GRIMESCAR Valley is the last remaining idyllic but tiny slice of Green Belt in my neighbourhood, and I am completely against the proposed commercial and housing development on it.
I have lived in Birchencliffe for 16 years (and 20-odd years before that in Mount). Even at my tender age I can remember a time when the valley had little built on it. We have already lost much of our local green environment to development; surely we can preserve the small strip that is left.
Health and well-being is enhanced by proximity to green spaces, crucial in an urban environment. For the greatest benefits to mental health this means having opportunities not just to get outside, but to interact with nature.
There is so little wild green space left in this part of Huddersfield; the Grimescar Valley is an oasis of unmanicured, free to access, tranquil outdoor space and provides the only such opportunity within walking distance of my home.
It provides a rich, local wildlife experience; birds we have spied in the valley recently include a lesser spotted woodpecker, robins, coal tits, blue tits, long tailed tits, goldfinches, pheasants, siskins, nuthatches and wood pigeons.
There is nothing better than a weekend walk down the valley, foraging for hedgerow fruits, followed by a jam-making session. This year we have made bullace jam, plum jam, spiced apple chutney, sloe gin and bramble pies and jelly, all from produce gathered ‘down the valley’.
These are the small pleasures of life which matter so greatly, the loss of which would be so detrimental to quality of life if carelessly removed by unnecessary development.
We are currently experiencing very difficult economic times, with little prospect of short term recovery. There are already many houses for sale in the area around the Grimescar valley that are not ‘moving’.
There are two unused and forlorn business premises within a few hundred metres of the proposed commercial site.
What will get us through these tough times is not false promises of growth through development at any price, where only a small few benefit and the jobs created are largely temporary.
Rather, our councillors and town planners should listen to the little people who get on with things, don’t make a fuss, value their neighbourhoods and amenities and contribute positively to society in a hundred quiet ways.
If everything that improves our local quality of life is built on and taken away we feel powerless and unmotivated and fearful; we are less able to engage and rebuild when the recovery comes.
Please leave the remains of the Grimescar Valley alone for future generations to enjoy as we have enjoyed it.
Michaela Hainsworth
Birchencliffe
None of our businesses
THE textile, engineering and chemical entrepreneurs who, in the past made Huddersfield into a town known, respected and influential throughout the world, must be spinning in their graves. The Luddites must be dancing on them.
Huddersfield, a town which only a few decades ago reportedly had more millionaires and Rolls Royces than anywhere else in the country and was awash with mills, factories and workshops, can’t find room for an industrial warehouse.
The result has been for Oxfam and Silentnight to move out of the area.
At a time such as now when people are crying out for jobs it truly is a catastrophe for local people and a telling tale of inept local governance.
I don’t care how many rosettes, certificates, awards, stars or plaudits the council has been awarded, the only items Huddersfield is now famous for and talked about are the University, the horrendous single track uneven roads, speed cameras and the water leaks in St George’s Square.
I should say at this point that having started off as a doubting Thomas in the early years when the Huddersfield University was being sponsored and prioritised by the Council, after visiting on one of their open days I am a convert. It is a brilliant success story.
I have been complaining for years that we have surrendered our independence and self-sufficiency to become a commuter town feeding off and dependent on surrounding places such as Leeds, Manchester and Wakefield to attract industry and workers.
I wonder what proportion of Huddersfield residents commute to these and other places every day. Even the aforementioned University depends on a majority of its students being attracted from outside the borough.
The policies of KMC in relation to the future of the local workforce are isolationist in thought and deed.
The buildings which provided tens of thousands of workplaces have been turned into residential flats or empty offices.
The result; nowhere left for workplaces. How can we possibly expect companies to come to Huddersfield, invest and provide for us if we haven’t anywhere for them to open a factory or base?
Many of the complaints I have been making for decades concern the policy of actively strangling our lifelines into and out of Huddersfield – the highways.
It is an act of long standing disgrace that routes into Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Mirfield from the M62 through Cooper Bridge and the Flockton bypass have not been built, widened or improved in the decades they have been talked about.
We should have petitioned when the M62 was first built for a spur like the one into Bradford running from the topside of Outlane through to the Colne Valley.
The Colne Valley has always been one of the engine rooms of Huddersfield providing work, wealth and prosperity for thousands of people.
The result of decades of negative thinking and ideas is that we remain an isolated unreachable destination.
We are an island surrounded by motorways and missed opportunities.
John Langford
Lepton
Goodbye Jimmy
ON Wednesday, November 9 we went to Leeds and while there decided to attend the funeral of disc jockey and TV presenter Jimmy Savile.
I had met Jimmy on a couple of occasions quite a number of years ago, once to talk with him. He was a very funny and quick-witted.
We arrived in good time and could have gone inside, if we so wished, but decided to let someone of the Catholic faith have our place inside St Anne’s Cathedral.
It was a very moving experience to be there and I felt a good deal of feeling from the very large crowd towards Jimmy, of the sort I have never quite experienced before at a funeral.
It was a very good and respectful send-off for him. RIP.
Frank Graham
Netherton
No time for apathy
I ABHOR the word Nimby (Not In My Back Yard). Nevertheless, the opposite to that is apathy and that is what is shown when people do not make their views and feelings felt.
HG of Lindley (Mailbag, November 7) says Nimbys should be careful and think clearly about what they really want.
What the current LDF offers is not what most people want. Is that clear enough?
How would HG feel if our council planned industrial development along with a housing estate and wind turbines in their back yard? People are fed up with being manipulated with glib smooth tongues.
Do nothing about LDF and repent at leisure because when the concrete goes down it will not be coming up again.
What would we have if people simply sat back, said nothing and did nothing? Let us get down to brass tacks and ask the questions of those who are driving the LDF forwards and get some honest answers.
We need to know now how many jobs have been secured and how many are in the pipeline, and also where will these jobs be located. They have no idea.
Ask the same people how many houses they envisage and the numbers flow freely without the exact location of these developments. Where is the planned infrastructure for LDF? There does not appear to be any.
HG of Lindley talks of repercussions if the public delays or derails the much hated LDF. Does HD think that setting land aside for development will cease with LDF? Developers will keep coming back like Oliver Twist for more and more. This is what they do.
So Nimbys, have your say, as apathy will achieve nothing. After the land has gone and the developer has made his fortune we shall be left to manage the chaos that will be left, chaos which is sure to ensue as there seems to be no infrastructure development programme of any worth.
How do all these thousands of extra people get around on our already congested highways and rail links. What about doctors and dentists’ surgeries? There are many questions with fewer answers.
R J Bray
Shelley
Democracy in shreds
PLASTIC bullets issued on the streets of London, student protestors pushed, shoved and harassed by the police, protest camp brutally removed from Trafalgar Square.
Yet another dark day for the shred that is left of British democracy. The Government cites the violence at student demonstrations last year to justify the aggression of the police – to which I say, what violence?
The collateral damage at Millbank Towers, the Tory Party HQ, was nothing compared to the damage meted out by the Government to the future of Britain’s youth.
Tuition fees have robbed thousands of an education and benefit cuts will rob thousands of their homes whilst the recession and cuts in the public sector will rob many more of their jobs.
The violence that is being visited on the people of this country by the Oxbridge elite is without precedent, and the resistance that is building all around the world to corporate rule is without precedent as well.
When public sector workers strike on the November 30 everyone will have the opportunity to get involved in the demonstrations and rallies up and down the land.
It will be a strike not just to defend our pensions but to defend the very fabric of our country, the welfare state, public services, the health service, a living wage and the institutions that have made this country what it is.
Ian Brooke
Springwood
Good mannered
IT has been suggested that the people of this country have bad manners.
After I came here from Poland my employers were very helpful to me, finding me work and helping me when there was no work.
Also, I wish to say people are very friendly. When I had an accident in the street I suffered a concussion. The lady in the ambulance, called Joanne, was very kind and considerate. She helped more than she had to do. The next day she also came to the hospital. I don’t think she had to do that.
I have very good experience in this country. English people have very good manners.
Vic Marek
Mount
