We would love to see them at the next Friends of The Racecourse meeting on April 24, 7.30pm at Leicester Street Community Rooms.
The small group of dedicated local people who have been giving their time and energy to the park for the last four years, improving lighting, paths, installation of more bins, improving the maintenance of the trees and play area, removing abused telephone boxes and effectively bringing down the crime on the park by tirelessly campaigning for better police presence and a dedicated park ranger, so that it is indeed the pleasant green space that you enjoy each day, would really appreciate more people who really care to help them continue to move forward.
We look forward to meeting them,.
Sally Crow-Mathews (resident 17 years),
Member, Friends of The Racecourse.

It's a good deal . . . for developers
Councillor Joan Kirkbride must think us naive if she expects us to be taken in by her smoke-screened excuses regarding the failure of the Tory administration at County Hall to cash in on the sell-off of school playing fields across the town. And her clumsy attempt to blame a Government minister for yet another impending disaster at County Hall ignores a number of very important facts.
First of all, it was her administration which decided to identify and sell off all school "surplus" land as a combined job lot to the highest bidder, even though many warned that this would not realise best value for money in the long term and that many of the sites were indeed not surplus.
Secondly, as reported in the C&E in April 2007, the estimated £90m received by the county council from Barratt Homes was far in excess of the £65m it said it required for rebuilding at the time the sale was announced (more than enough to cover the £17m lost so far at Parklands)
But thirdly, and by far the most worrying, is that even when the land had been sold at a bargain basement price, how then did the county council end up having to take the risk on not receiving full payment for any of the land that didn't achieve planning permission?
So, correct me if I am wrong, but the county Tories seem to have done a deal with the developers which said: "You can have all the land at a bargain price, much less than if the plots were sold individually, and you stand to make around £210m profit on the deal. But don't worry about having to be speculative or take any risk yourself because you will only have to pay us the money on individual sites once planning permission is secured on those individual plots, and we will cover any shortfall that arises."
She also conveniently forgets to mention that, as again reported in the C&E, the campaign to protect Parklands playing fields was instigated and led by members of her own Tory group on the county council.
If Jim Harker's administration wants to save any face from this debacle, then they should come clean now about this very shaky-sounding deal and be truthful with us over where the failure of their plans lies. The public are sick to death of the "blame the other lot" line which is too quickly employed by party politicians whenever they mess up and a good dose of the truth in this case would be welcome and very revealing indeed.
Councillor Tony Clarke,
Independent, Castle Ward, Northampton Borough Council.

Playing field sale doesn't add up
Analysis of information available in the public domain supports a conclusion that the county council could afford to spare the playing fields at Parklands, Kingsthorpe, and St Luke's (all three of which are the subject of village green applications) and still meet the financial commitment to the schools improvement PFI programme.
It has been reported in these very pages that a package of 16 of the surplus school sites (there are 18 in total) has been sold to Barratt Homes for £90m. Furthermore, the county council has previously stated that a total of £65m was required from the sale of the school sites to fund the PFI contract.
The entire Parklands site only covers 5.26 hectares, just over half of which is playing fields. With current land values of around £2.5m per hectare, all three of the above mentioned playing fields together are only worth around £17m. To quote an Americanism: "do the math".
With particular regard to Parklands, the original PFI agreement was made on the assumption that "the playing fields are likely to be required by Northampton School for Girls" (source: NCC 2002 Schools Review) so receipts from the sale of Parklands playing fields were never part of the original budget.
Ed Balls has reviewed the application against the Schools and Standards Framework Act 1998 and determined that it sold our children short. He can no more go against the law of the land than you or I, and wasting council taxpayers' money to argue otherwise is simply ridiculous.
Simon Hegarty,
Aintree Road, Northampton.

Not racist to talk on immigration
In reply to those who objected to my letter informing readers that the BNP had achieved second place in a council election in Wellingborough and that it was time the main parties woke up to the majority of the population's concerns on immigration, the general conclusion seemed to be that I spoke incorrectly.
So try this. Channel 4's Dispatches programme The Inconvenient Truth last week stated that 83 per cent of the population thought the country had a "population crisis". It found that 84 per cent of the population wanted immigration reducing, 15 per cent would halt all immigration and 69 per cent of Britons surveyed said multi-culturalism was not working.
In the Mail on Saturday, Somali-born reporter Rageh Omaar spent two full pages debating if Enoch Powell was right in his "Rivers of Blood" speech.
In the same week, the House of Lords economic committee concluded that the country's high legal immigration rate of 190,000 every year had no beneficial economic effect to the country, contrary to the Government's and the Immigration Supporters Club previous claims that mass immigration was essential to maintain the country's financial success.
My concerns and opinions are what the majority of our people inconveniently think, but dare not say for fear of being branded a racist. Both The Times and The Guardian carried articles this week on the rising political success of the BNP. Does that make them racist papers and reporters?
John Wright,
Port Road, Duston, Northampton.

Each vote counts
Ven Subbarayan made a poor fist of down-playing the BNP's second place success in Wellingborough (Viewpoint, April 10).
Under proportional representation (PR), each vote carries influence.
The European Parliament elections in June 2009 will use PR. In 2004, in our East Midlands region, the Lib Dems claimed a seat with 12.9 per cent of the vote. In the South East, the Green Party won a seat with 7.9 per cent.
Given public disaffection with failed and discredited establishment politicians, the success of smaller parties gives those of us who seek to give voice to concerns of the people of England, great encouragement.
Richard Deane,
Secretary, Northamptonshire Branch, English Democrats Party.