Readers' Letters (From Craven Herald)

Charges own goal

11:40am Friday 2nd December 2011 in Letters

Sir – Yorkshire folk are renowned for being careful with money and how they spend it.

So what a pity that this caring for money does not extend to Craven District Council in relation to car parking charges.

Skipton is a quaint Yorkshire market town which needs tourists to survive, so one would think that Craven District Council would set car parking fees at a price which is reasonable and not too expensive as to deter tourists.

My wife and I visit Skipton about four times a year; we arrive around noon and stay for three hours. In the past it has cost me £2.10 (note the 10p – the Council hoping you do not have the correct money so you put extra in). On Wednesday last we arrived at the car park and to our shock the car park charges had increased to £3.10 for three hours.

I refused to pay that amount and opted for two hours, enough time to have lunch and a quick run around before departing the town.

Craven District Council will argue that their charges are reasonable but they are not. In Preston a three-hour parking charge is currently £2.50.

If Skipton wants to continue to encourage tourists into its town and keep businesses alive then it is going to have to review its car park charges otherwise Skipton will have more empty shops and a loss of Council Tax.

And what did we do when we hurriedly left Skipton – drove back towards Preston and stopped off at Boundary Mill where we had free parking and also saved in excess of £100 on the items we bought against high street prices. Oh, and they were quality items.

Mr G Gilbert, Fensway, Hutton, Preston

Move staff cars back

Sir – I noted in last week’s Herald that Craven District Council is going to offer half-hour parking in the Town Hall council parking place.

I travel to town and back by bus most days and see what has happened to Aireview Terrace and the road to the railway station by the parking of office workers at Belle View offices.

Are these people aware we have two emergency services on Broughton Road – ambulance and fire? There are also heavy goods vehicles, plus coaches and Morrisons delivery trucks.

Maybe it would be a good idea to put council workers’ cars back at the Town Hall. How are ambulances and fire engines able to get through? Those vital minutes held up could cost lives.

M Halstead, Broughton Crescent, Skipton

I’d be fair capped

Sir – In reply to the amount of interest sparked by Angie Pedley’s letter about the dialect word “fair capped” meaning pleased/surprised.

I am a creative writing student at the University of East Anglia (a proper Yorkshire lass, however), and my dissertation is based around collecting dialect words for a collection of poems.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any that were commonly used, and perhaps still are, and whether they would write to the paper or me with words, phrases and stories. I think they are integral to identities of smaller communities and ways of life that are now passing.

They link us to the land and our surroundings and I am fascinated by how poetic they are. I want to know what people think, and it would be interesting to see further debates and differences.

Let us all celebrate the beautiful language that has accompanied our everyday lives for centuries.

Sarah Smout, UEA (Cowling, at heart), 81 Waddington Street, Norwich, Norfolk NR2 4JX

Surgery thanks

Sir – Nowadays we mostly seem to hear about complaints about people and services so I thought I would write a letter of thanks to show my appreciation for the care provided for my mother by her GP from Dyneley House Surgery.

She was taken ill at home last Friday morning and too poorly to get to the surgery to attend an emergency appointment.

Even though we had missed the cut-off time for a home visit for later that day, the receptionist was very helpful (as they always have been) and said she would speak to one of the GPs. The GP did indeed carry out a home visit later that day.

Unfortunately my mother’s health worsened over the weekend so I called the out-of-hours emergency number on Sunday evening and a doctor phoned back within the hour and decided to do a home visit to check on her.

Within a few hours of me contacting the out-of-hours service, my mother had been seen by a doctor, a bed found for her at Airedale Hospital and ambulance transport had arrived to take her to the hospital.

I was very much impressed by the care, attention and speedy response by all concerned and would like to say thank you for the excellent medical services we have in our area.

We sometimes don’t appreciate how lucky we are until we need to use the NHS services.

A grateful relative, Name and address supplied

Lacking MP’s letters

Sir – I rather think John Clark (Letters, November 24) may have misconstrued my remarks directed at Julian Smith MP regarding his failure to respond to letters in the Craven Herald letters column. Of course I would fully concur with Mr Clark’s suggestion that Julian Smith is out and about in our constituency asking questions and getting people’s views.

The fact that rarely a week goes by without a photo-op and an accompanying report of his activities is testament to this. Nor do I question the opportunity and accessibility of the various locations he holds a surgery.

No, the central tenet of my observations was that he took full advantage of the letters columns to promote himself when seeking election but since becoming our MP he has ceased this practice.

My request for him to explain to us why his voting record on EU matters in Parliament since his election has consistently been at odds with the personal and party pledges he gave us when seeking our vote has still not been answered David Curry, his predecessor, regularly responded to readers’ comments in the letters column.

Kris Hopkins in Keighley does so and I presume lots of other MPs do too who accept that this is part of the rough and tumble of being an MP.

A J A Smith, Wainmans Close, Cowling

Croft nest egg

Sir – I don’t know whether Sue Woodcock’s saga on the moors is a triumph of willpower over planning or a shrewd example of how by persisting she has created a nice retirement nest egg by selling her house (Woman in croft row to sell home, Craven Herald, November 24).

I hope they take as much part in local affairs as she has done.

I recall the campaign she instigated to stay in a building she’d been told she could not live in. Some weeks ago she flagged up her decision to sell in her newspaper column. No wonder there are people interested in buying. The question is: what will happen next on that site? It would be interesting to read how much profit she reaps.

B Shalg, Silsden Park Caravan Site

Handbag thanks

Sir – It is not often there is any good news about but there was for me when I left a shopping bag in my trolley at Tesco last Thursday.

So I should like to thank the kind person who handed it into the customer services desk. It is wonderful to find there are still so many considerate and kind people about.

Margaret Price, Grassington Road, Skipton

Catch to trout record

Sir – I was appalled to see the photograph of angler Robert Clark proudly showing off his out-of-season brown trout that he caught in the River Aire recently, especially as I was aware of the circumstances of its capture. It was the equivalent of a shooting party showing off a bag of 100 brace of grouse at the beginning of June in the middle of the breeding season.

Fair-minded anglers will be distressed to learn that Mr Clark was fishing for pike with two rods (contrary to Skipton AA rules) loaded with 18lb breaking strain line and a wire trace with three treble hooks holding a mackerel dead bait. Normal Aire pike fishermen use 6 to 8lbs line and a single hook.

The trout was allowed to swallow the mackerel and the hooks were so deep that the fish had to be killed as to return it alive to the water would have condemned it to a slow death due to it not being able to feed properly.

As for it being a specimen it was anything but. At 26 inches in length it should have weighed about 7:8:0 so it was 2 lbs under weight. A glance at the photograph shows it to be very thin and there was evidence that it had recently spawned. Whilst it was a few ounces over the present Skipton AA record brown trout, a 6lb fish was landed last February (again out of season) by a grayling angler and carefully returned to the water and a 6:10:0 fish was landed in season last summer in the nearby Bradford No 1 AA water half a mile upstream.

Now if the trout had been in much better condition, had been caught any time between March 25 and September 30 and on light tackle that gave it a sporting chance– well, that would have indeed been a catch to have been proud of.

John W Preston, Carleton-in-Craven

Follow Ludlow

Sir – Before any serious decisions are taken regarding the future of Skipton, I suggest that the people involved take a look at Ludlow.

Ludlow is a small town in Shropshire, near the Welsh border.

Like Skipton, the early prosperity of the town was based on the sheep trade, it has a castle and a thriving traditional market and there the similarities end.

Ludlow has only one chain store, Tesco, and it took them almost nine years to get permission. They had to build it in the town centre, it also had to blend in with the surrounding area and is even built on the footprint of the medieval parcels of land.

It has now become famous for its local food fairs and the castle is used for many festivals and arts events, bringing people into town from far away.

If Ludlow can succeed from its fairly isolated position in the country, perhaps Skipton, with very close neighbours, could re-invent itself.

Come on planners, it’s time for some lateral thinking. Don’t go modern just because you think that the town should be like any other town in the area, put the existing assets to better use, bring people to Skipton because it’s different, not a clone of Bigtown.

Chris Bryant, Steeton

What are the terms?

Sir – Might I respectfully ask councillors Paul English and Robert Heseltine – and all other councillors who had the wit on Monday, November 14, to see that the Maple Grove Development in High Street has become a monster round the council’s neck – to ask for a clear and unambiguous statement from the chief executive officer of whether a withdrawal is legally possible?

Should a withdrawal be possible they should ask upon what terms and should insist that the answer is not limited by the words “in confidence”.

As democratically-elected councillors they owe it to their voters to make themselves aware of this information to ensure they are acting in the their best interests. If withdrawal is not possible this means that there is a binding agreement in existence, which makes it even more essential that they, together with the general public, are fully aware of the terms of that agreement.

The argument of secrecy on the grounds of commercial sensitivity trotted out up to now can no longer be appropriate in the face of a concluded agreement.

The council is dealing with a publicly-owned asset and the time for secrecy is past.

With regard to the contractual terms, it should be borne in mind that this transaction is part of the Skipton Developments Project, which, at the outset, contained a real benefit for Craven as the successful developer was required to build and finance, at its own expense, replacement offices for the council. For some reason this requirement was dropped and the public is surely entitled to know, and judge for itself, what equivalent benefit has been substituted. I have long had an interest in this matter and have been continually surprised at how little councillors know about the details – even to the extent of not knowing how much land is involved.

It is time for them to remedy this and should councillors English and Heseltine heed my request, I hope they will be supported by the large body of councillors who feel they should be made aware of what is going on. John Weatherill, Flasby

Shelter waste

Sir – I agree wholeheartedly with David Radcliffe (Craven Herald, November 17) on the various points he objectively raises concerning the sheer waste of money and amenity involved in the avoidable moving of the bus shelter near Greenroyd Mill in Sutton.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire Highways seeks to obfuscate the whole matter by his comment that “all the work has been funded by the developer of the mill”.

Firstly does he really mean ALL work? Secondly who is “the developer”? Is it the first one who funded the expensive extension to the school playground and later went into liquidation? Or the second one who was very heavily indeed subsidised by vast sums (expressed in £millions) from various compartments of the public purse.

In the latter case, of course, this excess expenditure will in reality have been paid not by the developer but by all of us as taxpayers – be it via council tax, petrol duty, VAT, beer duty, income tax, or whatever – and remember we all pay at least some of these taxes.

Now that it is too late to turn the clock back, I hope therefore that as David Radcliffe has already requested, we will at least be told just how much has been spent in total (broken down into sections) on this “project”, since the current official attitude seems to be simply to “sweep it all under the carpet” with minimal publicity. But lessons must be learned by all and as Yorkshire folk we must remain absolutely clear that wasted expenditure is still wasted expenditure however those responsible might ‘conveniently’ label, allocate, sub-divide, or otherwise seek to hide or excuse, the facts concerning the same.

Peter Turnbull Bent Lane, Sutton-in-Craven