A practical approach to languages

KATE Adie’s complaints (Yorkshire Post, June 25) about our youngsters failing to learn foreign languages are indeed timely when everyone who is interviewed on TV speaks near perfect English.

Part of the problem is that it takes a long time, sometimes a lifetime to master a second language. Politicians know that they have to get a grip on English as it is the lingua franca.

But many languages don’t need that degree of accuracy as working languages.

One can learn enough to impress a foreigner and leave him or her with the impression that one knows a lot more. The point is that whoever listens to you knows that you are a foreigner but does not know exactly how much you know of his language.

If you keep strictly within the parameters of your knowledge, he will never know how much you exactly know and will often give you credit for all the things you don’t know. You may think this is cheating but unfortunately life is too short for perfection. The teachers that I meet are always teaching perfection, but the learner must take shortcuts.

North wind and fairness

From: W Sharp, Claphouse Fold, Haigh, Barnsley.

With reference to your article on wind turbines (Yorkshire Post, June 18) would it be possible to publish details of any similar projects in the home counties, particularly Buckingham, Berkshire and Surrey?

This would show if the distribution of these wind farms is being done fairly, when it comes to the desecration of our beautiful countryside.

From: Mrs PA Brown, Moor Lane, Carnaby, York.

I WAS astonished to see your wind farm chart (Yorkshire Post, June 18)

Where did you get your information from? For example, within six miles of my home there are two turbines with planning consent for Carnaby, a site with 11 turbines at Lisset up and running, also proposed sites at Thornholme and Fraisthorpe, each with nine turbines and a single turbine in Carnaby.

PM’s euro confusion

From: Rodney Atkinson, Meadowfield Road, Stocksfield, Northumberland.

DAVID Cameron seems completely at sea on the euro.

As a young man advising Norman Lamont at the Treasury on “Black Wednesday” in 1992 he fought for the UK to stay in the ERM. Now he says the euro is not for the UK.

He says Greece should be supported inside the euro but refuses to contribute any money. He sees the chaos of the euro and the bankruptcy of the Irish, Portuguese and Greeks and yet seeks to “support the euro”.

He says that “each economy needs its own interest rates” (and this therefore means its own currency) but seeks to keep Ireland, Greece and Portugal inside the euro without their own interest rates and without their own currency.

Just when history is handing a predicted victory to the United Kingdom on the future of Europe, our Prime Minister seems to be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

These costs no ‘accident’

From: Allan Ramsay, Radcliffe Moor Road, Radcliffe.

JACK Straw is asking if there should be tighter controls on personal injury claims, as they bump up the cost of car insurance (Yorkshire Post, June 28).

Why not tighter controls on the root of the problem, that is, the law-breaking, if not inconsiderate drivers who injure people?

Some 10 years ago, the British Medical Journal banned the word accident, as it implies an unpredictable and chance occurrence while in reality collisions are predictable and avoidable.

The use of the word accident basically excuses undisciplined and disrespectful behaviour. It’s totally unacceptable in the workplace and the classroom.

On our roads, there are some 200,000 injuries each year, with close to 3,000 fatal, it should be even more so. The Department for Transport reckons each death costs the nation in excess of £1.5m.

The Government says cutting the pensions of public service workers is an essential step to help reduce the nation’s debt.

Why then is cutting the casualties on our roads not just as essential?

People who sustain injury on our roads not only bump up insurance premiums, they become a burden on the NHS, and can ultimately become a burden on the benefit system.

System failure of party politics

From: Robert Cartlidge, Storth Lane, Wales, Sheffield.

IN the midst of all this jargon of democracy, we can’t sort out our own problems.

All the western countries are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, not to mention the fact that we do not have an elected stable government. It is proven our system is archaic.

It is perfectly obvious that we need a system of complete change; to do away with the constant irascible back-biting individuals performing infamous, acrid duels of policy rhetoric.

With this so-called coalition, we are as divided as ever, yet we strive to impose our fragile system upon others. We can’t be democratic when we do not possess a truly elected government.

Isn’t it time we changed entirely to a non-party system instead of well-heeled bourgeois citizens controlling our destiny?