YP Letters: Who will fall on sword for floods fiasco?

I HAVE been waiting patiently to see who else is going to resign over the recent floods. I doubt very much whether anything could have been done to solve the flooding but a lot could have been done to mitigate it in terms of flood defences, dredging, land management.

Come on, one of you has to take the can. Be it a Minister, Secretary of State or committee chairman. Good grief, even the Chancellor is in the firing line. Who is responsible? As usual in politics, it is pass the parcel. Well the music has stopped so who takes the blame?

From: D Wood. Howden.

LOOKING at the tragically collapsed Tadcaster bridge and at least one other in West Yorkshire, it comes obvious that a large part of the blame for these collapses lies in the fact that these ancient structures have been undermined by the burying of pipes and cables in their structures.

In both these cases, the bridges have only collapsed on the side where the structure has been weakened by digging into the bridge to bury these pipes and cables. As a frequent visitor to Tadcaster due to its excellent fishing and Sam Smith’s superb beer, I have often stood on the bridge and watched the fish below.

I hope the bridge will be re-constructed in its original form, but, to ensure its structural integrity, that when the rebuilding is done the pipes and cables are removed from the structure and laid in a suitable separate conduit. The bridge should then last for another 300 years even with the advent of heavy flooding.

Fracking folly with cheap oil

From: Ted Naisbitt, Kings Meadows, Sowerby, Thirsk.

AM I missing something here? I read in your newspaper and others about the plummeting oil prices (down to less than $30 as I write). Apparently the motivation of the Saudi oil producers is to flood the oil market, forcing down prices to break the US fracking industry’s competitiveness (as well as the Russians and Iranian oil producers for good measure). All commentators seem to think that these low oil prices are here to stay for some time.

Surely the companies queueing up to start drilling their fracking wells in this country will have based their well viability costings on out-of-date, much higher oil and gas prices? So, when they get their planning permissions, which the Government seems willing to override local councils and public opinion to achieve, the fracking companies will find that it is not financially viable to even start drilling.

Hence this Government, having based its energy strategy on getting cheaper oil products from fracking, will find itself facing a crisis in oil and gas supplies. There will then be no alternative but to buy on the open world market – as they do now. So we will be no further forward!? Do they have a Plan B?

Labour toffs not like us

From: John Parker, Station Road, Baildon, Shipley.

I READ in the press recently about the Labour peer Lord Watt who sounded off about the “London-centric hard left who sit around their million pound mansions eating their croissants”, and later a report that a disproportionate number of Labour members who have joined since the 2015 election are “high status city dwellers pursuing well paid jobs with high levels of disposable income”.

Add to that, one of the cornerstones of New Old Labour, Diane Abbott, sends her child to a private school in contrast to David Cameron who is sending his daughter to a state school. Are these Labour toffs secretly pleased that the Conservatives are in government so they do not have to pay a mansion tax? Do they swan off to their holiday homes for a bit of dolce vita in Tuscany after each demonstration? It seems that hard working citizens are best represented by the Conservative party now, while Corbyn’s New Old Labour have forgotten all about their heartlands.

Time to run our own rail

From: Brian Ormondroyd, Birchwood Court, Ilkley.

THE new operator of Yorkshire’s local rail network has ordered 280 new carriages in a £490m deal with Spanish manufacturer CAF (The Yorkshire Post, January 23). Britain gave the world the railways. Now we are giving much needed employment to Spain. Half a billion pounds to add to our overseas debt.

A majority support the renationalisation of Britain’s railways. lt has been estimated that a billion pounds annually is going to foreign, often state- owned rail companies, in various subsidies. Bring back British Rail and manufacturing. You know it makes sense.

Little hope and no glory

From: Peter Hyde, Kendale View, Driffield.

YOUR correspondent Gordon Bray (The Yorkshire Post, January 23) suggests Land of Hope and Glory as a new anthem. Why? I ask myself. While we are in the EU, and are being flooded with migrants, losing jobs in mining and steel industries, being flooded due to lack of funds and being deprived of funds for the NHS, I would suggest that there is little “hope” and little “glory”.