FOLLOWING the Shabab story and letters in the Examiner (‘Restaurant wants to expand ... into the street’ August 31) from the current upstairs restaurant in New Street the powerful smell of its cuisine is already a daily distraction for shoppers along the precinct.
Why are appropriate extractors not used as elsewhere? Bringing food down to street level will only serve to increase and impose that.
I don’t want this smell imposed on me just as much as I don’t want tobacco smoke either.
Restaurants are obliged to provide wash and toilet facilities, how do the restaurant propose to provide that for the disabled customers who can’t use the upstairs facility – Portaloos next to the tables, maybe?
Why do they want eight seated tables for the disabled?
No disrespect, but all possibilities considered, with their mobility aids-scooters-wheelchairs-sticks and so on, I think we may have a health and safety issue here.
More importantly, and as the applicant (Shabab) suggests, is the proposal exclusively for the disabled?
As has been suggested by P Heighton (Mailbag ‘Restaurant’s outdoor bid won’t assist us’) why not negotiate a lease and favourable rate terms for the empty premise with its disabled access in situ at street level directly underneath its establishment.
If the proprietor is serious about the disabled having access to his culinary wares why not build a ramp where there are steps and fit a folding Stannah chair lift and a bellring to call for assistance?
He calls for them not to tell people who to vote for in the coming Labour leader election and then goes on to tell the people of Huddersfield to vote for David Miliband.
Isn’t that being just a little hypocritical on Mr Sheerman’s part?
We haven’t, however, heard from him recently on what in my view is the planned Tesco destruction of Huddersfield shopping centre. Will he be attending the planning meeting to voice his objections?
When everything goes pear shaped due to the ineptness of our council they will all turn round and blame everybody but themselves.
HARD UP AND FED UP
Thanks to Longfellow
IT was with great sadness that I read in the Examiner of the passing of Mr Alan Driscoll.
Thanks to this gentleman who as ‘Longfellow’ brought Huddersfield Town to the fans, we out in the Spen Valley could read the news of our beloved club.
Boy did he bring the news so, so brilliantly. Many the Saturday evening hoping the away football special would get back into Town in time to catch the Examiner news vendor and the last copy of the Saturday evening football special.
Once in my hands I never moved a step until every word of the match report was read. Instantly you were back at the match heading every ball, seeing every kick.
Mr Driscoll to me and many other Town fans is a Huddersfield Town favourite as much as the Wilsons and O’Gradys he wrote about. The Boots and the Shanklys he interviewed every day.
For his life we are so grateful and to his family, Mrs Driscoll, his son and daughter and grandchildren we send our deepest sympathies.
We know life will never be the same for you but we hope what he gave to so many through his millions of words and deeds will allow in the days and weeks to come you to remember, with a smile, what a truly wonderful man he was.
God bless.
David A Wood
Alan was a true gent
IT is almost 50 years since I first met the late and hugely lamented journalist Alan Driscoll when I joined the Examiner as a junior in the sports room.
Alan’s purple prose, as I recall, coined such colourful phrases as “midfield stoker general” and, on occasion, when Town, were engaged in desperate defence, he would paint a picture of them holding siege against “an armada-like cannonade.”
Alan, of course, compiled his Saturday match reports from the old press box at Leeds Road where his vivid accounts reached the Ramsden Street office by ‘phone before appearing in print and with the Examiner on sale in town by 5pm – in the 1960s virtually all football matches tended to kick off at 3pm on a Saturday and finish at 4.40pm on the dot – shorter interval and less time added on for anything!
Malcolm Cruise, in a poignant recollection of Alan’s social inclinations was too polite to reveal that his party-piece “trombone solos” accurately portrayed someone displaying very rude health – and they certainly always blew away any frostiness at many a “do” or if there was a call for some light relief in the news-gathering process in the old reporters’ room.
Alan didn’t work in sport, he was a news reporter who graduated to industrial editor and then deputy news editor, “filling in” as Town reporter during what, even in those days, was a heavily committed workload.
On first name terms with virtually all of the “captains of industry” as he called them, he penned articles at a time when the town rejoiced in near full employment provided by thriving textile, engineering and chemical companies, some of whom held a world-wide reputation.
Even in today’s more troubled economic times, his acute insight into a company’s activities and the town’s personalities and heritage, would make fascinating and informative reading.
Former Examiner colleague and friend Malcolm referred to his more recent contact with Alan as Almoner of his Masonic Lodge. Alan, in fact, had also undertaken those duties a number of years ago when his cheerful countenance and, yes, his many contacts, brought much-needed comfort to others in difficult times.
A consummate professional with an impeccable shorthand note, he telephoned me a few months ago and asked if I would mind taking down a few paragraphs which were, in fact, his carefully crafted obituary notice for this newspaper.
I sat with him at home some three weeks before he died and it was salutary to hear him reminisce about his life with Town and at the Examiner – both of us recalling the more halcyon days when the newspaper’s daily circulation touched 50,000. There was moisture, in his eyes, too, as he spoke movingly of the support of his family during a protracted illness and how proud he was of some of their achievements.
A greatly valued friend, a gentle man and a true gentleman.
John B Gledhill
Former Examiner sports editor
Caged suffering
READERS may be shocked to learn that in Britain, more than 45 million pheasants and partridges are mass-produced to serve as feathered targets for wealthy ‘guns’.
This bloody and brutal end to their lives is the final insult.
From birth they are confined in cages, sheds and pens, in which disease and death are a daily feature.
Many birds, frightened and stressed are fitted with devices that restrict their vision and prevent them from pecking their cage-mates.
About half the released birds die before they can be shot.
They perish from exposure, starvation, disease or predation, or under the wheels of motor vehicles.
Only a fraction of the shot birds are eaten – even pro-shooting magazines have reported that many are buried in specially dug holes.
Killing animals for fun has no place in a civilised society. For a free anti-shooting pack please contact Animal Aid on 01732 364546 or go to www.animalaid.org.uk
ms Kathleen Stephenson
Upper Cumberworth
Bonehead vs bonehead
AFTER reading the story in the Examiner about the English Defence League protest in Bradford, Ian Brooke states that “It has cost a fortune to police a few boneheads”.
So which juvenile name would he give to the campaigners who turned up to protest against the EDL causing more police to be on hand to keep both parties apart and stopping more problems.
It seems to me that both sides are there intent on trouble and it’s the taxpayers who have to pick up the bill.
In this country we have the freedom to protest so the problems will just go on and on with no group winning. What a waste of energy and resources.
mike warren-madden
Honley
