Improvements to stations on wrong track

WE are told that many millions are to be spent on improving our railway stations. Why?

When you travel by train all you need is somewhere to buy your ticket, a toilet, perhaps a drink or sandwich, perhaps a newspaper and a seat to sit on. All these facilities already exist in our stations. There are a lot more facilities than in America where, in some places, even a platform doesn’t exist. You jump down on to the line!

I once had to jump off the train with my baby in Philadelphia at a small halt prior to the station where my relatives stood waiting.

We don’t need to spend millions of pounds on stations. We need good, reliable trains, affordable fares, very good line maintenance and a railway that we can be proud of to take us up and down our country. We do not need luxurious stations – just a good service affordable to all.

I would dearly love to travel and visit relatives – at 90 years old it’s important – but I cannot afford to. Keep the stations clean and adequate – forget the millions new ones are expected to cost.

Meddling
Prince

From: Phil Smith, New Walk, Beverley, East Yorkshire.

SO the Prince of Wales – Charles Windsor – has had 36 meetings with Ministers since the last general election (Yorkshire Post, August 13).

Of course, he has no democratic right to do this and should not be interfering in politics at all.

He is supposed to be politically neutral, but it is obvious that he isn’t. Otherwise why would the contents of his letters to Ministers be kept secret? This country should not be run for the benefit of the Windsor family and their cronies. It should be run for the benefit of the rest of us exclusively by the rest of us.

An old trick to
put off callers

From: Mrs Sylvia Dowson, The Avenue, Driffield, East Yorkshire.

HAVING just changed to British Gas because my previous energy supplier had been so rude, I was amused by the article by Andrew Vine (Yorkshire Post, August 13).

Like many, I am fed up with these callers, who advise that it will be just a quick call and then go into huge detail. Fortunately, when asked my age and I reply “84” they often switch off – unless, of course, it is a funeral parlour or life insurance company.

But thank you Andrew Vine. I remember Arthur Askey, can sing his song (or a version). I have kept your article and will have a good laugh many times over. You have made my day, as we say!

Falling prey
to busybodies

From: John Watson, Hutton Hill, Leyburn, North Yorkshire.

I COULDN’T agree more with the letter from Bernard Robinson (Yorkshire Post, August 14), a gamekeeper of long-standing.

He complains about the RSPB and the RSPCA interrupting his daily schedule and telling him how to do his job.

This man has probably more knowledge in his little finger about how the fauna in the countryside live and survive than all the college boys of the aforesaid charities have in the whole of their bodies.

I have experienced over several years occasions where the 
RSPCA especially has poked its nose into situations when it would have been better off staying away. This has caused me to withhold any financial support that may have been forthcoming.I remember a case, a year or two ago, where a cat was thought to be stuck up a tree when the RSPCA called the fire brigade to come and free it.

I can remember writing at the time that if the creature was left alone it would have come down under its own devices.

I deplore the fact that hen harriers and other birds of prey are at the mercy of sharp-shooting gamekeepers.

However, I also deplore the 
fact that some university-educated people think they 
can come into the countryside and teach those who live here “to suck eggs”.

Draconian
government

From: Brian H Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

JOHN Watson is correct in assuming that he will be “classed as a homophobe”, at least by many people who have not yet reached a certain age (Yorkshire Post, August 14).

If there is a boycott of the forthcoming Winter Olympic Games, it will not be “to please a small body of homosexuals” as he asserts.

Rather it will be due to the consciences of huge numbers of right-thinking people who find the new legislation introduced by the Russian government, evil and draconian.

How can homosexuality be “totally against the laws of 
nature” when claims by Conservatives that it can be “cured” have been totally discredited.

Imagine what it must be like for a young person who knows that they have no desire for sexual relations with the opposite sex to be told that the alternative is unnatural and sinful if not criminal.

Surely the most unnatural 
thing for them to do would be 
to allow themselves to be 
coerced into acting against their instincts.

It is unfortunate that 
president Vladimir Putin’s new legislation came too late for an alternative venue to be considered. That would have satisfied everybody except his benighted remnant of the Soviet Union.