Letters round-up

“WE’RE pleased and impressed that Miss Anne McIntosh is keeping her involvement with our area by trying to improve the life of rural dwellers with her efforts at the Ripon seminar.

Her transport comments were of interest to us, a voluntary group dedicated to improving public transport to, in and around the North York Moors. We agree that volunteer-run Community Transport schemes are attractive but tricky to establish. This is well illustrated by the fact that while North Yorkshire County Council has been keen to see community transport replace bus services for several years, the number of successful community transport operations in our area can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Community transport has many benefits, but replacing buses will never be one of them. The services aren’t integrated, can’t be used by visitors to the area and are unlikely to find unpaid volunteers queuing up to drive them, especially when those same volunteers are being asked to run local libraries and whatever else our county council stops funding.

Moorsbus carried 1,736 passengers last year and cost the county council £1,316 in concession reimbursement. Nothing else. How much money did those people bring into the shops, cafés and pubs in the area? Yet the county council is threatening to use a loophole to refuse that repayment, denying access to Moorsbuses for elderly and disabled people by doing so and probably even killing off the network. We are running a second bus this year, bringing thousands more pounds into the area, making a lot of people very happy and keeping a thousand or more cars out of the National Park. But will the council allow us to continue? We never managed to discuss this with Miss McIntosh, but have asked our new MP to meet us. Watch this space.

Eden Blyth, Friends of Moorsbus

Inspiring advice

LOCAL Christians and many others have this past week reacted joyfully to Pope Francis’s beautiful encyclical Laudato Si’ (Praise to you, Lord), in which, addressing humanity, he calls upon us, movingly, to exercise a responsible stewardship over a creation in which everything is interdependent.

He deals specifically with some of the ecological challenges threatening our common home, not least with anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions which contribute to climate change. He addresses also the contamination of globally scarce water supplies – the stuff of life, the loss of biodiversity, contamination of air, of the soil and of our oceans.

He castigates the deniers, (to whom he cites the precautionary principle), the pedlars of misinformation, and the apathetic as contributors to an environmental degradation in which the first victims are the poor, selfishly deprived of the wherewithal for life in a culture which purports to help them.

It is too much to hope that our planners in Lancashire and in Ryedale will, indeed are able, to bring this message into their arguments as they weigh up the pros and cons of granting fracking permits. It may however provide a new background of hope to their deliberations as they listen to the voices of those opposed.

David Cragg-James, Stonegrave

Singing his praise

I WOULD like to add a very personal memory to the tributes paid to Dr Raymond Sturdy, organist at St Mary’s Priory, Old Malton, who has died aged 65.

In the autumn of 2010 I contacted Ray out of the blue when our small Garrowby Choir, with a concert looming, was left leaderless. He didn’t know us, we didn’t know him and we had only seven weeks to prepare.

He was a joy to work with and always encouraging, managing our mixed abilities charmingly and brilliantly. In that short time, Ray got us from a wobbly start to a place where we were able to stand proudly on stage and sing happily and confidently. The concert in Bishop Wilton that November, alongside Malton District Male Voice Choir, was a howling success. From that beginning with only eight singers, the Garrowby Singers have grown in confidence, in capability and numbers. Now ably led by two of our original altos, this choir is strongly rooted, singing regularly at weddings and church services as well as giving a variety of concerts. Ray’s invaluable help to us in the early days is just one example of his many acts of generosity in sharing his time and musical talents with others.

Emma Brooksbank, Menethorpe

It’s a turn off

RE: Di Keal’s article on MP’s salary. Problem. This article is the worst of old-fashioned politics which only has the effect of turning people away from politics.

It shows the worst in Di Keal: incorrect “Categorically refused”....many of us heard Kevin Hollinrake say in Malton Church husting that he had to attend one meeting a month. He would be in the constituency anyhow.

“Part-time MP”… just watch Kevin Hollinrake work for all his constituents, not just the Lib Dems (Not even the Libs) as obviously Di Keal suggests she would from the end of her article.

“Salary small change to a man of his means”… I will not lower myself to respond to that save to say the Independent group that looked into MP’s salaries actually lowered the total cost to us taxpayers when the whole package was considered.

Solution. Maybe Di Keal will regret her article. She can show this by her future actions. Not by continuing to write to the Gazette and be a better loser, 23,000 votes.

Benefit. All the constituents can benefit from the actions of our new MP, and his common sense, business experience, local knowledge and simple Yorkshire good sense.

Robert Churton, Skewsby

Many thanks

I WOULD like to thank and congratulate our new MP Kevin Hollinrake for securing a parliamentary debate on shale gas extraction on Monday, June 29.

At that meeting he called for independent monitoring and publicly available analysis, a defined minimum radius between production sites, a clear solution on water recycling and disposal to reduce traffic, additional blight compensation for any person or community directly impacted, a willingness to stop if lives and livelihoods are affected to unacceptable levels, and a clear answer to the question of who cleans up and who pays if the worst happens.

Those of us who watched the debate were astonished to see the minister reply by reading from a text prepared before the meeting. She did not seem to respond to the many sensible points and concerns made by our MP.

Kevin has on many occasions indicated that he will not support fracking in our constituency unless he receives assurances in regard to the above matters. As no such assurances have been given, would he now confirm publicly that he will oppose fracking in his constituency?

Councillor Paul Andrews, Ryedale District Council (Malton ward)