Letters to the Editor

SIR - The introduction of congestion charges is a great idea and should improve the quality of life for many Londoners.

Let us hope it is implemented nationwide, especially in car-choked Otley/Ilkley. As a society we should be looking at the whole issue of car ownership and the way it has dictated where and how people live and work, rather than coming up with more and more ingenious ways of maintaining the intolerable levels of car ownership we endure today.

For several generations we have allowed young people to buy cars and build their entire working and social life around it. We have all heard of those who claim they need a car because they cannot get to work using public transport.

Well, excuse me, but had they not owned a car in the first place they would not be working in that particular location. Car ownership has created the phenomenon of job theft on a massive scale, unprecedented in our history.

The shop assistant for example, who lives in Harrogate commutes to Leeds and the shop assistant who lives in Leeds commutes by car to Harrogate. This example of job theft is replicated in every profession and throughout every town and city in the country, leading to the levels of car use we see today.

The car is owned mainly for prestige and convenience, something we are persuaded to buy and so creating a lifetime's dependence upon. The need did not create the car, the car created the need. As little as 50 years ago England was still one of the most beautiful countries on earth.

Road building aside, how many of the ugly housing estates, shopping complexes, and industrial estates which sprawl over huge swathes of England today would ever of been constructed had the car been unavailable to transport people to and from those areas and anywhere else they damn well please.

The better public transport system we hear so much about is no more than a smokescreen promulgated by the car lobby in order to maintain the status quo and avoid actually doing anything to reduce their own ranks. Everyone, it seems, wants a better public transport system but they all want it for someone else, not for themselves.

The only way to reduce the number of cars on our roads is through legislation, to prevent future generations from buying cars in the first place and making the same mistakes as their parents and grandparents in the process.

For those who wish to ignore the devastating effect the car has had on the well being and fabric of society, just look around and ask these questions. Had the car been unavailable would you be living on the housing estate where you live now and would it have even been built in the first place.

Would you be working in the supermarket or factory built on a green field site 20 miles from your home. As a mother, would you be driving your idle, computer addicted, housebound offspring the quarter mile to school every day, and how many of our villages and farm houses would still be inhabited by country people rather than the highly paid, car commuting, city working yuppy brigade who inhabit many of these areas today?

The impact of car ownership on our lives and -landscape cannot be over estimated and it is long overdue for a Government to take on the might of the car lobby.

Do we really want to condemn every future generation to the levels of car tyranny we endure today. God help us if we do.

J Ingle

Bedford Mount,

Tinshill,

Leeds.

Memory stirred

SIR, - With the closure of High Royds Hospital memories of this impressive facility have been stirred.

My connections were through my father who worked there for many years. He was fortunate to get a job during the depression around 1930 and later trained as a nurse. He finished up as an Assistant Chief Male Nurse, the equivalent of Assistant Matron, but often did the Night Superintendent's job as he did not mind the night shift.

We lived near the hospital and I got to know various people through various events. There was the flower show, a great favourite of mine, with a special display put on by the catering staff to show their talents with hams and pigs heads as well as confectionery.

There was a fete, held on the cricket ground, in the early days. I think this was for treats for the patients by a friends group. The hospital had a farm with some fields, now St Mary's School, just behind our house. The farm workers were friendly characters and two of us locals would go to help during the summer holiday harvest.

We had to be careful, lovely heavy horses and old fashioned machinery but the men told us when to move away or when not to come at all because of the dangers. Wonderful days.

The main farm had dairy cattle and pigs and I also remember a foal being born one year. There was a private electric railway which connected to the Ilkley line between Coopers Lane and the Chevin Road. Coal was brought to the siding and then hauled up to the main yard for the boilers.

At the side of the line was the cemetery for those patients with no other place to go to final rest. The way home from school, if walking, would be cut short by walking through the allotments and across to the Cricket Field. This was only done on brighter days.

Only occasionally would there be instruction for Dad to take the long way round because he was not sure about one of the patients. Some faces became familiar and words might be exchanged but you kept walking even if slowly so as not to drop the lollipop bought with the bus fare from the corner shop near the drive gates.

Whilst described originally as 'Menston Asylum' Dad sometimes commented that it was, what we would call 'social exclusion' rather than serious mental problems which had consigned many to that institution in those early days.

People could be put away quite easily if you had some influence and a friendly/co-operative doctor. Not really the good old days was it!

The idea of naming streets after the wards is a good one but perhaps, depending on the layout, Cricketers Way and Farm Approach might be suitable.

Nor should we forget the Nursing Staff, maybe Nurses Approach or similar. There should be connections to the locality, not random names. The accountants have had their way, the High Royds site was a valuable asset compared to Otley even though, logistically, it would have been a better site for the new hospital.

An era has ended. Let's hope the development does not ruin the space between Leeds and Bradford (Guiseley and Menston townships) nor create a massive traffic problem on the A65.

P A Watson

8 Lickless Terrace,

Horsforth.

History repeated

SIR, - I feel I must respond to your correspondents in the Wharfedale Observer dated March 6, 2003, and especially to those who live on or adjacent to the Cambridge housing estate.

I did not read David Blake's article but by the tone of the letters can judge its content. As a child I lived on East View Terrace and at this time there were no houses beyond Albion Street.

The land behind Albion Street was made up of allotments, hen runs and even pigs were kept there. Further beyond this area there were the 'Irish' fields where numerous friends and I played football from dawn until dusk.

The point that I'm trying to make is that the very people who live in the area, the people so highly upset by the new development ideas, are indeed themselves living on an estate developed over the past 40y years on a greenfield site. I am sure at the time there would have been just as many protests regarding that development (maybe your archives from the early sixties show this).

As you may have gathered I am in favour of a major development in Otley but understand the NIMBY syndrome 'not in my back yard'!

But for Otley to survive it must grow. We need the business in our shops, restaurants and local services i.e. plumbers, decorators, gardeners, the list is endless. We need the new bypass, the bypass was always intended to continue from Leeds Road to Pool Road to take the enormous amount of traffic travelling through the town on its way from Harrogate to Skipton.

What's wrong with the people in Otley travelling to Leeds, Bradford and Harrogate to work? Okay so there will be increased traffic, it is a chicken and egg situation. You won't get better transportation until there is a demand. No demand, no transportation!

A comment I read quite some time ago in your columns made by a Leeds councillor was 'Otley is not an island'. This seemed very apt to me. Otley needs to grow, Now!!.

Alan G Sowden

15 Falcon Close,

Otley.

Fair charges

SIR, - I am duty bound to respond to the letter from Malcolm Naylor who as usual misleads the public of Leeds and peddles untruths about the changes to charges for day and home care services.

Yes, the fairer charging proposals have meant some difficult decisions and in an ideal world all the services we provide would be offered free of charge but we don't live in an ideal world and tough choices have to be made. The fact that the Liberal Democrats joined by the Conservatives opposed the proposals is no great shock.

Of course they wanted to make full political capital out of the situation by issuing hysterical press releases claiming that our older people will have to pay huge increases, when in fact many thousands of them will be better off.

Perhaps the most sickening fact is that they have been able to frighten a small number of our older people into believing that they will not be able to afford to pay for vital services. I watched with revulsion during the council meeting as both Councillor Harris and his Conservative counterpart, Councillor Andrew Carter, promised that they would abolish the charges knowing full well that their budget figures would not add up. I listened as Coun Carter, from the party that opposes the winter fuel allowance and once told our older people to keep warm by knitting themselves hats, had suddenly overnight become the champion of our senior citizens.

I have been in politics for a long time and seen many debates in the council chamber but I have never seen older people used so cynically. For those not present in the Civic Hall during the budget, I will repeat what I said. The fairer charging proposals are there to ensure that those who cannot afford to pay will not have to and those who may be able to make a contribution will do so, but we will never remove services from those who cannot afford to pay and, if after the system has been introduced we find that a significant number of people are worse off, then it will be reviewed.

Unlike the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives we do not make promises we cannot keep.

Coun Brian Walker

Leader,

Leeds City Council,

Civic Hall,

Leeds.

Head in sand

SIR - In so far as it is possible to decipher any meaning from Mr Malcolm Naylor's somewhat incoherent letter it appears that he does not want the Government to carry out its first duty of protecting the public against terrorism.

In common with others with a similar incapacity to focus on the dangers facing us all, his alternative strategy seems to be do nothing and hope for the best, at least until 'proof' is presented to the people.

What if this 'proof' arrives in the form of a large mushroom cloud on the horizon? The words 'head' and 'sand' spring to mind.

Bill Williams

Farthings,

Bradford Road,

Otley.

Iraq tyrant

SIR, - To all the 'peace' marchers, rebel MPs etc. if Saddam stays in power I invite them to join me on a visit to Baghdad to protest about the tyrant's policies (killing his own people etc.) and also to ask how long will we be allowed to march? Ten minutes maybe?

Anne Cryer is right to mention Israel - our friend Saddam pays £16,000 to families of suicide bombers. Has Mrs Cryer a view on that? Its safer to catch a bus in Ilkley or Keighley than Tel Aviv, whilst still being critical of course.

F Dickinson

Larkfield Road

Rawdon.

Plea for old picture of excursion

SIR, - Yeadon, albeit being the home of an airport internationally, is never likely to feature dramatically in any history of the railway.

It's station opened on February 9, 1894, and thereafter, during 77 years of its existence, business was confined to irregular light goods traffic and occasional passenger 'specials'. These were these being operated notably at the town's August 'feast' week, when workers from the local textile mills availed themselves of the opportunity to entrain direct to Blackpool or, less frequently, Morecambe, for their one week's annual holiday: such excursions becoming known popularly as 'ghost trains' of which I am keen to obtain a photograph? Can anyone help me?

Gerald Myers

6 Moorway

Tranmere Park

Guiseley.