SIR – It is now official that Woolworths is now to close with the loss of some 30,000 jobs.

This comes in the wake of the Government announcing a new scheme to get more people off the dole and into jobs. If they refuse or don’t get a job in a given time span could lose their Job Seekers’ Allowance and forced to take a job on or go on a training scheme.

I think we have been down this road before of talk of new jobs and better training schemes, which don’t work. This is only going to make a lot of employed people angry and it’s going to be harder for people losing their jobs due to the ‘economic downturn’ as they say in political circles.

Many people will have many happy memories of shopping at Woolies. I for one have a memory of my brother and myself going to Woolies on a Saturday morning to buy fishing tackle or a model from Airfix.

It was just as much an iconic high street shop as the other iconic shop of Busbys and many people remember shopping there.

Bradford is going through a job crisis at present with the development of the Westfield shopping plaza put on hold. You only have to walk a square mile of the city centre to see how many shops are vacant or going in to receivership.

So what are Yorkshire Forward and other bodies doing to put Bradford back on the map of industry and commerce and to encourage new jobs and businesses to set up in the city?

Martin Palliser, Waincliffe House, Laisterdyke