Letters to the Editor

Now let me see: 70 per cent plus of the 66-mile-across LA basin is given to the mighty automobile, in terms of roads, garaging, service stations, used car lots, etc., and they have spent $billions on freeways and traffic management. And still traffic moves more slowly than it did in 1948.

Traffic pollution isn't too bad. A coroner said that an unknown murder victim couldn't have been in LA more than three months because "lung damage was minimal".

What proportion of Salts Mill visitors come on foot/public transport?

Tapp & Toothill closed down because you couldn't park there? On what evidence? How many people drive into Bradford to buy pens, paper and legal forms? How many people passed it at lunchtimes and still didn't go in?

It couldn't be because it was badly situated and you could get most of their stuff cheaper in W H Smith, could it? The causes of the decline of Bradford's city centre are far more complex than just car parking, which you can do more easily in Bradford city centre than in Leeds, by the way.

Mike Healey, Dyehouse Road, Bradford 12

SIR - Re Pauline Wood's letter "Yes magpies DO need to be culled" (T&A, August 19). At least one member of the RSPB has cottoned on that there is a place for culling pest species (I wonder if Pauline's membership to the RSPB will now be revoked?).

Over the years, gamekeepers were given this task, but now the population is encroaching more and more on what used to be agricultural land. Then we have to contend with dead-heads who know nothing about habitat management, so where do we go from here?

Do we let every Tom, Dick and Harry who owns an air rifle have a field day throughout the length and breadth of the country?

Do we advocate the use of poison, which will no doubt kill some of our pets through the food chain? Or do we have a government-sponsored cull using professional shooters?

I agree with Pauline, drastic measures have to be taken on all pest species, NOW!

T Williams-Berry, Bredon Avenue, Wrose.

SIR - I was interested in the report (T&A, August 15) about the Yorkshire couple's experiences in Oxford, where the gentleman, a hairdresser, nearly lost his job because of his Yorkshire accent and line of conversation.

Perhaps two points are relevant here -

1. Customer relations. Especially in the intimacy of hairdressing it behoves the cropper to treat the cropped with due deference. Always appear to agree completely with their most asinine observations, preferably in words of one syllable.

2. With particular reference to Oxford, I am not acquainted with the local population there, so cannot make any pertinent comment. However, the people of Cambridge, where I spent my university years, I invariably found warm-hearted and understanding without any particular airs and graces.

Perhaps the all-enveloping presence of academia has affected the local Oxonians?

Re fox-hunting, which the gentleman felt he ought to cultivate in order to effect some rapport, I would refer him to Oscar Wilde's inimitable "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."

Derek Mozley, Moorhead Terrace, Shipley.

English rights

SIR - Without reservations I support Richard Jowett's call for an English parliament (Letters, August 14). The population of Britain is made up of about 59 million people, over 50 million are English and the Welsh, Scots and Northern Irelanders make up the rest. The rights of majorities form the very basis of our democracy and we English have every right to an English parliament.

Mr Jowett is quite right when he says that "England" does not appear on the new map of Europe. On this map the UK has been divided into 12 regions ie Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the City of London and the rest of England is divided into eight Euro regions.

This "regionalisation" has arrogantly pre-empted a referendum on Britain's future in Europe.

It beggars belief that our armed forces have been engaged in a war to enable Kosovans to achieve independence for the Kosovan nation and our government has taken upon itself to "rob" the British people of "their" nationhood.

Mrs Margaret Harrison, Brownhill Road, Birstall.

SIR - The bus changes have left the residents of Woodside without any transport to the following -

1. Morrisons supermarket on Mayo Avenue

2. Kwiksave on Manchester Road

3. Dixon's Technology College and St Josephs on Manchester Road (for our schoolchildren)

4. The Post Office at Low Moor, the Richard Dunn Sport Centre, and doctors and dentists on Manchester Road.

The only daytime bus service to Woodside with the present changes is the 613 which runs every 30 minutes and travels by Wibsey, Moore Avenue, and Great Horton Road. A normal 15-20 minutes journey by Manchester Road is now 25-30 minutes and cost an extra 20 pence per journey.

Will FirstBus directors please let us know where the improvement is? There are empty buses running to some areas when there are no service to others.

To get to and from work within reasonable time, people are forced to use other modes of transport eg travelling in a group by taxi.

The bus changes have created isolation and segregation for many.

Sybil Bryan, Dunnington Walk, Woodside, Bradford.

SIR - Living in Calverley we have one bus every half-hour to Bradford which finishes at 6pm and doesn't even run on a Sunday. Very inconvenient for people without cars who would like to visit the theatre one evening or relatives on a Sunday.

Things did improve slightly when every alternate bus went via Five Lane Ends, but now even that route has been cancelled.

Now we have the pleasure of a tour through Thorpe Edge and Undercliffe.

I have written to First Bradford but don't hold out much hope of any change. It is supposed to be a public service but the public in Calverley are not getting part of that service.

M Crowcroft, Carr Hill Drive, Calverley.

SIR - I am trying to solve a family mystery. My grandfather, Harold Johnson, lived in Bradford from about 1900-1920. I think he had a sister called Frances who was married to a Bert, and that around 1914 he married Beatrice Gott.

I don't know if he had any family, but he later deserted his wife to go off with my grandmother, who was born Eleanor Joyce. I think she married a man called Parkinson, about 1917. He was killed about six weeks later in World War 1.

She later married James Albert Hird, possibly 1919-20. My grandfather died in 1970 and was buried as James Albert Hird. Any help in solving this mystery would be much appreciated.

Alec Hird, "Percheron", 3A Balne Lane, Wakefield WF2 0DH.