'Axing last bus of day a huge blow to night-time economy in Richmond'

I often use this bus to get home after going out with friends, with the equivalent journey costing over £20 by taxi.

Many people will now think twice about going out to eat or drink in the town.

It also removes a vital lifeline for the catering staff who rely on the route to get home after their shift.

With hospitality businesses facing increasing cost pressures on all sides, this couldn’t have come at a worse time.

This is an opportunity for the new North Yorkshire Council to prove it has clout and speak to Arriva about restoring this route as soon as possible.

Daniel Callaghan, Middleton Tyas.

Biodiversity

ALTHOUGH we are lucky enough to live in a very beautiful village in a very beautiful county, I often despair over the lack of recognition of the reduction in the numbers of insects, birds and wildflowers.

Inspired by other villages such as Great Ayton and local individuals both here and around the country we have attempted to make our small garden and allotment as attractive as possible to pollinators, birds and wildlife.

We decided to allow the small patch of green in front of our house to grow to produce various grasses and a few wild flowers which immediately attracted a variety of birds and insects.

We had already asked the mowing team to leave this area which they did when they came to mow on May 30.

Our young granddaughter even realised: "It doesn't matter if it's messy, it's nature!"

We subsequently received an email from the parish council reprimanding us for making such a decision and allowing the grass to grow untouched.

We were then given an ultimatum which was to cut down the grasses or else they would order it to be cut by the mowing team.

This team tears through the grass every fortnight leaving the cuttings which then turn to sludge and also block the kerbside and drains.

As members of "Care for Our Village" group we have spent backbreaking hours digging and clearing this away.

How can it be that what we have done is wrong?

Given the new warnings on insect decline, it seemed a little petty to order the destruction of this small patch of biodiversity.

B and D Cobb, Hutton Rudby.

Caroline Lucas

READERS might have noticed that the Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, has decided to step down at the next election.

There are few MPs more widely respected for their honesty or who can claim to have got more of the big decisions right at an early stage.

If we had followed her advice, homes in Britain would have been better insulated well in advance of this winter and people would have gone through this horrible cost of living crisis with significantly lower bills.

If we had installed solar panels on new homes, schools and hospitals when she first advocated them, we would have saved a lot of money as well as helping the planet.

There is only one realistic way to get sensible, far-sighted policies like these on the political agenda.

It is to vote for people who are interested in standing up for their local community as well as their environment.

I am looking forward to giving local voters the opportunity to do that at the next General Election and am now the Green Party’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate in Richmondshire.

I hope I have earned the trust of the local people who elected me to the North Yorkshire Council.

It is way past time that we transformed the way politics works in this country.

Cllr Kevin Foster, Richmond Constituency Green Party.

Carbon fears

IN relation to the recent D&S exchanges on global warming and the merits or otherwise of a carbon zero economy, is it possible that we may have allowed our fears to get somewhat out of proportion? We are told that CO2 is 0.04 per cent of the earth's atmosphere.

I believe that if it falls below 0.02 per cent plants would die.

I would be grateful if someone could enlighten me on the following:

• How come millions of years ago, during the Ice Ages, without any human beings, cars or planes, according to analysis of the glaciers, the CO2 content of earth's atmosphere was 15 times higher than the 400 ppm it is today?
• What happens to photosynthesis, which relies on sufficient CO2, when we reach our desired carbon zero targets? And why is CO2 pumped into polytunnels?
• Is it not true that carbon is the main component of carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, fats, muscle tissue etc? The carbon component of our DNA is what makes us physical and earthly beings. Does that not mean that a net zero carbon person is a dead one?

Sue Holden, Richmond.

Climate Catch 22

I WAS pleased to hear from Frank Broughton “Fuel addiction” (D&S letters, May 26) that, "no climate scientist would deny the role of carbon dioxide (CO2) on enabling plant growth”. Great, another scientific "consensus"!

I don’t believe that CO2 causes global warming. However, if it does, perhaps a climate scientist can explain how the level of CO2 in ice cores from the last Ice Age is many, many, times greater than the current level of CO2?

Whether CO2 is good or bad, we are left in a Catch 22 situation.

Do we go all out on net zero and cut CO2 and the ability of our planet to grow sufficient crops to feed humankind?

Or, do we continue to augment natural CO2 emissions with man-made emissions and avert worldwide starvation and hope we are right? I vote for the latter.

I say we will have plenty of time to adapt because the scientific predictions have been so wrong in the past.

Alastair PG Welsh, Aycliffe Village.

Attention diversion

IN response to Bridget Holmstrom's letter “Climate change” (D&S Times letters, June 9).

Climate change is a fact, the conspiracy is that Governments throughout the world use it to divert attention from real governmental issues which are politically unfavourable to the electorate.

In the past one example was when a major terrorist attack in the United States in October 2001, Jo Moore, a Labour Government aide stated that “it was a good day to bury bad news”.

As for the ozone layer, I've never heard that old chestnut mentioned for some time.

Now so far as the ban oil characters, my comment – no oil, no food, no life – makes sense as there is no other source of energy known available to replace oil at this moment in time, however, Bridget may be able to enlighten us all on an option known only to her.

To set the record straight on my comments about the decades between 1960-2000, they are not made up by me, they were news items from the media from scientific research pertaining to those particular times and were not my personal predictions.

I hope this clears up any misunderstandings on these matters.

Trevor Mason, Swainby.

New world order

THE police have difficult situations to handle, people with mental health problems and others suffering from drug abuse and alcohol misuse.

In order to do their job the police have people that are specially trained to create a dialogue and resolve problems.

I believe that such people should be used in politics because of the problems in the world, none of which are being resolved.

In 2001, the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, built in the 6th Century, then in 2014 they shot 14-year-old school girl Malala Yousafzai for going to school.

Today the Taliban are in full control of Afghanistan and they are preventing women from going to school and from working because they believe that it is un-Islamic.

No politician across the world has the ability to communicate and discuss with them, so people across Afghanistan are dying of starvation and sickness.

In America, Donald Trump wound the crowd up to storm Congress where several people, including police, were killed.

Here Boris Johnson has finally resigned as an MP because he has been rebuked by a government committee.

I think we need a new world order because politicians never achieve anything.

Brian Tyldesley, Middleham.

School funding

SOCIAL media is awash with amazement that Rishi Sunak and his wife have donated $3m to a posh US College for a state-of-the-art computer facility, with chairs allegedly costing $650 each. Meanwhile a primary school in his constituency has to appeal for donations to replace their 15-year-old computers and this is seen as the norm.

Our country has created a huge divide between the state schools attended by 93 per cent of the population and those benefitting from endowments and donations from the wealthy.

Remember the £100,000 donated by Rishi Sunak to Wellington College, his alma mater?

I know the struggles our schools face to provide essentials, after years of cuts and austerity, but how have we got it so wrong?

I recently visited a school in Slovenia, which had state of the art technology, that our schools could only envy.

This was of course provided by the state, which understood the need to equip their young people with the skills required to compete in the future.

Meanwhile, despite all the rhetoric of levelling up and a high skilled, high paid economy, we maintain a massive divide between the haves and have nots, and leave our state schools to hold out the begging bowl.

Paul Harrison, Richmond.

Protest arrests

I WAS amazed at how quick the police responded to manhandle and arrest the protestors at the horse racing recently, it’s a shame they cannot apply the same treatment to the protestors who block the roads and damage property.

It seems there is a law for one and a law for others.

M Lockey, Stockton.