Bradford & District | Archive | 2005 | February | 18
From the Telegraph & Argus, first published Friday 18th Feb 2005.
SIR - Sadly, I was one of the many who attended the funeral of George McConville, formerly of Silsden.
The man, who I knew for many years, was blessed with a lack of pretension or self-importance. He had the spirit of those who did not need to prove anything.
His kindness and moral generosity I found uplifting in today's squalid world of denigration, spin and hypocrisy.
In the hours of conversation we had together, never once did I hear malicious or unjustified criticism. He was one of the very few people of principled honesty that I had met, thus becoming an inspiration to me, and will be deeply missed.
It is a pity that the world is not populated by more people of George McConville's calibre, instead of the prissy and pretentious that soil and pollute God's earth.
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED
SIR - May I respond to a letter `Helping Sooty Appeal' from The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) seeking volunteers to help with fundraising.
By way of interest, we have our own Humpty Dumpty collection boxes throughout the area, which contribute towards supporting and developing our work on behalf of 697 local registered blind and partially sighted people.
Our work includes an extensive range of services explained on our website accessible to visually impaired people. Our website address is: www.keighleyblind.org
As a local independent society and not a branch of the RNIB we will have served the community of Keighley for 100 years in the year 2007. So please remember and look out, there's a Humpty about.
FRANK WELLS
Chairman
Keighley & District
Association For The Blind
SIR - Our Social Bar Section, which hold their meetings each fortnight in the hospital at Airedale, are finding it difficult to form next year's programme.
They need entertainers or an entertainer to give an hour of their time from 10.30am to 11.30am to patients on Saturday mornings.
If anyone can help us to keep our programme filled, will they please telephone Mr Charles Clarkson on 652061.
MARGARET MOORHOUSE
Chairman, Friends of
Airedale
SIR - I voted for the BNP in the local election of 2004 to give them an opportunity to prove that they could make a difference.
However, when I contacted Cllr Clarke she did absolutely nothing to assist me and failed to keep appointments, letting down the local community. Cllr Kirby issued to me an apology on her behalf, claiming that "mistakes were made" and "things could have been handled better."
This is the poor level of service we are receiving from the BNP and I shall certainly not support them again.
JOAN SMITH
Harewood Rise,
Keighley
SIR - I was surprised with your editorial comment about my "tantrum", because the Inspector had changed the Council's policy to Silsden in the draft Unitary Development Plan. This is entirely untrue.
I have no axe to grind and in reality, personally, was truly delighted that the Council has a route to retain the green fields around Silsden. If you were more familiar with the Plan, you would know that the Council is doing as the Inspector suggests, wherever possible.
Planning law is not easy for laymen to understand, which is evident from your editorial. As a layman, I can only take the best advice from Planning Counsel that any recommendation put forward on the modified UDP must be logical, "sound" and "safe".
The sites concerned have never been part of the `greenbelt' and legal precedent means that they cannot now be included, despite the Inspector's recommendation. The Council cannot legally change their status, unless there are "exceptional circumstances" -- which the Inspector hasn't given us.
Our advice is strongly that to put these sites into the green belt would be challengeable by developers and possibly endanger the new Plan in its entirety.
The Council has therefore classed these sites as "safeguarded" to ensure that they will be protected from development for the lifespan of the current plan.
When it comes to finally presenting the new Plan for Council approval, we cannot simply "pic 'n' mix". It will be a case of passing the Plan or refusing it. If the plan is refused, it will mean that the existing 1998 UDP will remain, including the Silsden development sites. The positive gains around Silsden, at Leeming Field at Oxenhope and Manor Garth at Addingham, will be lost.
Having got so far, I'm sure you will agree that it would be regrettable for this to happen.
Councillor Anne
Hawkesworth,
Environment Portfolio
Holder, Bradford
Council.
SIR - I feel that I must write to you about my disgust at the Tory party's latest advertising campaign, ie the billboard hoarding on the forecourt of my local Jet Service Station which states "Well I mean - How hard is it to keep a hospital clean?
Well may I put it to them that if the Tory party really believe it is so easy to keep a large busy hospital clean, why don't they offer to prove it by giving their services for a week or two, and by doing so prove to themselves just how difficult it is.
How often have any of them ever cleared up things like chewing gum, vomit and other unpleasant germ laden rubbish?
I am sure that all domestic staff at any hospital are deeply insulted by the innuendos in this poster.
S A PICKLES
Halifax Road, Keighley
SIR - The following was published in Private Eye of February 4.
"Hats off to Labour MP Ann Cryer for her consistency on identity cards.
On November 28 she signed an early-day motion submitted by Austin Mitchell MP calling on the government to `reconsider its proposal for national identity cards' and regretting `the Government's efforts to stampede support by using fears of terrorism and asylum seekers.'
Astonishingly, however, by the very next day, November 29, Ann had changed her mind. She solemnly told the Commons that once illegal immigrants had arrived `ID cards will control what they are able to do and enable them to be arrested and deported.' Of course they will, Ann."
What is Mrs Cryer's policy on identity cards?
JOHN HARMAN
Epworth Place
Oakworth
SIR - I attended the meeting with ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett at Keighley College. I would describe the event as a convivial talk with a rather short period for questions.
On the same day the Times carried a group letter from names including military "top brass" Field Marshal Sir John Stanier, ex Chief of the General Staff, on the contentious issue of house arrest and the rule of law.
The letter acknowledged the difficulty any government faces in striking the balance between individual freedom and the good of society as a whole.
However, they noted that even during the protracted years of the Cold War and possibility of millions dying in a nuclear exchange, it did not lead to successive British governments suspending the rule of law. They further argue that during the long Northern Ireland Campaign we learnt the folly of internment. Their conclusion was that "the suspension of the rule of law is counter-productive. It promotes a sense of injustice amongst minority groups, it damages our democracy and it does nothing to make us safe".
The Law Lords have recently ruled on the issue of detention without trial, and the new Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, in what I believe to be a more measured way than his predecessor, is reviewing the whole process. I do not want to see Britain's derogation from the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. We should take great care before we surrender rights which have been hard won over centuries, in detaining people on suspicion of being a threat to the state, but without the presentation in open court of evidence for such an accusation.
So it was in this wider context of concern about civil liberties that I asked the ex-Home Secretary about his opinion on phone interceptions, an issue upon which the public surprisingly appear to be either very compliant or very lacking in knowledge.
The technology now exists for random sampling of communications for key word identity, since all calls carry the caller's number identity.
I probably did not really expect much of an answer, and Mr Blunkett disarmingly pretended to have forgotten my question, then repeated his parliamentary remarks. Doubtless the debate will continue.
Melvyn Harrison,
Kilnsey Fold,
Silsden
SIR - As an Eastwood School teacher since 1985, I am writing in response to your article on the front page of the Keighley News of 4 February, "Failing junior school is now being showered with praise".
We may be "an improving school" from the viewpoint of HMI inspectors and Education Bradford, but the article wholly fails to recognise the achievements and wholehearted efforts of the former head teacher, Lynda Godden, who resigned at the end of January due to ill health.
Lynda has worked tirelessly for the Eastwood community for over 20 years. We have all valued her honesty, hard work and conviction that children, not paper and statistics, matter.
She has inspired many of us and we will miss her, on a personal level and in her contribution to education and the local community.
We wish her a speedy recovery and hope that the many people she has worked with will continue to believe that children's needs, achievements and creativity should be at the very centre of a school's ethos and cannot be measured by league tables.
Judith Hargreaves
Eastwood Junior School
Victoria Avenue, Keighley
Sir - I was extremely concerned to see the national Tory party is claiming, in an article on its website, that "the simple fact is that there is absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever that passive smoking has ever killed anyone".
It is difficult to imagine a more irresponsible claim being made by any politician, particularly given the effects of passive smoking on children. The scientific evidence is well established, even the United States Surgeon General, Vice Admiral Richard H. Carmona, a combat-decorated Vietnam veteran appointed by President Bush, hardly a politically correct liberal, says that environmental tobacco smoke (passive smoking) kills three thousand people in the US every year.
For the Tories to promote the view that passive smoking never killed anyone is extremely worrying and most reprehensible. I believe that every effort should be made to persuade Michael Howard to withdraw this article and to do so publicly. Until then it begs the question, has past funding from tobacco companies influenced the Tory party health policy?
Baroness Delyth
Morgan
House of Lords
SIR - I write in respect of HMS Protector, a former net layer first commissioned in 1938 which saw wartime service in Norway and the Eastern Mediterranean in 1941, when she was damaged by an aerial torpedo. After extensive repairs she returned home and joined the home fleet, where she was used as a training ship.
In 1954 she underwent a conversion into an ice patrol ship that included a hangar for two helicopters. In 1955, on completion of this work, she was charged with her first trip south to undertake the duties of the Falkland Island and its Dependencies protection vessel. The other duties for the Protector were to assist the British Antarctic Survey parties in their scientific work.
A further thirteen years of trips to the Antarctic and the Falklands transpired before she was eventually de-commissioned in 1968. I served aboard her during the 1965-66 commission.
During this thirteen year period literally hundreds of sailors and officers served aboard her.
Our Association is continually seeking ex-ship's company members from any commission during her thirty long and glorious years service, hence my reason for writing this letter to ask if any of your readers either served aboard her or know of anyone who did to contact us either through our website at www.hmsprotector.org or our treasurer, Bill Bartlett on 01202 480767.
We are cordially inviting any past crew members to join us and to come and enjoy a reunion with us of which there are three during the course of a year, our next one being on the weekend of April 1 to April 4 at the County Hotel, Llandudno.
Peter Latham,
Mayfield Houses,
off Mount Sion Road,
Radcliffe, Manchester.
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