IT IS a sad day for the residents of Lindley and surrounding areas after tremendous work had been undertaken by the Lindley Moor Action Group to stop the housing development by Miller Homes.

The residents will no doubt see the value of their properties reduce due to this development.

The decision by the Conservative government to relax planning laws will no doubt cause an increase in the numbers of applications to build houses when there is no real need for such developments bearing in mind how many properties are currently unoccupied.

It may well be that when the next elections come round a protest vote may well be considered necessary.

Peter Waller

Salendine Nook

Rough ride

I WROTE to Mailbag (Examiner August 20) regarding the resurfacing of Scar Grove over the August bank holiday weekend.

The team duly turned up on the designated day with five trucks (only one of which was a council vehicle – all others being contracted) one scraper, one tarmac layer and one small steamroller.

This proposed four day job was completed in one working day – of course, it was a long weekend coming up!

However, we now have a patchwork surface to rival any, and according to one of the team members the original remaining surface will definitely ‘lift’ at the first sign of frost, and in his words ‘it would have been easier to do the whole lot in one go’.

This now begs a question as to why the whole of Fenay Lane in Almondbury has been resurfaced in its entirety – it is indeed a credit to the road-laying team responsible – but Scar Grove and especially Lockwood Scar (which was last surfaced in 1958 so I am told by a reliable source) remain in a parlous state ?

I have no axe to grind with the good burghers of Almondbury and hope they enjoy their smooth ride, but do they have better council connections than the good people of Lockwood?

Barry Chambers

Huddersfield

Carry on Denis

I WOULD like to express my interest in Denis Kilcommons’ column.

I’m more than often interested in what he says and like him I’m a nostalgia entrepreneur.

He often writes in his column about things that provoke memories for me and he brightens up my reading of the Examiner.

The rock and roll era, the history (great stuff), and if I was one of your columnists I would probably add a few stories of my own.

Anyway, on cinemas he did miss out, I think, on one particular one which was the Ritz at Golcar.

I saw James Mason in Old Man out there about 1944, it was box office (great stuff).

Although I would only be about seven years old at the time.

Keep with it Mr Kilcommons, your rhetoric is, I’m sure, appreciated these days by many.

DEREK DEVLIN

Lindley

Heading for penury?

I READ Mr Tony Woodhead’s letter (Examiner, September 12) with interest.

Apparently we need to build 2.8m houses within the next 10 years, as our population heads towards 70m. Is it wise to allow immigration of some 500,000 a year to continue?

The “open door” policy of the past 10-15 years has brought in five million people (many impoverished).

We haven’t enough homes as it is, our health service is “creaking”, jobs are few and far between, as our industries have melted away.

The welfare budget is out of control, and our government continues to squander cash and lives in an unwinnable war, and to pour £12b “down the drain” in overseas aid, a great deal of which goes “missing” fairly promptly, as recently in Tanzania (£1b).

Alas nothing will be done, this once proud people and nation heads towards penury. It’s a pity, it was a good country.

BARRY FOWLER

Huddersfield

Ask the question

I WOULD like to make reference to Bill Armer’s second letter (Mailbag September 13) on plans to meet housing needs in this country.

The Prime Minister plans to unleash one of the biggest home building programmes this country has seen for a generation. I fully support this but seem to be in a minority.

The population of England and Wales went up by 3.7 million between 2001 and 2012.

In that period house building has fallen to lower levels than in the 1920’s. The population increase might owe a lot to immigration but I cannot see the Government leaving the EU, stopping immigration completely, and bringing in a one child per family policy.

The 400,000 new houses that Mr Armer mentions are less than 18 months of supply. We have a lost generation of first time buyers. The average age of first time buyers is now nearly 40. A shortage of housing means higher rents and so makes it harder for them to save for a deposit. There is a need to get the banks to lend more to potential buyers and for the Government to release the land it owns.

There are no quick answers to the present housing crisis but the first thing is to convince people of the scale of this problem.

The question people need to ask themselves is where are your children and grandchildren going to live ? Are they going to be house owners or are they going to be renting into their fifties?

Tony Woodhead

Lindley

Thanks to postie Carl

WE would like to thank our postman Carl who has delivered our post in Syringa Street, Marsh for the past 15 years.

Always on time, in all weathers, and always with a smile and helpful. He is always smartly dressed and is a credit to the GPO.

PETER AND BETTY SHAW

Marsh

Cycling matters

WE ARE pleased to have had the opportunity to meet with Government minister responsible for cycling matters at the opening of the new stretch of cycleway in Calderdale.

An extensive network of traffic free cycle routes for use by commuting and leisure cyclists already exists in Calderdale, and we are delighted that funds have been made available to Calderdale Council by the Government to add to this network.

We used the opportunity of meeting with Norman Baker to point out how for relatively small amounts of money a really comprehensive traffic free network could be achieved, in particular by the extension of the new cycleway to the existing Hebble Trail and on to Halifax Railway Station, by the extension of the Calder Valley cycleway from the Brighouse boundary to Cooper Bridge, and by improving surfacing to the existing Calder Valley cycleway between Sowerby Bridge and Walsden.

Reid Anderson

Cycle Touring Club, Calderdale

Close to home

IN REPLY to ‘Blind As A Bat’ (Mailbag, September 8) in which Simon Shaw of New Mill wrote regarding the imminent arrival of wind turbines in the Shepley area.

Mr Shaw argues that contrary to the turbine applicants’ bat report which their expert states the nearest recorded bat was three quarters of a mile away he has noted bats 30ft from the proposed site.

What has become apparent with planning applications for turbines which are close to people’s homes and built on green belt land is the similar problems with these reports and their applications.

The bat expert involved reported in the turbine application close to us that there were no bats visible.

Well we have noted them in our garden feeding in the evenings. I think you have to draw your own conclusions on the accuracy of some of these reports.

At the moment there is a rush to push through as many applications for wind turbines and get them erected.

The reason for this is that come October the feed-in tariffs for this type of energy will be reduced.

In layman’s terms the amount of our public money these people will be receiving is to be reduced so we have this Klondike gold rush effect.

Will this mean that our energy bills will reduce? There flies another pig over Shelley.

R J Bray

Shelley