IN response to your article of July 20 concerning the proposed Tesco supermarket in Holmfirth, as residents of some 25-plus years in the area we would be delighted to be consulted about the effect a large store on the site suggested would have on the roads around where we live.

As far as we can see, the quoted six large deliveries per day and general daily shopping traffic will not have a great deal of choice about the route they will take.

They will have to travel on an already busy New Mill/Holmfirth Road, past four schools and numerous nursery/daycare facilities on a route which already has a 30 mile-an-hour speed limit.

Are the planners proposing to knock down a few houses to widen the roads in order to facilitate this traffic and accommodate the hundreds of school children who walk this route daily?

Be realistic Kirklees Council – you’ve chosen the wrong site!

Philippa and James Morgan

Huddersfield

Is Tesco really green?

DELIVERY juggernauts from the M62 will not go round by New Mill nor face the blockage in Holmfirth.

They will turn off at Thongsbridge and I should like to insist (if only that were possible) that every councillor concerned with this application should take the route from the Thongsbridge crossroads up past the school to the Tesco site and experience its impossibility even now with no superstore yet in place.

How many children’s deaths do they think acceptable?

As for the claimed ‘green’ credentials of the project – these amount to a negligible bit of moss on the roof and nothing more.

And having examined these plans, I am curious to know how the retail floor is to be held up with no supports shown in the car parking floor below.

Arthur Quarmby

Holme

Beggars need more help

REGARDING the article in Wednesdays Examiner about begging in the town centre.

I think these people need help not harassment from the police. Many of the town’s homeless have drug, alcohol and mental health issues for which they need help.

The council either can’t or won't accommodate them and the idea of aggressive begging is mainly a myth. Wether beggars sitting in shop doorways is unsightly is a matter of perception.

Personally, I find some of the legal drinkers who descend on town on a weekend to be infinitely more unsightly and threatening than the town’s beggars.

Have the police nothing better to do than deal with begging when burglary and violence is on the rise or is this policy to arrest beggars a shallow attempt by their political masters to appear to be cleaning up the town?

Rita Rearguard

Huddersfield

Spike the fountain idea

WHAT is it with the council with its fascination with water features and their hidden costs?

Casting my mind back a few years I’m sure people will remember the very expensive dissolving fountain purchased from abroad, but unfortunately the stone was not up to the harsh conditions in our climate.

So it was removed and the bill came to umpteen thousand pounds.

Now years later we are once again going down the same route. I mean money is no object – it’s only £50,000 to install and a further £52,000 per year to run the pretty thing.

But have they taken into account the extras?

Any visitor to Dublin in the recent past will have seen the beautiful maid of Erin situated on O’Connell Street.

It was a representation of the waters from the Wicklow Mountains flowing over the supine statue of the reclining maid.

The locals with their Irish humour called her the floozy in the jacuzzi.

Getting to the point, she had the tendency to attract all the local drunks at the end of the evenings, having water battles and such.

It was also where they would sit and discard all their fast food packages into the fountain. It was a constant battle for the council employees clearing the thing out.

Another trick that seemed to amuse them was to empty several bottles of detergents into the fast-flowing water so it wasn’t long before it would turn into a giant bubble bath.

When this happened, all the water had to be pumped out and replaced and it happened very frequently.

A couple of years ago the city council called it a day and to save further expense removed the thing, putting up the giant spike in its place.

I only hope we are not going to be doing the same thing a few years hence.

Joe McManus

Linthwaite

Unbelievable water cost

IS it me? I read about the estimated cost of the water feature, hereafter to be known as ‘Mehboob’s folly’, in St George’s Square.

Can it be true that our ‘leaders’ are really going to spend £1,000 per week on this?

This adds up to £52,000 a year – or nearly £10,000 more than keeping the Tourist Information Centre open.

Perhaps it could have gone towards New Mill Library or has our council decided that only the good people of Lindley should be permitted such a facility.

Perhaps when Clr Khan is called to open the new library in Lindley it might also be named after him!

Trevor Woolley

Huddersfield

Battle to beat terrorism

MRS N Clarke asks for an explanation why we have troops in Afghanistan and shows a staggering naivety on the whole issue.

Has she not seen the various reasons for this action? Does she think that she is immune to terrorism? Does she not recall the excesses of the Taliban and their cohorts, Al-Qaida?

Her arguments about Zimbabwe are simply a red-herring, trying to make out that this is a religious struggle by Christians is insulting!

No, Mrs Clarke, we are trying to get the Afghans to look after themselves.

We are trying to rid ourselves of the ever-present threat of terrorism and until this threat is removed – either by closing the youth-corrupting madrassahs or totally dismantling Al-Qaida – there will be the need for preventative actions.

The final naivety is her suggestion that Afghans here should return home to ‘resolve’ the situation. They are here to escape from their oppression.

I have many Palestinian friends who wring their hands at their homeland situation, but are quite happy to live in the Gulf States and enjoy a better way of life.

The real problem is the lack of manpower and equipment that our forces need to do their job and we all know whose responsibility that is, don’t we Mrs Clarke?

GB

Shepley.

Enough museums

I HAVE noticed a number of people requesting a museum for Huddersfield.

I might be pointing out the obvious here, but just exactly what is the Tolson Museum? This fine museum has many artefacts from Huddersfield’s great past, including textiles and engineering and, for those insistent on a visitor centre at Castle Hill, as much information about our Iron Age hill fort as you need.

What else do people want, a Kirklees museum to go with the rest of this soulless administrative area?

Bob Monkhouse

Dalton

Bedroom burglars

I NOTED with interest the cartoon in the Examiner – ‘Horace and Doris – burglar in the bedroom’ and then the recent statistics about crime.

We get fairly regular reports about people being in bed when burglars break in. I think it would be a good idea if householders would install a panic button next to their beds – either an extension of their existing alarm or a separate installation.

That way, they would simply activate the alarm and alert neighbours.

BILL PLACE

Oakes

Time for action on hill

After reading Wednesday’s Examiner, I am totally lost as what the Thandi Brothers have to do to get a proposal through planning.

Is Clr Smithson actually saying nothing can be done on the hill ? Or is he saying the current lease holders can’t?

This all started with an extension to the pub which got out of hand due to bad advice to the Thandis’ and what appears to be no supervision from the council.

I also find myself in great pains to be in agreement with Clr Ken Sims as most of what he does seems to be in his own interest anyway.

For the report to say this could not be commercially viable, there was a pub on the hill for over 100 years which seemed to make money and attract more than just ‘doggers’ on to the site.

Why doesn’t the council either invite the Thandi partnership to the table and reach agreement on a development or at the very least make an offer for the lease on the land so they can then do as they please with it.

This has gone on far too long at the taxpayers expense.

Michael Brook

Meltham