Monday's Letters: Drivers should take more care to avoid parking penalties

Pat Normington (Yorkshire Post, September 13), who lives in Wetherby, gave details of three tickets she got when parking in Wetherby itself and then asks if readers agree that all three were unreasonable. While having some sympathy for her health situation, I don't agree.

Owners of disabled badges get preferential treatment and, in return, are required to display them properly but two of the tickets were because she had (a) partially covered the badge with a box of tissues and (b) not opened it. The third offence was parking in a permit-only area for residents and she said she was "not aware" of this as she probably didn't think to check for any signs.

I would suggest that she keep her tissues on the passenger seat, open her badge fully and look for the markings and signs that indicate residential permit zones.

Sheila Datoff (Yorkshire Post, September 2), a visitor to Haworth from Canada, decided to park slightly outside the space "to avoid having our car hit by the door of the next car and to let passengers get out on that side". Her car was clamped and she wrote about clampers being "menacing and acting in a distasteful manner", accusing them of waiting to catch "unsuspecting" customers and "innocent" tourists etc. Parking properly would have avoided that unfortunate event.

When clamping soon becomes illegal on private property, the clamping firms are already preparing to move into issuing parking tickets. This is bad news for motorists because no licence is needed to issue tickets as they do with clamping. Kits for DIY Ticketing packs are easily available from the internet and then rogue ticketing firms will start to appear. The clampers and wardens are only being as vigilant as some motorists are being absent-minded, thoughtless and careless with their parking habits.

From: SB Oliver, Churchill Grove, Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire.

From: CC Grace, Church Close, Maltby, Rotherham.

IN response to Pat Normington's letter in respect of the issue of unfair parking fines, I would suggest that to incur a fine for not displaying a disabled badge in the prescribed manner may be unfortunate or unlucky on one occasion, but to fall into the same trap three times smacks of carelessness.

A taste of the future for strawberries

From: Dominic Rayner, Gledhow Avenue, Roundhay, Leeds.

RON Farley (Yorkshire Post, September 17) makes a joke about strawberries running about the countryside, but presumably also intends a serious point about the uncertain consequences of genetic modification, and the fears that the phrase "GM crops" seems to evoke.

The point of implanting a particular gene sequence into the DNA of, say, a strawberry is not to make random changes and see whether the fruit might be able to beat Usain Bolt at the 2012 Olympics; just like dog breeders and rose growers have been doing for centuries, the point is to produce a specimen that has a useful feature it doesn't currently have.

Imagine this problem: with climate change delivering drier summers, how are we going to continue to produce affordable strawberries?

The energy needed to supply water to irrigate the crop is too expensive. Left to evolution, it might take 10,000 years before strawberries are able to grow in dry conditions to the size that people like at Wimbledon.

Horticulturalists crossing one strain with another might be able to manage the job in 20 years. A scientist using genetic modification could perhaps solve the problem in a couple of years, so why wait? Is the fruit dangerous just because its adaptation to dry conditions has been managed in a laboratory rather than in a nursery?

If people would rather not risk eating it, then of course they shouldn't. But should that give them the right to stop a farmer growing the crop, or to stop other people eating the fruit?

Unfair trade hits farmers

From: Kathleen Calvert, Paythorne, Clitheroe, Lancashire.

IT is frighteningly easy to be complacent about your future food supply when you have plenty.

The generation who lived through the Second World War value their food supply far more than those who have grown up with a plentiful supply having experienced the effects of a sudden serious shortage of food.