Newby Wiske

THE long running fiasco surrounding the planning application by PGL for Newby Wiske Hall continues.

I am amazed that PGL are still pursuing this application. If it is approved, the parish council and residents of Newby Wiske will continually raise objections about noise and any new structures erected by PGL.

Hambleton District Council will continually need to mediate between PGL and the village, which will be unsatisfactory for all concerned.

In the event of the PGL application being turned down, the parish council’s proposal for several dwellings in the grounds and hall itself, may result in a better price for the hall and grounds, and a satisfactory outcome for the village.

Miles Garnett, South Otterington

Heart unit

I REFER to your article Heart attack unit earns recognition (D&S Times, Dec 28) about the Friarage Hospital. I have been attending the cardiology unit for most of 2018, and the award is well deserved.

I cannot praise Mr Turley and his staff highly enough, for the way they have looked after me, on every visit. They treat everyone with respect, and are so caring and friendly. Most people attend the Cardiology unit because they have experienced a life-changing event in their health and the care and attention you receive in the unit is above and beyond.

Any questions are always answered in great detail in language everyone can understand.

So well done to everyone as you all deserve this award.

Ian Rudd, Thirsk

Towards Brexit

I ENJOYED reading Janet Hall’s Brexit motoring analogy (D&S Times letters Dec 28).

It reminded me that our car has been in the EU garage for so long that the battery is flat and we have forgotten how to drive it. The garage is a big modern, expensive building full of people but sadly no mechanic’s able to fix it.

Our shiny EU car is comfortable and warm but the driver has been on the vin rouge, he is getting on a bit and his vision isn’t what it was 40 years ago.

His driving is taking us towards cliff edges, to places we don’t want to go and worse still, he is driving on the wrong side of the road. It is an accident waiting to happen.

Time to jump start the old car, take the driver’s seat, re-set the sat nav and head for the open road. Avoid the fog, the potholes and irresponsible people waving flags and accelerate down the highway to success.

Happy motoring and a happy New Year.

James Ackrill, Picton

Police survey

CLEVELAND’S Police and Crime Commissioner Barry Coppinger is asking us to complete a survey to tell him if we support an increase to the police precept, added annually to our council tax bills.

To fill in the survey is a pointless exercise, because I can prophesy now that, like his Labour colleagues up and down the country, Barry will, in the end, increase the police precept to the maximum amount allowed by the government.

God help us if the People’s Party were left, unfettered, to raise council taxes to whatever levels it chose!

Steve Kay, Redcar & Cleveland councillor

Confidence

IN her vote of confidence Theresa May won by 200 votes to 117. By an odd coincidence if that vote had matched the referendum vote of June 23, 2016 the vote would have been 118 against Mrs May, 111 in favour with 88 abstentions to represent the 12.2 million people, 27.4% of registered voters who didn't vote at all in the referendum.

Can we know please which way Rishi Sunak voted in the vote of confidence? Was he one of the 200? Or was he one of the 117?

Nigel F Boddy, Darlington

Not cobbles

"COBBLED street under wild moors", so ran the title of the weekend walk (D&S Times, Dec 21). I have a family connection to this particular street in Haworth as my paternal grandfather was one of the road workers who laid the original setts.

He did not lay "cobbles". These are formed by natural water erosion which round the stones into very large pebbles. What he put in place all those years ago were setts. These are stones cut into deep, rectangular blocks of the same size and laid like a parquet floor.

Sometimes tar was used between the joints, but not always.

If you look carefully at the photo of the steep street in the centre of Haworth you will see how the surface differs from say the market square in Richmond which is laid with cobbles. Sets make for a very flat, even surface whereas cobbles are just the opposite.

Being a road worker or "pavior" eventually cost my grandfather his health as "health and safety" did not exist in his day and conditions for those working outdoors in all weathers were often far from good.

So, please let's get it right and stop calling the material he worked with "cobbles".

Sheila Simms, Leyburn

Setting it straight

YOUR correspondent Jonathan Smith (D&S Times Weekend Walk, Dec 21) is clearly enthusiastic about the attractive metalling to be seen in the delightful streets of Haworth, and rightly so.

However, he mistakenly refers to these as being cobbled. The dressed stones seen in the photograph captioned "Haworth cobbles" are in fact setts. Cobbles are natural, large and rounded beach or river pebbles, sometimes used for decorative purposes but also historically used for country hostelry forecourts to name just one of many common examples.

Setts on the other hand, as can be seen in the photograph, are elongated blocks or cubes of gritstone, hewn from a quarry and dressed to specific dimensions for use in highway construction.

Setts date back to Roman times and beyond, and whilst both cobbles and setts may each have their own differing regional names throughout the land, setts can never be cobbles just as cobbles can never be setts.

Frank Grace, Eggleston

Small bait

I REFER to the letters by Tony Robinson and Michael Anderson(D&S Times, Dec 14). The events quoted by Mr Robinson from the 1950s to the 1970s are relatively small bait compared to what has happened since we got entangled with the Brussels mob.

ince the millennium alone we had economic meltdown with many European banks failing, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the collapse of the Greek economy and financial meltdown in Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy and war in the Balkans.

During the 1950s Britain was recovering from the Second World War. At the start of the 1960s only about one in 80 households owned a car.

By the beginning of the 1970s this rose to nearly every household. By the end of the 1960s most people were taking overseas holidays and by the start of the 1970s most young people in their 20s could buy a house.

Home ownership was increasing exponentially. Compare that to today for the millennials. So anyone who could not see the vast economic improvement in the 1960's and early 1970s must have been living on a planet with too many moons circulating it.

As for Michael Anderson suggesting we have control of our laws, trade, immigration, borders, and taxes, again a case of living on a planet with too many moons.

As for his adulation of Mark Carney, Bank of England governor, all of Carney's forecasts and predictions have proved false. And yes, we have had project fear and fake news from the Remainers.

Some of their wildest claims are that our planes will not be able to fly to Europe, ferries will stop running, severe shortages of medicines and we will not be able to travel in Europe. Total tosh.

If we were to hold another referendum will it be the best out of three, five or seven? In this respect I suggest Mr Robinson consults the Oxford English dictionary to find the meaning of referendum.

Since the referendum the British public have learned a lot about the bunch of undemocratic dictators and political nobodies who have tried to bully Britain.

Trevor Nicholson, Leeming