Letters round-up

Current figures show that if MPs don’t uphold these amendments, at least 6,000 people in North Yorkshire alone could be left without vital financial support.

Macmillan is also worried that some MPs might reject the Lord’s amendments without realising that doing so will push some people with cancer over the edge financially. Our survey shows that over half of Conservative MPs (54 per cent) do not know that the Government’s proposed changes will affect people who have had cancer. Just over a third of all MPs (38 per cent) are unaware of this impact.

Macmillan knows the financial burden that many people with cancer face. The charity found that four in five (83 per cent) people with cancer are on average £570 a month worse off as a result of their diagnosis.

This is because of loss of income and extra medical costs, such as transport to hospital appointments, as well as spiralling household bills as cancer treatment causes people to feel the cold more when they’re likely to be spending more time at home.

As the Bill moves to its final stages, we hope MPs in North Yorkshire recognise the impact that any cuts to benefits will have on the physical and mental wellbeing of people in their constituencies with long-term illnesses and uphold the Lord’s amendments. If people in North Yorkshire want to find out more about this campaign, they can visit our website http://bit.ly/1NKw9Wk Dawn Graham, senior Macmillan development manager, North of England, Macmillan Cancer Support Environment under threat from folly IT is Colin Wrigglesworth not the Green Party who should take off his blinkers where energy supply and use is concerned (Gazette & Herald, January 27). If we focus on more efficient use of energy and couple it with a concerted investment in renewable energy, then his “dash for gas”, with its climatic dangers becomes unnecessary.

In 2015 Denmark produced 42 per cent of its electricity from wind turbines alone. For several days in July Denmark was able to meet all its electricity needs and export 40 per cent of generated energy abroad.

In the past year, energy demand in Britain fell by 6.6 per cent, while GDP grew, and this was without a coherent programme of demand management. Denmark has been pursuing the renewable agenda for longer than Britain, but we have far greater renewable resources and under the enlightened programme of Ed Davy and the Coalition Government had been making good progress. It is the sudden reversal of this approach under the disastrous leadership of Amber Rudd and the Conservative Government that threatens to undermine a promising new business and threaten our environment on the altar of short-term expediency.

Mike Gwilliam, Norton

Clear roads must be some mistake

I RECENTLY drove around Norton and actually found a couple of roads that haven’t been dug up, blocked off or had temporary traffic lights.

In fact, one of them was actually easy to drive down.

Is this some sort of oversight?

Dave Beck, Norton

War of words on fracking issue

I’D like to correct some of Bob Gardiner’s assumptions (in his letter January 27) about our visit to Pennsylvania to find out what fracking is like from a resident’s perspective.

Had we found that fracking was discreet, safe and generally welcomed by people who had lived alongside it for a decade, what would I have to gain from talking of poisoned water sources, and communities being ripped apart in bitter quarrels etc.? I have no ideological agenda and no political ambition. I simply want to live in peace in this beautiful part of God’s Own County.

Not only did we meet with many of the same people whom Kevin Hollinrake had met, we were also fortunate in having a personal invitation from the VP of a gas company to visit a production site and talk to the workers about their experiences. We took opportunities to speak to people from all walks of life in cities and in rural towns, in shops, bars and restaurants, and to business owners and landowners.

Mr Gardiner is correct that my quotes about a decimated tourist industry were not from statistics – after all, Pennsylvania is the size of England, and you wouldn’t expect tourism in London to be impacted because there were 10,000 fracking wells across the north of England. They were from local tourist business owners where fracking had taken place – not anti-fracking zealots - who we happened to meet on our travels.

It was Mr Hollinrake – not I - who admitted he is fighting a PR war to bring fracking to Ryedale. It was the people spoken to in Pennsylvania – not I – who said they felt used in this PR war.

Steven White, Great Edstone

Leave EU and cut all of this waste

“THE Waste Makers”, written by Vance Packard, was published in 1960. It contains the passage “the systematic attempt of big business to makes us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals”.

If one replaced “big business” with “The European Union”, the statement would carry manifest meaning. EU Directives, enshrined in UK law requiring “Best Before” or “Use Before” and like derivatives all create unnecessary waste among a population which is becoming unable to look after itself.

Incredibly, the two common preservatives: salt (sodium chloride) which is a natural mineral several million years old) and spirit vinegar (acetic acid, oxydised alcohol) are in this list.

Such diktat directives cause a cascade of non-productive bureaucratic administration which results in economic (financial) waste.

We must rid ourselves of it.

D Loxley, Hartoft

Ditch criticism of drainage in pages

I HAVE read, with interest, the very critical article by your correspondent Dale Lowther (Gazette & Herald, January 14) and am mystified by her comments.

In the Vale of Pickering/Ryedale area, which your paper covers, there is only one Internal Drainage Board, the Vale of Pickering IDB, which maintains about 320 miles of farm ditches (but no rivers which are the responsibility of the EA).

The article is very critical of the Drainage Board and indicates that a ditch, previously maintained by the Drainage Board, has now been abandoned. The article also indicates that there are regulations that do not allow her to carry out essential maintenance on this section of ditch.

Our records show that we do not have any board-maintained ditches, and never have on land owned or farmed by anybody called Lowther – could it be possible that this article refers to another Drainage Board with no connection to this area.

If this is the case, why publicise such a damning article in the Farm and Country section of your paper?

This board takes pride in maintaining the extensive ditch network within the Vale, with a small dedicated workforce and the board are confident that our efforts are appreciated by the local farming community.

At no stage have any designated ditches been “de-mained” as indicated in the article. To the contrary, the Vale of Pickering Board have, in recent years, taken over the responsibility for maintaining a number of ditches that were previously not maintained by the board.

S Edwards, clerk to the Vale of Pickering Internal Drainage Board

Secret backers are the demons

KEVIN Hollinrake MP must fear he is losing in the letters columns in our local newspapers, as his supporters have switched to demonising the environmental charities that oppose fracking.

I looked at the Friends of the Earth website (I’m not a member) and everything there is very open and transparent as to finances and governance.

However, look at the practice of “donations” made by the fracking industry to the funds of Mr Hollinrake’s party. It is public knowledge that these run into millions of pounds, but the details are concealed in the way in which transactions are made – which is anything but open and transparent. Barclays bank, owning 97 per cent of Third Energy, the company planning to frack in Kirby Misperton, is a generous donor.

It is these billionaire donors who are the demons, not the publicly-accountable leaders of charities.

Peter Williams, Malton

The real story on exam result table

WHEN you published this year’s exam league tables last week, there was no explanation as to why Ampleforth College managed to achieve a score of 0 per cent for five or more A* – C.

I am sure that your readers will be relieved to hear that this score places us alongside 233 other independent schools which entered pupils for International GCSEs (IGCSEs) instead of the conventional exams. The IGCSE exams are considered more stretching and a better preparation for A-level study, but the Department of Education has chosen not to recognise them when compiling its tables.

Your readers may be interested to learn that 88 per cent of Ampleforth College’s students achieved 5 or more A* - C GCSEs or equivalent, including IGCSE English and maths. Sixty-three per cent achieved the EBAC, and 96 per cent achieved grades A* - C in English and Maths. We are proud of our students and their results, and happy to sit at the bottom of a league table which has been described as “absurd”.

Dr Hannah Pomroy, director of studies at Ampleforth College