Piddling little puds

I've just read the article on Yorkshire puddings and am distressed to see the scientific approach.
Yorkshire puddingYorkshire pudding
Yorkshire pudding

The real thing is a work of art. Yes: to Milk. Yes: to a tablespoon of water. No: to the piddling little puds shown in the picture. Yes: to a nice big oven dish containing the pud mix under the wire rack shelves on which the beef is roasting so that all the juices fall on to the pud.

What would Heston Blumenthal or Jamie Oliver know about making a good Pud? They’re not Yorkshiremen!

Max Fitton

Erskine, Mandurah, Wester Australia

Sign up to this pledge

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Many issues of concern have arisen from the actions of the Labour-run council in the felling of street trees and the Amey contract. The damage they have caused to the city and resident trust is leading to new groups forming.

People who are tired of being deceived are working to achieve wider democratic change in Sheffield.

I have signed five pledges requested of me by “It’s Our City”, a new community-led network of Sheffield residents. This group “seeks to be an independent, positive and productive contributor to a vibrant local democracy, and for the well-being and resilience of our diverse communities. We ask for more from our elected representatives (Councillors and MPs), statutory authorities, and others managing and delivering services.”

The time for citizens to ask more of their representatives is well overdue, and I am thrilled that rather than “switching off” and feeling helpless, they are working for positive change.

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One of the five pledges highlights a key issue on which people will vote on May 3: “I will actively listen to the people of Sheffield, with care and respect at all times. I will act in residents’ interests first, not those of my political party (or the Council Cabinet). I will not support misrepresentation of resident views. I will support genuine consultation and involvement. I will work to build trust and ‘reconnect’ the Council and those it serves.”

All current and potential councillors ought to be free to assure residents by signing up to this pledge.

Alison Teal

Nether Edge & Sharrow Green Party, (S7)

It makes you think

We can only hope that the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia make a good recovery, but on the other hand will they be presented with the NHS hospital bill for their treatment which involved numerous doctors and nursing staff?

One has sympathy for them but our own people have had their operations cancelled because of cut backs in the NHS, it makes you think.

EB Warris

S14

Realistic choice

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Cyril Olsen, (April 16), and Terry Palmer, (April 17), are misguided in believing that MEPs from other countries gang up on MEPs from the UK.

The Parliament works on a committee basis for three weeks of the month in Brussels, discussing proposals for legislation across national and political divides to try to achieve the best solutions for all EU members, often chatting informally before the meeting to get support for an amendment to help alleviate a particular problem for their country.

It is because of such in-depth discussions that we now have cleaner air and beaches, strong legislation on food safety and environmental and consumer protection, and stronger workers’ rights, to name but a few important achievements right across Europe. The fourth week is spent in Strasbourg when the committee reports are ratified in the Plenary Session.

It is true that Mr Farage turns up in Strasbourg, usually just to be offensive to Commissioners or fellow MEPs, but he is reported to have attended the Fishing Committee only once out of a possible 49 attendances. Terry Palmer refers to the EU as “corrupt”, but it is UKIP MEPs who have been in trouble for misuse of their parliamentary expenses.

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Yes, there was a 51.9 to 48.1% majority in the referendum in 2016, but it is becoming ever clearer that many of the Leave promises have turned out to be false. Quite reasonably, the other EU countries say that the full benefits of membership of the Single Market and Customs Union cannot be extended to countries outside, unlike the claim by Boris Johnson that we could continue to trade with the EU without paying our contribution (1% of GDP and 5% of VAT receipts as paid by every member) or obeying any of the rules which protect our environment, workers’ rights etc.

Many issues such as Euratom, the Medicines Agreement, airline landing rights, to say nothing of the huge complications caused for the Irish Peace Agreement were just not mentioned, or brushed aside. There are a number of companies moving or contemplating moving their operations to the rest of Europe, including non-European companies who invested in the UK to have access to the wider Single Market. We could lose many valuable jobs.

Mary Steele, (April 19), is unwilling to concede that austerity was imposed on the UK by the Coalition Tory/Lib Dem government of 2010 as a deliberate break with the policies adopted by Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling to revive the economy following the bankers’ crash which started in the USA.

Moreover, they deliberately targeted the poor for cuts in services and wages, while the rich had the top band of their tax cut, and the level inheritance tax kicks in was raised, again benefiting the very wealthy. The reason some VERY wealthy people supported the Leave campaign, (and questions are now being asked about the campaign’s finances), was precisely because they fear that a transnational organisation like the EU may take action on some of their tax havens.

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We need to know just what agreements the Government manages to negotiate over the next months, and be given a realistic choice, through parliament or a second referendum, as to whether these agreements are what people voted for, just as a new General Election gives the people an opportunity to say if the government they elected last time is delivering what was promised. That’s how democracy works.

Veronica Hardstaff

Northfield Court, S10