Selfish dog owners a threat to health

These children plan to come down onto the Wilderness site every week to follow their Forest School programme.

They are being put at risk by a few selfish dog owners who allow their dogs to run free and deposit their mess in the wildlife areas.

Have we never heard of the terrible infestation of toxocara canis? Look it up on Google to read what dreadful effects this contamination can bring.

What happens when a dog is let off its leash? Out of sight and, for the selfish few, out of mind. Deposits are left behind, become covered with dead leaves and thus invisible, and along comes a child. The inevitable fouling is not only a serious health risk but creates extra and very unpleasant work for the school staff back at school.

Most dog owners who use the Wilderness are very conscientious, carry a bag for deposits and keep their dogs on leads. What can we do about the selfish few?

How dreadful it would be if the site had to be closed due to the fouling of the few. So many people have worked so hard to make this site a little woodland oasis in the centre of Skipton, for the children of the town. When can we have respect from those few selfish dog owners?

Isabel Warren, Moorland Terrace, Skipton.

On behalf of the Friends of the Wilderness

No excuse for fouling

Sir – I would like to reinforce the letter sent by Isabel Warren regarding the Wilderness and the dog fouling issue.

Our children are four years old and are taught as part of Forest School activities to report any dog fouling they see (as well as any other litter). How very sad that we have to add this to the early years curriculum!

Each time, as part of our risk assessment, our leader checks out the area before the children visit and we will now need to send a “clearer” each time before we visit. It is hard enough to get volunteers to support us without this task being involved too.

As a dog owner myself, I do recognise the unpleasant task, but it is one of the responsibilities of being a dog owner that we take on when we take the dog on. There are dog fouling bins in position, so there really is no excuse. The signs in the Wilderness clearly state the fines that will be imposed should an owner not clear up after their dog.

The Friends of the Wilderness have done a great job in bringing this area back to life for residents and visitors to enjoy. Perhaps if the few dog owners who are allowing their dogs to foul the area realise how important it is to so many others they might take a little more care when walking their dogs.

Angela Harrison, Headteacher, Brougham Street Nursery School, Skipton

Clamping justified

Sir – In reply to your article on February 9, headed “Boycott the businesses which clamp our cars”, as an elected official of Skipton I would have thought that Coun Polly English would have been all for saving businesses in Skipton instead of boycotting them.

I have a question for the councillor. Did she find out why people are resorting to clampers before attacking these businesses? No, she did not.

I have worked at the Cross Keys for four years and in that time we have been sworn at, spat at and generally abused when we have politely asked people to park elsewhere because we have a function coming in and need our parking spaces.

And, just to finish off, if I lose my job because of Councillor Polly English telling everyone to boycott us, will she then pay my wages as jobs are scarce in this town?

Sandra Guy, Chef, Cross Keys, Skipton

Disgust at boycott call

Sir – I am writing, with absolute disgust, regarding the article regarding the boycott of the Cross Keys public house in Skipton.

As I am sure you are aware, the public house trade is already a dying trade, one where more pubs are closing week on week. For a councillor to ask for local residents to boycott one for an issue such as clamping, which they have every right to do, is a complete disgrace.

The landlord and landlady that run the Keys also run the private car park. This car park is there for the use of the public who use the establishment. For people to avoid paying and displaying in our town’s car parks for the sake of £1.70 to go shopping, why do they think they have the right to avoid paying town charges and park on private land for free?

If I park on double yellow lines I get fined, what is different? How would the councillor like it if I boycotted paying my council tax as I don’t agree that bins are only emptied every other week?

Skipton is a town that warmly invites people to visit and use facilities, not ask to boycott them. I am in complete support of the Cross Keys and that if people take advantage then they should face the consequence. If people use the pub they won’t get clamped, simple.

Matt Oxley, Skipton

Pubs need support

Sir – Regarding last week’s story and Coun Polly English, I am totally against the methods of these clampers, but for one of Craven’s elected councillors to put in print that the public should boycott companies or premises that employ these mercenaries is totally out of order.

The place where Coun Polly English should be speaking is in council chambers where some electors put her.

Pubs, clubs and shops need help, not bad press like that.

WR Burnett, North Parade, Skipton

Traffic observations

Sir – In response to Patrick Martin’s letter (Craven Herald, February 9), I do wish you, Mr Editor, had published his address because if it was off Gargrave Road I would have known whether he was the son of Mr Martin, the local North Yorkshire County Council traffic supremo, as he is sticking up for NYCC, which very few people do. Full marks to him.

Before I retired I used to deliver to North Yorkshire County Council anywhere in their area and some years ago NYCC decided, with the roads becoming more and more congested and where there was definite rush-hour traffic, the work wouldn’t start until after 9am. Good idea?

I walk, yes walk, every day from Hall Croft to my yard down Engine Shed Lane. The route takes me onto the towpath and I come off at Magnet onto Carleton New Road over the railway bridge onto Engine Shed Lane.

The other morning, 8.30am-ish, I came past Magnet. Chaos. Traffic was backed over the railway bridge on Carleton Road, and looking over the railway bridge down Broughton Road there was standing traffic as far as the eye could see.

The problem – NYCC were constructing the new pedestrian crossing. So much for a 9am start. I believe they had packed up and gone by 9.45am. So traffic back to normal.

I believe most of the cars parked on Broughton Road are from the railway station, being that the car park has got the contractors’ cabins etc. on it. There probably are one or two from the mill.

Mr Martin goes on to state there hasn’t been a serious accident. Does there have to be before action is taken?

Looking down off Carleton New Road onto the cars parked, you get a good view of the problem, so does he think it’s okay for large HGVs to have to drive up onto the pavement going out of town before the railway bridge because they have met another HGV/bus coming into town?

He goes on to say NYCC always put the public’s interest first, with the development of Belle Vue Mills, when they shut Brewery Lane 12 months before it needed to be on the instructions of the developers. If you wanted to get to Morrisons etc, pedestrian-wise, you had to cross the canal bridge, diversion signs sent you to Belmont Bridge or the other way to Magnet, and when Councillor Polly English raised it at the council meeting, the NYCC traffic representative, not Mr Martin, stood up and said they had made a mistake. I don’t think that was in the public’s interest.

I must admit that Brewery Lane is wonderful now.

David Scholey, Hall Croft, Skipton

Not our bosses

Sir – So “People power has persuaded county council bosses to hold another consultation” (last week’s Craven Herald). Funny. I always thought that our elected representatives and the paid employees of our councils were our public servants, not our bosses.

Beware of the power of the media. If you continue to refer to these folk as our bosses, they and we may come to believe it.

Fortunately, in almost all my dealings with Craven, North Yorkshire and the national park I’ve had high and helpful standards of service and I rather want to keep it that way. Don’t we all?

John Asher, Stainforth

Answers please

Sir – Can any of the 120 councillors, whether town, district or county, who are so keen to tell us at election time how wonderful they are, tell us the rationale behind the decision to create a skating rink on Skipton High Street last Thursday morning? Now don't be shy!

Brian Stoner, Regent Road, Skipton

Turbine queries

Sir – Regarding wind turbines, can someone answer me two simple questions about these unreliable edifices?

Firstly, if no subsidies were available, would any have ever been built?

Secondly, and more importantly, when the wind doesn’t blow and they don’t generate power or the wind is too strong and they have to be stopped, why do the Government give our money to the turbine companies for not producing electricity?

Surely it should be the other way round. If certain weather conditions exist that stop the operation of the turbines, this must surely be seen as a fault with the whole concept making them not fit for purpose.

The companies should be legally bound to reimburse the taxpayer for failing to provide electricity. If I buy a car and for three days a week it doesn’t start, I don’t give cash to the motor company for those days it is not working, do I? Same principle!

Paul Morley, Long Preston

Climate change rip-off

Sir – I received a letter through my door headed “Reducing your carbon emissions and fuel bills” from Barnoldswick Town Council, informing us about climate change and basically how we can help to stop it.

In two words, we can’t. The climate has changed several times since the planet was formed, going through warm and cool periods and even more than one ice age, we are told by scientists, who know more about it than we ordinary people do and more than government ministers profess to know.

So why do these people continually bang on about it?

There is one reason and one reason only, money. All the cliches they dream up are purposely designed to get more and more money from us.

We are charged a, what they call, green tax on our use of gas and electricity, supposedly to help save the planet. Rubbish. It is one giant rip-off to screw money from us.

Carbon footprint, affordable green renewable energy, micro-renewables and talk about looking at alternative low- carbon ways of generating energy, we all know what alternatives they are talking about, don’t we?

It means blighting the land with less than useless wind turbines that have to be slowed down if the winds are too strong or they burst into flames and stop altogether when there’s no wind. They are stationary more often than not from what I’ve seen of them.

Council tax payers’ money can be spent on better things like weekly bin collections, street cleaning, clearing ice and snow from footpaths when need arises, real police on the beat preventing vandalism. Why not harness the power of the sea, wave power? The tide comes in twice a day without fail and we are surrounded by it completely, but fail to use it.

Also at the same time, instead of spending millions of pounds on useless turbines, why not spend the money on getting the coal mines open that were closed down by Margaret Thatcher’s American Hatchet man to teach Scargill and the unions a lesson?

Now we have to import billions of tons of it. It would create thousands of much- needed jobs for office clerks and the young men of this country currently on benefits – and if they won’t do the job, simple, stop their benefits. I’m sure there are plenty of young strong Polish and Eastern European workers out there who would jump at the opportunity to earn a good wage.

Peter Gardiner Ethel Street, Barnoldswick

Wages puzzle

Sir – Is anyone able to offer me a sane, rational, sensible, logical, acceptable explanation of why we as a nation see fit to pay the person who manages our national football team some 30 times that which we pay the person who manages our entire nation – ie the Prime Minister?

Yours in puzzlement, Bryn Glover, Cracoe