Sold out for homes?

Why are they shocked that Terry's are closing down? It is a highly successful business which is profitable and has good products.

However, the factory site is worth a fortune. No doubt the factory will be converted into trendy flats for yuppies and a high-class hotel for racegoers.

By allowing massive high density developments generating millions of pounds of profit such as the Barbican, Heslington, Coppergate, Foss Islands, Germany Beck, Derwenthorpe, Hungate and many smaller schemes across York, property developers are circling like sharks and having a feeding frenzy.

The outcome of this is huge pressure on sites such as Terry's factory as land prices across the city soar.

All this unsustainable development is not just bad news for workers at Terry's. York residents should wake up and start to realise that if the present pace of developments continues to spiral out of control York will become an increasingly congested and unpleasant place to live.

Adrian Wilson,

Grasmere Drive,

York.

...ONCE again the working men and women of York are left to pick up the pieces as another city landmark disappears when the Terry's factory closes.

Can it be coincidence that the huge (and valuable) sites previously occupied by the carriage works and Ben Johnson have now been extensively "developed", with the only growth industry left in the city being town houses and the omnipotent York trademark, the housing block?

How long before our forward-looking planners allow the Bishopthorpe Road site to go the same way?

Anyone can see the incentive for a manufacturing business to cash in on the residential land boom if they are confident of local authority approval - if that means the loss of thousands of proper jobs, who cares? They can buy an apartment as a buy-to-let investment with their redundancy.

Once the green light was given by city planners for big business to cash in their York sites, it has been like a Klondike gold rush to jump on the gravy train.

The decisions made by our city leaders and planners over the past decade have totally changed the emphasis and appearance of York.

The balance created by hundreds of years of thoughtful evolution has been destroyed. The Terry's workforce are the latest casualties in this grand design.

Mr J S Giles,

Bolton Percy,

York.

...WHAT'S the betting the lovely Terry's building will be turned into luxury flats? If they hurry they might just have them ready for Ascot in York.

Entrepreneurs can buy them up and rent out at inflated prices to daft southerners.

With all our famous industry disappearing, carriage works, chocolate factories etc, we will be forced to work in the service industries.

Multicultural tourists will gaze at us and our quaint buildings and cobbled streets from the tops of buses as we shuffle along with heavy shopping unable to pay parking fees, ignoring shouts of "eh up Yorkshire puddings."

We are growing weary of Save Our Swim, Barbican, football ground, pubs campaigns.

Will our very daffodils be "grubbed-up" and sold off to plant in luxury flats' window boxes?

Our next campaign Save Our Daffodils, a fitting epitaph: SOD it.

Pamela Egan,

North Lane,

Malton Road,

York.

...THE extremely lucrative development potential of this marvellous factory site has been the obvious reason for the premature greedy closure of this historic chocolate factory.

Over the recent past York has lost most of its traditional large employers of skilled labour and the Terry's warning sirens must be heeded by the remaining York workforces.

Terry's management has a ready and willing British taxpayer-subsidised workforce in Poland and the rest of the European Community. Everyone, including the unfortunate jobless Terry's workers, must realise that Britain's misguided support of the European Community has deprived them of their precious jobs.

Brussels Eurocrats won't let us subsidise our jobs.

Completely and quickly out of the European Community is the only answer to this latest woeful British situation.

My own Out of Europe campaign shows that the majority of people want to come out of Europe.

Please don't be kidded by Tony Blair's belated promise of a Referendum on the European Constitution. Ask for an Out of Europe and English Parliament referendum instead.

George Stephenson,

Wadworth Hall Lane,

Wadworth,

Doncaster.

...LIKE many other people, I read the banner headlines in Monday's Evening Press with great dismay. Another wonderful British institution may close with the loss of hundreds of jobs for local people, and the loss of another export of some repute.

Peter Terry said that things had gone downhill since the takeover by Trusthouse Forte/Kraft.

However, this decline - and the decline of many other facets of British industry, including textiles, manufacturing and tourism - has also coincided with the meteoric rise of the value of the pound sterling against other currencies, especially the Canadian and US dollars.

News that the pound is up again against the dollar is frequently announced with an air of jubilation, an almost audible "wow factor".

A rise in the value of the pound against the dollar is not good news now.

It might be thrilling for people who have booked a holiday to Canada or the US because their spending money will go a lot further. For everyone else, however, it spells disaster.

Every time our pound rises, it takes more dollars to buy one. This results in the rise in the import price of everything we try to export - especially countries of the New World who use Canadian and/or US dollars for trade.

When our goods are more expensive than similar products from elsewhere, the outcome is inevitable.

The pound is artificially high. If we want people to visit Britain, and buy our products both here and abroad, and if we want to promote our industries, that pound must come down.

SM Robinson,

Mulberry Drive,

Haxby,

York.

...ROY Templeman, our planning chief, is quoted as saying that maybe the Terry's site could be used, not for employment, but for a suitable "mixed development" - one or two offices, a few cafes, a smattering of retail, and lots of luxury apartments, whose occupiers will rent them out for astronomical sums for race weeks.

I have a much better idea.

Why not use it as the site for the huge shopping mall which York so badly needs on this side of town? Masses of space for car parking, a helicopter pad, plenty of room for John Lewis and Debenhams too, and all benefiting from the new transport infrastructure which we are told will shortly be put in place for the forthcoming Ascot week.

There could even be room for a modest theme park at the back of the site, so family fun would be assured.

As for employment, I estimate that my scheme could generate at least 1,500 job opportunities on site, with lots of jobs for taxi drivers running people into town to the Odeon, the casino, or wherever, to avoid the evening parking charges.

Because, of course, we would still have our quota of penthouses with their affluent students, as a contribution to the relief of York's perceived housing shortage.

This is of course no consolation to those about to lose their jobs. My proposals have come too late for them.

We expect that the council and its officers, knowing that this was coming for months, will have some emergency contingency plan up their sleeves to help out.

But somehow I doubt it.

Philip Crowe,

Clifton,

York.

Updated: 10:15 Thursday, April 22, 2004