Our city centre is being strangled

I AM saddened to read Newcastle City Council has given permission for further tall buildings at Westgate Road and now St James’ Park car park.

No longer will we see an open, vibrant, interesting city with the sun’s rays warming our hearts and old historic buildings opening our minds to imagine our past, where cattle were once headed through the Haymarket, Blackfriars’ priests helped the needy and local families built up business.

Now we will experience tall anonymous high winds, funnelling through cold streets like anywhere else.

Newcastle is being strangled, surrounded by university business and more and more student accommodation, offlimits to the local people and families who toiled over the centuries to make Newcastle great.

The university has got land from the local people gifted it by the foolish council and they have a stranglehold – an arc from Rye Hill, Pitt Street, the RVI, Sandyford and Manors, besieging and strangling the retail centre.

Do the universities pay tax to the council? University students are exempt from council tax. A small amount of council tax income to support the local people means our local services can come from these measures.

ROSS HELLENS, Newcastle I WRITE to you from Canada seeking assistance in finding two sisters Mary and Millie Clark.

In 1977 my mother, aunt, and my family travelled to Horden in search of relatives with whom contact was lost in the 1950s with the passing of my grandfather, Newrick Spooner.

After some research, we knocked on a door and located my grandmother’s sister, Lottie (Charlotte) Clark and her husband Tom, and five daughters.

The daughters were cousins of my mother, Millie Squarek (Spooner) and my aunt, Charlotte Lonsbury (Spooner).

They were Doreen Rowe, Charlotte Tidyman, Margaret