Warning about York road ‘treacherous’ for cyclists – letter

YORK used to have a reputation as a ‘cycling city’.

My mother has memories of bikes everywhere and York was synonymous with the likes of Oxford and Cambridge in the amount of people using active travel to get around.

However, where Oxford and Cambridge (or even much bigger places like Leeds and Manchester) have invested hugely in active travel infrastructure, (even connecting along A roads to outer villages), York seems stuck being neither here nor there.

I have just picked my child up from primary school today by bicycle. She has just changed schools to one located around Hamilton Drive and my goodness what an awful, dangerous and ill advised experience it was to cycle along this road, especially with a little child.

How on earth are we ever going to encourage more active modes of travel unless we sort out places such as this road.

It is a key connector to several schools, not to mention the pre schools and child minders who populate its vicinity.

However, at present the road is treacherous for anyone even attempting to travel by any other mode.

This could be a good start for the recent Active Travel England funding but I think I will take the car to pick up from now on as it’s simply not the worth the risk.

Chris Green,

Moss Bank Court,

Acomb, York

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Country under Labour gone ‘stark raving mad’

YOUR regular apologist for the disastrous Labour party government, Geoffrey Brooking from Hampshire, is either living on a completely different planet from the rest of the country’s population or his rose-tinted glasses need renewing.

In his last offering, he lauds Tony Blair, the man who has blood on his hands for taking Britain into a illegal war and throwing open the immigration doors to all and sundry, no skills needed, and Blair’s catchphrase ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ was a complete joke at our expense.

The Hampshire scribe also thanks Yvette Cooper for her ambition to get knife crime down, great idea but the mayor of London doesn’t seem to bothered about the crime rate in London.

Starmer and Reeves, constantly like a record that has stuck, talk about growth in the economy; with Reeves anti-business budget the only thing that is growing is unemployment, prices in the shops as obviously the rise in employers’ National Insurance is going to be passed on to the customer.

Raynor’s new employment laws will discourage employers taking on more staff.

The promise of cheaper electricity and gas will not happen, in fact it’s going up in price, the ridiculous race to net zero ideology within the Labour government is costing us all in pound notes and our standard of living.

So to the man in Hampshire, this country has gone stark raving mad and made worse by your beloved Labour party.

Robert Waite,

Windmill Rise,

York

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Warmer in a jail cell

AFTER the recent winter fuel allowance cut, I Googled the average winter temperature in British jails. It is 24 to 27 degrees Celsius, a level of warmth of which many pensioners can only dream.

Derek Chapplow,

Middlethorpe Grove,

York

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America is right in the end

THE way the present Trump administration is behaving reminds me of a quote by Winston Churchill who once said: “America can always be counted on to do the right thing, (usually) after trying all the wrong things first.”

D M Deamer,

Penleys Grove Street,

Monkgate,

York