Letters to the Editor

The girls are getting drunk and prostituting themselves. The boys are getting drunk and sniffing glue. This is when they are not annoying residents by smashing windows and throwing eggs at them. Another favourite pastime is throwing empty bottles and cans, or iron bars and lumps of wood over the wall, endangering life and property, mainly my car and garden. Kicking a football over the wall is a regular event. If it is not raining, football games go on until 11pm. Then there are the car races and hand-brake turns, not forgetting the obligatory ghetto blaster. You think I am exaggerating? I am not. Oh, and I forgot to mention the foul language.

If you don't believe me, ask them or maybe come and see for yourself. Where? That's easy, Gas Street car park any time between 5pm and the early hours of the morning, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

I know they have nowhere constructive to go, but this is not my fault and making the residents' lives a misery is no way to gain sympathy. The ideal solution would be a teen shed, a place of their own. Maybe an improvement in their attitude and behaviour would go a long way to achieving this.

MRS R KEY

Back Mill Hey

SIR - Regarding your front page article last week, "Tax revolt call over council inaction."

As one of the founder members of Silsden Business Watch, I feel that the comments made by my two colleagues are maybe a little hasty. Cllr Emmott is actively trying to find us this money as an initial start.

In your report he clearly states that we need to wait until Chris Slaven comes back from his holidays. We have waited nearly 12 months, so why not wait a few days more and then hopefully we will get some funding, or maybe we should be looking to the police for funding as they don't appear to be giving us the cover we require.

If we "jump up and down" now we may just be overlooked, so remember patience is a virtue.

CHRIS ATKINSON

Oak View, Silsden

SIR - As the oldest Keighley Town Councillor, may I make some comments about the recent letters and allegations about the conduct of the Keighley Town Council.

A few councillors seem to be trying to discredit the Town Council by their conduct and letters to the Keighley News.

Re: The balloon race. Keighley Gala Committee has for years been an asset to Keighley, but does it think it has copyright on balloon races? From memory other balloon races have taken place without complaint.

Re: The query over expenses. Due to the walk-out of our acting Town Clerk the Proper Officer and Finance Officer, assisted by the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and other Councillors, took over the day to day running of the office, deserving praise not criticism. A lot of work was done at the homes of the Proper Officer and Finance Officer out of dedication to the Council, this resulted in inflated phone bills which they reclaimed as legitimate expenses. These expenses were passed by a vote at a full council meeting.

I am very proud to be a member of the Town Council. Having no previous experience of Council protocol I have tended to keep my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut.

But I, and I am sure many other councillors, are getting fed up with these continual petty disruptions to the work of the Council by a few Councillors. We were elected to do a job. Let us get on with it.

I think the electors should know that most councillors are giving many hours of their time (unpaid), getting on with the job, and are now beginning to see some results. Some examples:

Keighley Day. This has taken hundreds of hours to organise by the Services Committee at very little cost. Most of the attractions are volunteers performing for the good of Keighley.

Any money raised will go to the Mayor's Charities.

Our Recreation and Leisure Committee are involved in Keighley in Bloom and have also obtained 2,500 packets of seeds free or at a good discount, and they are now in local schools for the children to plant and grow on then plant out where they wish. Your Mayor, Mayoress, Deputy Mayor and Mayoress have attended many functions and have a diary of future events to attend.

So, electors, please judge your council by the majority of councillors who are working hard to improve Keighley.

CLLR G EARNSHAW

Fell Lane & Westburn

SIR - I am a complete outsider from the Craven District, but please, oh please, would Keighley Town Councillors settle their differences in the meetings designed for that purpose and stop airing their dirty linen in public via the Keighley News!

Please give us all a break and stop wasting valuable time which could be spent on your lovely old town's issues and problems!

J M Tindale

Cowling

SIR - I believe that the peace marchers were armed with good intentions but not the facts.

There have always been peace protesters when there has been a threat to war, but no peace march has ever stopped any dictator from their course of evil.

I believe we must listen to the people who were on the marches because they are good people and they want to protect people from death and injury, and presumably think the best way to do that is to be against the war.

But you have to weigh that against the other voices we have to listen to - like the united voice of the United Nations, who are unanimously of the view that Saddam must be disarmed.

There may be a difference about the timing, but Kofi Annan made it absolutely plain there is unanimity amongst the whole Security Council. The more this moral issue is raised the more I think we should listen to the voices we cannot hear, like those of the one million Iraqis murdered, tortured to death by Saddam Hussein. The leader of the Kurds in north Iraq recently stated that the moral ease is overwhelming because of the murders and ethnic cleansing. I believe Britain has a crucial role to play in disarming Saddam.

This isn't a choice between war and peace. It is a choice between being prepared to take action including diplomatic and, if necessary, military action and not being prepared to take action.

I believe that in order for evil to thrive it is necessary for good men and women to do nothing.

Those whose position is not to take action have to face the facts that their position will leave tens of thousands languishing in jail, four million exiles forced to leave Iraq and millions of children starving.

I don't believe that the public has rejected Labour's message but that it has not yet been fully understood. Arguments that Saddam is innocent until proven guilty don't wash with me. If you read what the UN unanimously agreed, paragraph one makes it clear there is no presumption of innocence.

The UN is not approaching an innocent man and trying to prove guilt, nor is our democratic elected Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has from day one been going through the United Nations to make the case for disarming Saddam.

The image of US president George Bush as a right-wing warmonger has hampered Blair's attempts to persuade the public of the case for war. I believe those on the left who have adopted an anti-American stance have got it wrong

When it comes to a choice between Saddam Hussein and George Bush, I am surprised that on marches they appear to be burning effigies of Bush and not Saddam. That worries me.

I do not want the people of this country, particularly those on the left, to be on the wrong side of this argument. Their antagonism towards Bush has left them defending a situation in which a fascist dictator like Saddam thrives.

I am not meekly following the Prime Minister into war. Let me make it absolutely plain. This isn't just loyalty to Tony Blair

I am absolutely convinced in my own mind that the moral, political and legal case for disarming Saddam Hussein is so overwhelming. If in the course of that Saddam has to go, then I will not shed one tear. I am not particularly keen on fascist regimes that torture and murder people.

No government can fail to confront a threat which they believe puts the lives of the people of their country at risk

PETER CHENEY

Cross Beck Road, Ilkley

SIR - Have you ever seen a democratic leader run around the world trying to start a war like Blair is - ignoring the obvious death and destruction that would follow?

All this is to please an American President who won his leadership medal, virtually on the toss of a coin.

Let me join those whose banners state "Not in my name" while reminding Mr Blair that the power he misguidedly uses is borrowed on trust for five years from the British electorate. After that we can feed him to the dogs. After this we probably will.

FRED HIRLAM

Gloucester Avenue, Silsden

SIR - May I, through your letters page, make a plea for the unfortunate motorists who may have the misfortune of breaking down on our roads.

The other morning, the day I left my mobile phone at home, my car had a complete breakdown on the dual carriageway into Keighley. After 40 minutes and many hundred cars that did not offer to stop and help, I was offered help by a lady and the situation was solved.

Now I know that particularly our lady drivers would not wish to stop at night, but at 8.30am it seems most folk wish to get to work and cannot be bothered to stop. In future I intend to make a special effort if I see people in distress, and ask that your readers do the same.

JOHN L SUNDERLAND

Browcliff, Silsden

SIR - Regarding the closure of Water Lane, I was one of probably a very few pedestrians who regularly used it as a handy short-cut between Bridge Street and Worth Way.

In some towns, given the modicum of imagination and public respect - in Knaresborough, say, or Bradford-on-Avon - this could have made an attractive feature.

However, the sad reality is that for many years the Hattersley Steps end of Water Lane has simply been a foul dump. I for one will walk the longer way via Church Green content in the knowledge that something clean and useful is at last replacing a neglected and nasty corner.

For anybody wishing to savour the squalor of our once-proud past, this can still be found in Beck Street, Water Lane's counterpart on the opposite side of the stream.

IAN DEWHIRST, MBE

Raglan Avenue, Keighley

SIR - I would like to congratulate Mujeeb Rahman for his courage and strength of feeling expressed last week in your newspaper.

I am a teacher in Higher Education, and in my day to day capacity work with people from many different cultural backgrounds. Additionally, as part of my professional life I work in, and have a deep interest in, the areas of international/cross cultural management issues and ethics.

Key research strongly backs up Mr Rahman's assertion that our Anglo/Western culture is predominantly individualist in its orientations.

Other cultures such as his have more collectivist leanings, looking after others as well as oneself and valuing belonging to a community. These orientations and values come from many complex sources, as complex as culture itself. They are at the root of what we do, how we behave, and how we expect others to behave.

Individualism, taken to its ultimate extent, can lead to people caring only about their own gain and their own welfare. Losing any sense of the collective leads people to hold no perception of value outside themselves, to forget about their community, their environment and the future beyond their own.

Around me I see young (and older) people who are living for themselves and for the moment, for the value set of 'what's in it for me'. Mr Rahman quite astutely mentions drug and alcohol abuse as a key symptom of this value set - these are a quick release, an easy source of self indulgence. While I would be the last person to deny young people the essential freedom to experiment with their own bodies and their own minds, which is an essential part of growing up, if they live in a society or culture where no limit is suggested to this freedom in the form of responsibility what can we expect but a hedonistic response?

Our culture has lost the moral and codes sanction that went with mass religious observance. I do not practice a formal religion, however I can see the immense value which religious observance brings to a society. But if something is lost to us, we must acknowledge that loss and build on something else to replace it. This 'something else' could begin with a collective resolution not to be afraid to talk about, agree and assert what is right and wrong, ethical or unethical, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

We have much to learn from other cultures. When different cultures come to live side by side, they naturally and wonderfully begin to assimilate facets of each other.

Mr Rahman is asking only that we all ensure that this assimilation emphasises the good, the right and the responsible.

Awareness that there are alternatives to our cultural practices and that these alternatives may have much to offer in a time of social need is what real integration is all about.

The observation by Mr Rahman that young people are in a nightmare of self division should be a rallying call for all of us. This phenomenon is a symptom of crumbling core values, of having nothing strong enough to hold onto any more to give us direction and help us decide on our own behaviours. It is not a symptom observable only in youth or Muslim youth, it is affecting us all. To secure our society and all our cultural integrity, we need to decide what our core values are going to be to pursue that security and integrity, and most of all have the strength to nurture and protect them.

Siobhan Alderson

Box Tree Grove, Long Lee