YP Letters: North Yorkshire's complexity beyond wit of think tank

THE authors of the recently published Respublica think tank report recommending the abolition or merger of district councils in rural North Yorkshire (The Yorkshire Post, November 17) should be encouraged to leave their air-conditioned Whitehall offices and explore the realities of life in the areas concerned.

They may then hopefully realise that effective local government means administration of local services for local people through locally elected representatives.

Or does the author of the report see, in effect, a unitary authority with a membership of locally-elected ward representatives, possibly upwards of 200 in number, all vying for the best service and share of the public purse for their local areas?

The needs of rural communities are far more wide ranging and diverse than those of an urban nature and market town community needs are equally quite different from more urbanised parts of the county.

How can one unitary body be effectively structured and equipped to serve an area with as wide a range of needs and limitations as North Yorkshire, without major expenditure in initial set up and increases in on-going annual expenditure?

Local government lost efficiency in its ability to serve the public at local level in 1974 (when the last major re-organisation took place) and can well do without further irrational interference penned by the members of a remote body who wouldn’t know a mistal from a midden.

From Brian Waddington, Terry Avenue, York.

SCARCELY a day seems to go by now without The Yorkshire Post reporting on some promulgation by a think tank. I am at a loss to know who comprises these bodies. Are they self-appointed groups or quangos by another name? Furthermore, does anything happen as a result of the reports they produce? Or is it simply a matter of a group of people expressing their collective views on a topic in the hope that someone will do something about it?

Show us the money

From: Jim Tucker, Hovingham.

I READ with interest the letter from Ken Cronin of UK Onshore Oil and Gas offering reassurance regarding house prices in the event that fracking becomes a reality in Yorkshire (The Yorkshire Post, November 16).

His words appear reassuring but they are only words and I, for one, look forward to him backing up his assertions with something substantive, for example reimbursing any demonstrable loss of value or offering to purchase any unsaleable properties as a result of the development of his industry.

If he seriously believes what he writes, then offering such a guarantee (backed by the resources of the oil and gas industry) will not cost a penny.

If no such guarantee comes forth, then one can assume that the letter was simply another PR exercise to try and mislead an increasing informed public.

Only remedy for the NHS

From: John Towers, Burnt Yates.

READERS would do well to note that health campaigner Dr Richard Vautrey is a trade union representative (the BMA) and, as is typical of all trade unionists, looks to taxpayers to find more and more money for the very inefficient NHS to waste.

He treats readers as idiots – everyone knows that the money going to the EU cannot be redirected until we leave. Then again he talks about national spending on health in France and Germany but omits (presumably deliberately) to mention that funding in those countries is a mixture of state and private insurance.

The only long-term solution for the NHS in the UK is to move to something similiar to NHS dentistry where we all make a contribution on a scale of charges or have private insurance to “top up” what the taxpayer funds.

Government with no plan

From: David Cragg-James, Stonegrave, York.

HAS keeping Labour out become the sole raison d’être of the Tory party? Or does the party have any other policies which will withstand the scrutiny of rational, disinterested thought?

Current policies fail, either in their concept – hard Brexit, fracking, austerity – or in the manner of their enactment – universal credit, education policy, public services.

There appears to be no foreign policy. When preservation of power becomes an end in itself, it’s time to go. When confusion and incompetence characterise a government in the perception of the world, it’s time to go. When black is termed white, wrong is deemed right, failure is called success, it’s time to go.

Hopes for Zimbabwe

From: Nigel Boddy, Darlington.

WE are all of course awaiting developments in Harare. I wonder if the people of Zimbabwe might find some short term economic stability in a currency union with South Africa?

The Irish Republic had a currency union with the UK 
for 50 years after independence. In the longer term, might Zimbabwe and South Africa become one country?