AMAZING! Traffic lights to get up Castle Hill! Toys for vandals!

What will the lease holders and their architects come up with next in their determination to build a pub on Huddersfield’s most important archaeological and historic site?

You can just imagine the accidents waiting to happen as cars queue for the lights to change, tempers fraying as the queues lengthen and as impatient drivers try to get down Lumb Lane and when somebody decides to jump the lights because he can’t see anyone coming!

It would be funny if it were not so serious.

The arguments against building on top of Castle Hill at this time are so overwhelming that having to go through this process of applications and (I hope!) rejections is just an unnecessary waste of everyone’s time.

Castle Hill has great possibilities as a national treasure if the archaeologists and historians can be given time to get on with their work.

We need a five-year freeze before any further decisions are made about the Hill’s future.

Mr S W Roebuck

Newsome

Let Hill stay unspoilt

SO THE two Thandi brothers are again persisting in their efforts to desecrate one of the few remaining places of beauty that Huddersfield still retains.

Apart from the suggestion of introducing traffic lights to control the flow of traffic, which alone would be an eyesore, the addition of any building on the summit, apart from the existing Tower, would detract from the sheer visual impact that one receives when approaching the town from several directions.

There is also the small matter of this land being designated as green land and of historic value, or once again is this to be sacrificed to commercialism.

Many years ago when Huddersfield was a Borough Council it had numerous fine buildings but sadly since the formation of Kirklees we have been in decline.

It is now time that our planners advised the Thandis and others that enough is enough and Castle Hill will remain unspoilt for evermore.

W D Charnley

Huddersfield

Cameron must fight

MAY I applaud your editorial (Examiner, November 30) warning of the risks to freedom of the Press in all its forms if politicians were allowed any form of regulation here in Britain.

As a somewhat aged journalist experienced in newspapers, radio and television I’ve worked almost worldwide and have witnessed amazing degrees of state censorship.

Indeed I attribute my survival in several instances by having some “get-out-of-trouble” linguistic abilities – particularly Russian and, perhaps amusingly, when not to use some Spanish and German accents!

As you commented “Free speech is a cornerstone of democracy” and any restriction however minute is to be deplored. Cameron must really stand up and fight this issue.

Martin Noble

Brockholes

Crucial support

I JUST want to say a big thank you to the Examiner for highlighting Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (Examiner, December 4) and to the Town players for signing on the register. God bless you lads

I was diagnosed three month ago with this dreadful disease and it is scary especially on your own.

More research is needed into this awful disease. It can happen to anybody.

I just pray I live long enough to see my beautiful granddaughters grown up.

Mrs Patricia Pickering

Denby Dale

Book full of memories

HAVING just read the new booklet on 19th century Life at Lord’s Mill, I was reminded that I was there at the outbreak of the fire in 1952.

I was helping the Skelton brothers haymaking in the field opposite the mill, the field with the haycocks.

I was also reminded that the field of hay was overrun by mice, there were hundreds of them, black and white brown and white, why the variation I’ve no idea.

I lived a couple of hundred yards or so from the mill and well remember that little area being a hive of activity, with the candle factory, the little weaving plant run by Hubert Brook and the dye house run by the Shaw brothers.

I am on the photograph round the car in the bottom of the field.

Enjoyed the booklet from Honley Civic Society. Please keep them coming.

What about one of the time the Scots were reportedly about to descend on the area and the place names that that period left us with, ie Sentry, Scotgate and The Barracks?

Norman Mellor

Meltham.

Nationalisation call

BILL Armer (Letters, November 1) makes some interesting points regarding differential charging for our domestic energy use.

However, I feel this in only part of the solution regarding the future cost of our energy bills.

It must be clear to the general public that the privatisation of gas, electric and water has been a (predictable) failure and has not delivered the improvements promised at the time-namely, cheaper bills and genuine competition.

Instead we have an illusion of competition by what amounts to a complacent cartel.

We have neither cheaper bills or a better service. Quite the opposite.

The ridiculously complex tariff structure has been a deliberate attempt to confuse us. The supposed regulator has been singularly ineffective. A regulator with no real power is worse than useless. The changes proposed by the government of the day go nowhere near far enough.

It will not lead to cheaper bills. Companies will no doubt get together and make the cheapest tariff more expensive.

All the while families are suffering increasing hardship we are all paying a premium that goes straight to shareholders.

If companies were publicly owned this money would be re-invested for future green energy instead of making our bills higher to pay for this.

Disappointingly but not surprisingly none of the main political parties have the courage, honesty or conviction to press for the re-nationalisation of our essential utilities.

However, I do believe that eventually matters will come to a head and nationalisation will be back on the agenda as a necessity.

This will not though be until these industries have been bled dry.

Liam McParland

Huddersfield