Letter to the Editor

The 807, Keighley to Hawes and Richmond, is a Settle-Carlisle rail-bus link. In addition this very popular service can be accessed by people living in Keighley and Skipton and from other bus routes. There are many other excellent Dalesbus services which start in Bradford, serving Malham, Ingleton, Wharfedale, Hawes and Nidderdale.

We continue to press for better services and connections so that more people can use Dalesbus. Unfortunately, more bus priority is needed, allowing bus companies to achieve higher productivity and carry more people. They could then afford to improve evening and Sunday services.

Readers might be interested to know that in Oxford, where the city council is very positive about buses, commercial Sunday services start about 7am.

Meantime, people can find out about the Dales bus services by picking up the Metro Dales bus leaflet or visiting our website www.dalesbus.org

Ray Wilkes (Publicity Officer, Dalesbus users group), Tower Road, Shipley. SIR - I agree with J Foster (Letters, April 10). Nothing is done about carers at all. There should be funding by the Primary Care Trust.

Carers save the health authority millions of pounds by doing a service that should be funded just as other health care is funded. People should stand up and be counted on a subject like this.

The money to set up the Trust was colossal in management and bureaucrats so why not a paltry sum to fund the Carers Support Office?

J R Smith (Retired People's Action Group), Flawith Drive, Fagley.

SIR - Now the war against Iraq is drawing to a close we hear increasingly vocal demands from the Bush administration for action to be taken against Syria.

Many of us view with increasing concern the failure of Tony Blair and Jack Straw to disassociate themselves from these imperialist demands. The last country to threaten world peace on such a scale was Nazi Germany.

The aim of the so-called "Coalition" is to place a stooge regime in power in Baghdad, thereby ensuring that the United States and Britain have control over Iraq's oil.

This is nothing new. Britain and other Western countries share an appalling record historically in Iraq and the Middle East, and in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s constantly interfered in the internal affairs in the Middle East and often placed in "power" stooge regimes in Iraq, Syria and Iran.

Indeed one of the reasons behind Saddam's success in Iraq was this imperialism which he claimed to be opposed to.

Sean Connor, Cunliffe Road, Bradford 8.

SIR - Unfortunately the gipsies have again moved on to the field beside where I live. I have just witnessed one of the temporary residents emptying a large bucket from the back of their van which included toilet paper.

Do you wonder these people receive bad press? Is there any need for such disgusting habits in this day and age?

Lynda Colleran, Netherlands Square, Low Moor SIR - Many years ago I used to live at Thackley, and had relatives at Apperley Bridge. I am now researching my family history, and am anxious to trace descendants of a family thought to be closely related,who also lived in the same area.

The family consisted of Henry Webster, a railway platelayer then a stone quarryman labourer, born at Bakewell on April 14, 1850, and his wife Sarah, nee Smith, born at Rothwell in 1860.

They had three children, Robert, born 1884 at Greengates, who was a worsted cloth finisher; Mabel, born at Apperley Bridge on November 7, 1893, and who died there on November 6, 1911; and Sarah, born1900 at Apperley Bridge.

They lived at Greengates from at least 1884 to, probably, 1891, later at what was then known as Low Fold, Apperley Bridge, at least during the period from 1893 to 1911.

It is possible that Robert or Sarah's descendants may live in that area, and if so, I would be delighted to hear from them, as they may be able to solve a long-standing puzzle in my family history. I would refund any expenses, of course.

W A Mayes, 12 Lowdale Avenue, Northstead, Scarborough, North Yorkshire, YO12 6JW.