Letters: Something must be done about roadside litter

I know, from experience, that, once the proposed shop is up and running, there will be a noticeable increase in litter in the area approximately ten minutes’ drive from said shop.

How about making it a condition of allowing the proposed shop, that the company concerned allocates a certain number of hours each week for staff (and ideally, management as well as the junior workers) for clearing the litter that their customers thoughtlessly chuck from their car windows?

Personally, I think this should be rolled out nationally.

I know it won't happen but how about at least giving it some thought.

Something needs to be done about the disgusting amount of roadside litter.

Wendy Patch, Bedale.

Housing needs

HOUSING matters! It’s in the top five issues of concern to the public – and the only one for which North Yorkshire Council is responsible.

The council must have a robust strategy for how it will meet our housing needs, now and in the future.

Yet it has failed to resource the background work and research necessary to understand the different pressures in different areas affecting different age groups across the county.

It issued a draft strategy for consultation that had none of the detail necessary to reaching an informed view.

Not surprisingly, only 0.099 per cent of the county’s adult population bothered with it, and many of the public who did respond echoed our criticisms.

For example: "It’s really vague, appears to be a mix of hopes and dreams but no tangible mechanisms for achieving any of it." And: "At the moment it’s just words on a page."

Public comments also reveal considerable concern that "affordable" housing provided as part of new developments are beyond the means of people on average earnings.

One points out that "the definition of affordable varies massively across the new combined authority, as a house worth £400,000 in Harrogate is relatively cheap compared to a house of equal value somewhere near Scarborough".

Elected councillors outside the one-party, ruling Executive were denied the opportunity to examine the draft strategy.

With proper scrutiny, the council could have been spared the embarrassment of so many comments highlighting its inadequacies.

People can see through the waffle and want meaningful information and involvement.

Crucially, the Conservatives in North Yorkshire must come clean about what they consider to be "affordable" housing’

Councillor Steve Shaw-Wright, leader of the Labour Group of councillors, North Yorkshire Council.

Stamp it out

FOR the second time this month, I have had to go to the Royal Mail delivery office on the Harmire Enterprise Park in Barnard Castle and pay £5 to retrieve a letter with a supposed “counterfeit” stamp.

I say supposed, as a number of friends of mine have suffered the same nuisance and cost, as have apparently “hundreds” of people in the area according to a friendly post person.

That must equate to tens of thousands around the country.

Could this just be a minor version of the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw over 900 sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of fraud and false accounting?

Might it just be that there is a “glitch” in the Royal Mail scanning system that wrongly identifies genuine stamps as fake?

Will Royal Mail check it out? Don’t bank on it.

The inbuilt, default instinct of so many large corporations is to “deny, deny, deny” and I very much doubt that the Royal Mail is any different.

In any case, the glitch is making millions for them.

We are going back to the days before Victorian entrepreneur Sir Rowland Hill and his “Universal Penny Post” when you had to pay the carter a shilling!

Chris Foote-Wood, Barnard Castle.

Hairy Biker loss

LOVED by all, the loss of Hairy Biker Dave Myers has darkened many lives.

We have lost such an astonishing gentleman.

Dave lived his life to the full, not only a talisman of cuisine, he was also a man of many talents.

A professional make-up artist, an ambassador for Meals on Wheels, he also achieved a Masters degree in Art History.

With humour, he also boogied down on Strictly.

Dave’s first bike was a Cossack with sidecar. He moved on to ride many other models and bonded so tightly with Si King for that double act, The Hairy Bikers, which graced television for so many years.

Dave was a Scorpions rock band fanatic and much more. The Barrow born and bred biker’s personality was so colourful and charming, so lovable.

We lost him on February 28 and there has and will be tears in abundance.

He spirit will live with us always. Rest in peace, Davy.

Paul Snaith, Darlington.

Spring clean

THOUSANDS of volunteer #LitterHeroes in this region – as well as other parts of the nation – are grabbing their litter-pickers for the country’s biggest environmental campaign, the Great British Spring Clean.

Now in its ninth year, the campaign is run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, supported by thousands of individuals, families, schools, local authorities, community groups and businesses who care for the environment on their doorsteps.

Last year people came together to clean up more than 400,000 bags of litter from streets, parks, beaches and other public spaces and this year, as Keep Britain Tidy marks its 70th anniversary, we are hoping to beat that total. #LitterHeroes are being encouraged to make a pledge on our website, keepbritaintidy.org, to pick a bag (or more) of rubbish during the campaign, which runs until March 31.

However you choose to mark our 70th anniversary this Great British Spring Clean, your efforts will make a huge difference to the environment on your doorstep.

Allison Ogden-Newton, chief executive, Keep Britain Tidy.

General elections

THE upcoming General Election will be monitored quite closely by many countries throughout the world but the result in either a Conservative or Labour victory will surely be overshadowed by the outcome of the presidential election in the USA.

For one of the most influential countries in the world to be headed by either an egotist – Donald Trump – or an ageing Joe Biden spells deep concern for its western allies but relief for Russia and China in particular. They could have been facing a more youthful pro-democratic president if only the Republican and Democratic parties had chosen a candidate more suited to handle the many dangerous and complex issues in an ever-changing political world.

Despite its controversial internal problems, the relevance of the importance of the USA for the UK and Europe cannot be overlooked, especially in its long established stability and security via NATO as conflicts around the world intensify.

D Wearmouth, Shildon.

Voting reform

THE latest prediction for the coming UK general election is that the Labour Party will take 43 per cent of the votes and 70 per cent of the seats.

The Conservatives would be left holding 50 seats fewer even than they would have under proportional representation.

The magnitude of the expected swing means we now have a party in government with a respectable working majority but without practical reason for attachment to the defective system which inflated that majority.

Conservative MPs could contemplate electoral reform dispassionately upon its merits, without the overriding consideration of self-interest which normally rules this out for those in power.

This is a narrow window of opportunity.

Without reform now, many of the new Labour intake will face a one-term parliamentary career even under the old system: for them reform will be unthinkable.

MPs are debating the designation of extremist for those who don’t share our "British" value for democracy. They should pause to think which side of that line they themselves stand.

John Riseley, Harrogate.

Road condition

CAN someone tell me what exactly these councils are spending the council tax money on, because it certainly isn't the roads.

I have to have an MOT to prove my car is roadworthy yet the roads in County Durham and Stockton are an absolute disgrace.

The councils can't even patch them up properly. It's about time they were held to account.

Name supplied, Co Durham.

Sounds of spring

SPRING is fast approaching, and with it the familiar sounds of the dawn chorus, as we listen out for the melodic blackbird, the beautiful song thrush and the sweet serenade of the blue tit.

Bird song is important to many of us – in new research from the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), 73 per cent of adults said they would miss the sounds of birds singing if they lost their hearing.

Following on from World Hearing Day, we are encouraging nature lovers to take a free online hearing check.

Missing the high-pitched calls and trills of birds is common for people who are experiencing undiagnosed hearing loss, and as changes in your hearing can happen gradually, they can be difficult to spot. Over 360,000 people have taken RNID’s online hearing check, and many of them tell us they can now enjoy hearing birds singing again thanks to their hearing aids.

It’s easy to undertake RNID’s online hearing check and it only takes three minutes – why not check your hearing today at rnid.org.uk.

Crystal Rolfe, director for health, RNID.

Marketing tactics

YOU know you are getting old when brochures start arriving from cremation firms – still it makes a change from medical firms wanting to sell pills.

GO Wright, Sadberge.