46, Hawkstone Avenue,

Guiseley.