RE: Closure of the Hairy Fig in Fossgate. So sorry to see it close and it’s partly our fault; we used to shop there but a city with parking at extortionate and ever-increasing costs made us stay away from the city centre like so many others.
It’s not that the park and ride cost is high by comparison with the inner city, it’s all the other tax increases Starmer and his crew have brought that hurts our purses.
Not to mention you have to drive to the parks and one perfectly good diesel costs us £375 PA tax, a car good for another 15 years for sure. We have no spare capital to buy electric, nor want to.
Paying with a phone is beyond us, cash or card works – if we could find a space accepting that.
In Cambridge a new station has no car spaces at all but 1000 for bicycles – madness everywhere.
John Zimnoch,
Osbaldwick,
York
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Good luck Mr Carney and Canada
There’s a gripping 1941 Powell and Pressburger film entitled 49th Parallel.
A personal favourite of mine, it’s still shown on TV from time to time.
The reference is to the 49th Parallel of Latitude, a stretch of which divides Canada from the United States, which in 1941 was technically ‘neutral’. It made me think of the current North American situation.
What a contrast between President Trump and his northern neighbour above the 49th Parallel, Canada’s new PM, Mark Carney! Calm and measured, ‘Canny’ Carney, a political novice, seems to have taken the helm at the most challenging and unpredictable of times.
‘Good luck, Mr Carney!’/‘Bon chance, Monsieur Carney!’ Let’s hope history will show him to be a safe pair of hands as well as a strong pair of hands in the international arena as he was at the Bank of England.
The Canadian national anthem includes these sentiments, ‘….O Canada! Our home and native land!….O Canada, we stand on guard for thee….God keep our land glorious and free!….’
Hear! Hear!
Derek Reed,
Middlethorpe Drive,
York
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Too much tax
THERE are hundreds of thousands of pensioners in this country who are being depleted of any savings through taxation and cuts.
Most of these people left school at 15 years old and went to work in apprenticeships some into factory work and others into offices and work for the local authorities.
They all worked if they were males to the age of 65 years, women in most circumstances kept the home and later in life went back to work.
All usually paid into a company pension scheme to give them a small income in retirement to pay for their well earned treats.
This Government has totally wrecked their lives by stopping winter fuel payments increasing food prices but still giving countless millions to fund hairbrained schemes.
If you are a pensioner and run a small car it is usually fuelled by oil so they increase the price of fuel, increase the road tax to make you spend more of your savings to exist.
They then give you a rise in your pension but don’t increase the tax threshold so you pay the increase back making you still poorer.
Whilst doing this they are taking the role of parenting away and indoctrinating our children to believe that the state looks after you cradle to grave.
Meantime the elderly reach the end of life but this Government still takes more of their money in taxes.
T J Ryder,
Acomb,
York