If we don’t clean up, then mess will be the norm

When a kid can get a bike and head down the Huddersfield ring road, without any training, test or experience, the laws on cycling really need to be looked at. Most of the cyclists I see seem to have a miserable face and seem to be looking for confrontation, rather than avoiding it. OVER the weekend I had reason to drive up Halifax Old Road through Grimscar Woods and was appalled by the amount of rubbish thrown at the side of the road.

While we all know the low-life that throw their rubbish at the side of the road, it shouldn’t mean our council should shirk its responsibilities and not clean up these grot spots and all others in and around the town.

Unfortunately because these areas are not being cleaned up the problem then becomes the norm and multiplies.

While I appreciate austerity measures etc have made funding difficult for these necessary services, it should not be an excuse for incompetence and bad management.

Having just returned from a week’s holiday in Spain I noticed people doing these clean-up tasks and was told if they did not do a few hours each week they would not receive their benefits.

It’s a shame we don’t have a similar system here but then I suppose that would impede on their human rights. GEZ Sharp’s suggestion that we should vote for Independent candidates at the forthcoming local elections in May to give the two main parties at Westminster a ‘bloody nose’, may be not such a good idea for the voters of Kirklees

At the recent extraordinary meeting of the council to adopt the new Local Plan, one Independent councillor sent his apologies for absence and the other abstained from voting.

So no help there for Mr Healy’s search for someone who can ‘straighten out this mess’ IN response to Colin Liversedge remembering the Lido pool in Holmfirth

I went there on Wednesday afternoons during the summer term at school.

The water was not heated and the teacher and owner, Mrs Ballantyne was very strict and to a seven-year-old, quite intimidating.

I also remember the Ashgrove pool, off the Greenfield Road above Parkhead.

This pool had a mushroomshaped fountain, which I remember sitting under.

Happy memories. I HAVE just received a flyer from the council proposing plans for the centre of Holmfirth.

The plans are set to ruin all that is good about Holmfirth. We are a tourist town and as such we have folk and food festivals where they shut off Hollowgate and allow people to perambulate in safety.

Holmfirth will end up dead just like Huddersfield, somewhere you pass through on your way to somewhere else.

I suggest the planners go back to the drawing board and try again.