Letters to the Editor

SIR - I can no longer remain silent about education in Bradford. I retired from teaching nine years ago, after 38 years in Bradford schools.

Despite the very hard work of teachers, pupils and parents, progress has been disappointing.

My view is that Bradford has never been able to address the special needs of its pupils, especially during early years. Consequently pupils have gone through the system without appropriate provision having been made.

Re-organisation to a two-tier system was, according to its supporters, going to improve standards of achievement across Bradford. Five years later excuses are still being made.

Millions of pounds are to be spent on Bradford secondary schools. Before that is spent, has anyone looked at the structure of secondary education?

A move to Sixth-Form colleges would help to improve post-16 provision and be a more economical way of educating sixth-formers. The opportunity to change to this system was missed last time. Don't miss it this time around!

This would not be popular with secondary school heads because of the current age-weighting funding for students.

However, surely we owe it to Bradford children to make decisions based on educational criteria. They deserve a better deal!

Elaine Milner, Lynnwood Gardens, Pudsey.

Low Moor vital

SIR - Andrew Bower is correct to state that the Bradford-Huddersfield train only runs at an hourly interval as opposed to the more frequent bus service, and this would partly account for its poor patronage (T&A, January 13).

Furthermore, an excessive time journey caused mainly by delays at Bradley Junction further reduces the popularity of the service.

However, should the present service be increased to two trains per hour and with future rail enhancements reducing journey times, the popularity of the service should increase.

The re-opening of Low Moor station may have been delayed but plans are at an advanced stage.

Despite Mr Bower's recommendations to the contrary, the re-opening of Low Moor is important strategically as it would allow access to the rail network from the south of Bradford and improve the prospects of reopening the Spen Valley Line which would allow direct Bradford-to-Sheffield services.

Alec Suchi, Secretary, Bradford Rail Users Group, Allerton Road, Bradford.

The absent public

SIR - In response to Messrs Warren (T&A, January 5), Fitzpatrick and Lacey (T&A, January 6) and others, particularly those concerned about the Odeon and the Lake - yes, many councillors do work very hard out of the public eye and, yes, many do strongly oppose both projects.

However, the majority of such work and comment takes place in committees at which the public, although free to attend, are never to be seen.

The problems which concern these correspondents are, largely, not due to the deficiencies of elected members but rather the power of the professional officer body to drive through its own agenda.

Also, the lack of opportunity for councillors to exert a collective pressure, given the way full council is stage-managed (rigidly by party, with speakers confirmed to a handful of senior figures, etc) and the monochrome executive.

I would single out the reluctance of the Labour and Lib-Dem leadership to attend the latter and turn it into a genuine forum as a particular bugbear. Since the Tories only effectively govern with the tacit agreement of Labour, many key decisions are 'made in the shadows' rather than in the open.

Coun James Lewthwaite (BNP, Wyke), City Hall, Bradford.

Gruesome cruelty

SIR - Is it not time that the Home Office was made accountable for failing to regulate animal research in this country?

Animal Aid, in a newly-published report, has documented examples of painful and gruesome animal experiments that were conducted recently in British laboratories. Dogs, cats, mice, rats and even chickens and ferrets have been subjected to a range of torments.

The majority of the three million experiments conducted every year in this country receive no proper advance assessment but are given approval on the nod by one of just 30 woefully under-resourced Home Office inspectors.

The result is the kind of ugly and unwarranted cruelty we have highlighted in our new report.

Nor is it any wonder that only 13 serious animal welfare infringements were dealt with in 2004 - with not a single one leading to a prosecution.

A full report is available at www.animalaid.org.uk or can be ordered from our office at the address below.

Andre Menache MRCVS, Scientific Consultant to Animal Aid, The Old Chapel

Bradford Street, Tonbridge, Kent.

An overdue ban

SIR - How happy I was to read that the docking of dogs tails may be finally banned in Britain (T&A, January 11).

I've heard arguments on both sides for many years, breeders stating that certain dogs would break their own tails through excessive wagging against cupboards etc - utter rubbish, according to vets.

I never forgot reading Black Beauty by Anna Sewell especially the chapter on the puppies that whimpered in pain while their mum licked away the blood and the horses that had their ears pricked up and necks raised for fashion purposes only.

We animal lovers can only dream of the day when this is banned.

Jenny Sampson, Rossmore Drive, Allerton.

A new bottleneck

SIR - I would like to congratulate Bradford Council once again for making a traffic-calming area (Hutton Road/Smiddles Lane) and creating another bottleneck.

Two lanes of traffic are now reduced to one with what can only be described as a chicane which Michael Schumacher would be more at home driving around.

The traffic jam extends to Manchester Road and beyond to Rooley Lane and Morrisons supermarket, not only causing problems with flow of traffic across Manchester Road but also up and down, which brings me to my next point.

Manchester Road used to be a three-lane carriageway so what do we do? We put a bus lane down the middle reducing it to two lanes and then run buses on the carriageway with bus stops effectively reducing the once three-lane carriageway to one lane.

I look forward to sitting in the next traffic jam on our roads in an attempt to improve them (I don't think so!).

B Heaton, Warren Lane, Gilstead.

Ban tobacco sale

SIR - I am getting a bit bored with the debate about smoking. Not because I smoke, far from it, I am a reformed smoker so am probably worse about smoking than people who haven't smoked at all.

My gripe is this. It is legal to buy and consume (smoke) cigarettes from the age of 16, before that age it's illegal (I presume because under that age you don't realise it's bad for you - of course you do).

You don't see a stream of under-16s being handed on-the-spot fines after being stopped in the street for smoking.

So how are the powers-that-be going to stop people who are legally allowed to smoke?

This leads to my second point. If smoking isn't illegal, the government should leave well alone.

The only sure way of stopping people suffering from passive smoke is to do the proper thing and ban the sale of the most addictive drug on the planet completely.

If they aren't going to do that then they should leave well alone!

Dean Loynes, Westgate, Bradford.

It's only a lake!

SIR - Not many correspondents have dived in to support the proposed lake in Bradford city centre but there have been numerous wet, hypothetical comments about its fate.

Were these people thrown in the deep end of a pool when they were young or did they jump in the shallow part and bang their heads thus making them frightened of water?

I couldn't imagine beautiful Lister Park without its stretch of water and that's not stagnant or full of litter.

For goodness sake it's only a lake. They're not trying to create another Venice and if found wanting it could always be filled in and supplanted with stone flags, steel seats and a few deciduous saplings! Ugh!

D Rhodes, Croscombe Walk, Bradford.