Price of care

The clerk seems to imply that it is significant my not being a resident of Osmotherley, omitting to mention that neither is he - nor was his predecessor! In fact, I have spent several extended visits to my mother, who is a resident, and for whom I am her scribe. My several and prolonged visits over five years have enabled me to obtain a good measure of what it is like to live in Osmotherley.

In January this year, my mother not only posted a completed survey to the clerk but also a letter, explaining in detail her reasons for hoping such a bus shelter would be built in Osmotherley - something which respondents were not required to do, but about which she felt so passionately.

She received no reply to either her completed survey or her letter.

My subsequent e-mail to the clerk asking why her letter had received no reply also drew no response. If the Council did indeed collectively discuss any of these letters - as the clerk now says it did - we were most certainly not informed at any stage. Neither were we informed of the outcome of this survey.

It was only in June when I e-mailed the clerk that I learnt any decision had been made on this issue. Hence my previous comment that earlier letters had been ignored.

Perhaps the council should draw some conclusion from this about the desirability of two-way communication and of publishing findings.

The clerk's reference to current bus services as being stop-on-request regrettably misses the point. It is not that the excellent bus drivers cannot, or do not, stop on request: it is the lengthy wait at an exposed altitude on a bare hilltop during inclement weather that is the killer application.

And the council's plan to defer for two more years any decision regarding a second shelter is scarcely acceptable: at 84 years of age, two years may be two years too late!

The clerk informs us that plans for even a humble bus shelter must apparently go before at least two other statutory bodies before being approved. I now wonder if this survey was ever more than a token gesture rather than a careful tool that truly sought to gauge public opinion accurately. All talk and no action.

If the demand for such a bus shelter, according to the clerk, was "very low", it is probably because the opinions of the healthy majority (the car-users) have prevailed over those genuinely in need of such a structure.

For public record, and before another harsh winter sets in, precisely what is required to persuade this "caring" community of the need for a second bus shelter in Osmotherley? Is a frozen corpse required first?

STUART ROBINSON

Osmotherley.

Plus and minus

Sir, - Re Malcolm Rainforth's letter (D&S, Jun 11), on North Yorkshire highways department priorities, I have two tales to tell - one positive, the other negative.

When my wife, Marjorie, and I returned to Brompton on Swale after 20 years away, I noticed that the footpaths and kerbs did not suit someone in a wheelchair, as I am.

I contacted the authority and asked for something to be done re drop kerbs for wheelchair users.

Within weeks, I had received a map of the village and a note asking if I would mark out any further places where I considered drop kerbs should be placed. I duly completed the map and within a short period of time workmen arrived and said kerbs were installed.

I was so grateful that I told this story on the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2.

However (there is always an however, isn't there?) I recently had cause to write to Mike Moore, director, environment services, about the disgraceful grasscutting and weed-filled gutters.

I received no letter in reply apart from a card giving the name of a deputy who I phoned. I explained to him that the grass in the village was cut at least six to eight times a year in the Seventies and Eighties when we were here previously, and after cutting, the grass was gathered and taken away. Now, apparently, cutting is only twice a year by private contractors who just cut and leave the remains, which turns into straw and blows all over the village.

He said money was the problem and things were cheaper in those years. I commented that council tax, by another name then, was also cheaper.

As far as the gutters were concerned, a man appeared on a four-wheel cycle and proceeded down one side of our street and up the other at about 20mph, spraying as he went. This, I was informed, would only be done once a year.

However, he did say that they were looking at the problem of grass etc and would contact someone else who would contact me.

The problem and money-guzzler, I believe, is bureaucracy. From my initial letter to Mike Moore, I had to make a phone call to a deputy and the deputy would make another phone call to someone else to contact me.

I thanked him and said that in my opinion our environment was getting worse. Weeds are the plant equivalent of graffiti and should be given more priority.

WILLIAM MCCANN

St Paul's Drive,

Brompton on Swale.

Outrageous

Sir, - Every day hundreds of thousands of people across the country take vitamin pills and other food supplements as a matter of routine. But within a few years, a huge proportion of the vitamin and mineral tablets on sale in this county will be outlawed by European legislation, not for safety reasons, but in order to harmonise products on sale in different countries across Europe. Familiar products like 1000 milligramme fizzy vitamin C tablets, which many people take when they get a cold, will disappear.

This is an outrageous restriction of consumer choice, and is typical of the kind of over-regulation that is bringing the European Union into disrepute. It is not too late to reduce the impact significantly of these unwanted new regulations, but it will take positive action from the Government and the minister Melanie Johnson to secure a better deal for our consumers and our health food industry.

Sadly, there is no sign of such action. That's why we have launched a nationwide campaign to try to get the Government to change its mind.

You can support our campaign by signing the electronic petition we have established at www.conservatives.com/vitamins or by picking up one of the campaign cards in your local health food store.

CHRIS GRAYLING MP

Shadow Minister for Public Services, Health and Education

Book thanks

Sir, - May I through the medium of your columns be given the privilege to express my sincere thanks to all those kind people who bought my book Through All The Changing Scenes and gave donations. The book proved to be a great success, so much so that I have been able to donate £1,250 to my charity, Arthritis Research Campaign (Northallerton branch).

It gave me great pleasure to put this book forward, and I pass on my thanks to all who helped me get it off the ground.

TOM PEARSON

Long Garth,

Aiskew.