THIS year the inaugural Dickens festival will take place in Malton.

Visitors from all over the country are expected to attend, including Professor Michael Slater, the foremost Dickensian scholar, Bafta award-winning actress Miriam Margoyles and Lucinda Hawksley the great, great great granddaughter of Charles Dickens.

One of their first ports of call will be Charles Smithson’s office in Chancery Lane where Dickens got his inspiration for Scrooge’s Counting House.

This week I accompanied a photographer from a national newspaper to Chancery Lane. Both of us were utterly appalled at the filth strewn from end to end. Every gutter was bunged up with cigarette ends and debris. Chewing gum, dirt of every description covered the flagstones. We both wanted to get out of Chancery Lane as quickly as possible. It was not a pleasant experience.

Volunteers from the Dickens Gift to Yorkshire charity will be working tirelessly to reinvigorate the town this Christmas with choirs and prizes, treasure hunts and walks, Jazz bands and Dickensian films. Shopkeepers will be dressing their windows, there will be festive food and gingerbread competitions. All this effort, to make Malton a truly magical place for families at Christmas spoiled by muck in every alley way.

There is no excuse. Ryedale District Council, which has squandered hundreds of thousands of pounds of ratepayers money on its bunker mentality over Wentworth Street, has a statutory duty to clean up the town it has done its damnedest to destroy.

If councillors can find the cash to throw at lawyers they can find the cash for pressure washers and brushes. If not, Malton will be left in no doubt what its district council really thinks about it.

Selina Scott, North Yorkshire

 

Needy families in danger from cut

SINCE the Chancellor is in a state of transition and appears determined to cut tax credits, this still leaves recipients in a limbo.

If tax credits are cut this will affect 6,000 children and their parents in Ryedale alone, whether the parents are working or not.

It is estimated 34 per cent of people working in Ryedale earn less than the living wage (that is more than a third of the people in work). It means that local families already on a low income (many in work) will be further penalised, will find it impossible to make ends meet. Is it right for them to carry this disproportionate tax burden?

Jill Knight, Hovingham

 

Kindness helping to save children

ON Saturday, October 24, the Malton & Norton Group of Save the Children held a very successful coffee morning at the home of Joan and Alan Suggett, which raised a total of £612.

This will be used in the ever-increasing task of helping to improve the lives of children in this country and around the world.

The committee is very grateful to Joan and Alan for opening their home for this event and they, in turn, would like to thank everyone who gave their support by buying Save the Children Christmas cards, making scones, etc. donating raffle prizes and coming along on the day to make this such a happy and successful occasion.

It is only with the unfailing help of our supporters that the group can continue their work on behalf of the children.

Anne Bell, chairman of the Malton and Norton group of Save the Children

 

Question on land must be answered

I HAVE just one question for the leader at Ryedale District Council: and it is just this - does she really believe that in today’s world any developers will pay more than today’s value for any land?

And what is she going to do when they only pay the going rate and refuse to pay any more, because that is what could very easily happen.

Ann Hopkinson, Malton Town Council

 

Fracking promise is not kept now

WHEN Kevin Hollinrake returned from Pennsylvania, he attempted to reassure his constituents that fracking would be safe in the UK as long as there were strong laws and regulations in place.

However, he seems unconcerned about the latest government U-turn which will allow fracking in SSSIs, groundwater Source Protection Zones (GPZs) – which protect our drinking water aquifers – and under National Parks and AONBs.

Laws banning this type of activity were promised by Amber Rudd in the House of Commons in January.

The fact that these promises have now been broken don’t seem to worry Mr Hollinrake.

Apparently he has received “reassurances” from ministers that legislation will “shortly” be introduced to prevent fracking wells on the surface of National Parks and AONBs (but tellingly not SSSIs and GPZs), and that most concerns people have over fracking “will not be realised”.

This highlights the fact that fracking is currently not banned in any protected area, whatever Mr Hollinrake may claim. Also, why should people believe any more government reassurances on fracking legislation, given that they have already broken clear promises made earlier in the year to protect these critical areas? And can Mr Hollinrake clarify which of his constituents’ concerns over fracking will be realised?

Adela Pickles, Frack Free Ryedale