UK transport system is still off the rails

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

REASON has failed to overcome decades of cross-party bungling and deceits in the upgrading

– or not – of most of the UK’s fragmented public transport.

If Tom Richmond’s “continuing tirades” on Northern (The Yorkshire Post, November 23) are becoming “rather tiresome”, perhaps it is because he, and many of us, feel that there is no option other than to keep breathing down their necks.

I agree with Bob Watson’s comments on the one-minute time scale for late-running; however, if a train doesn’t run at all maybe, in duplicitous suitspeak, it isn’t late?

Recently, on the Harrogate line, there were six cancellations in one day and I don’t imagine we were unique. Would-be passengers are not alone in this. I have every sympathy for all the front line staff; but let the tirades against the faceless, besuited “theys” continue.

Many otherwise loyal Tory voters favour Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to renationalise transport, if nothing else.

Bob Watson wonders where Tom Richmond might be putting his X on election day. Bob’s sympathy with Northern makes me wonder if he’s a shareholder!

From: Canon Michael Storey, Healey Wood Road, Brighouse.

AS everyone is aware, the forecasting of the result of the forthcoming election is “in the hands of the gods”. I guess that people aren’t much wiser how to vote, after watching and listening to the four party leaders on Question Time in Sheffield. One wonders about people’s reactions.

My initial reactions, to put them into a few words, as Fiona Bruce hoped for on TV, are:

Jeremy Corbyn – a concern for all who live in UK.

Nicola Sturgeon – self-centred concern for Scotland only.

Jo Swinson – genuine wish to get it right for everyone by staying in Europe.

Boris Johnson – usual pomposity, full of himself.

As the Tories have been in power all these years, why hasn’t the Government dealt with all the various issues like law and order, education, health and an ageing population until now? Can we trust Boris again?

From: David Rimington, Fairways Drive, Harrogate.

I WAS very alarmed to read proposals in the leaflet from Jo Swinson, the new Lib Dem leader, to ignore the result of the 2016 referendum, stay in the EU, build 300,000 houses each year, and solve the climate crisis.

The city of Bradford has about 210,000 households, so it means a city the size of Bradford every eight months or so.

Just where will they be built? How much of our countryside will be covered in concrete?

Of course, these houses will be required if we stay in the EU. Total foreign immigration to the UK in 2018 was about 600,000.

Rather than solve the climate crisis, it would seem a good way the foul up the future.

From: Thomas Reed, Harrogate.

YOUR questions to party leaders about Yorkshire’s future were very pertinent (The Yorkshire Post, November 22) – my disappointment is that the Northern Powerhouse, and North-South divide, did not even come up on the two-hour Question Time special.

Shame on Fiona Bruce who just wanted to be the centre of attention.