Time to move the Cenotaph
Mark Belton’s comments on the Citizen’s War Memorial (June 18) are ill-founded and rely on a very tenuous heritage link between the Anglican Church, the Christ Church Cathedral and the memorial (Cenotaph). Research on the Cenotaph history clearly shows it was wrapped in controversy from its conception to its final placement and construction. The Anglican Church only agreed to its final (but temporary) placement in the cathedral grounds following significant demands for changes in its original design.
Belton proposes to ‘‘hit the pause button’’ on the RSA’s proposal to relocate the Cenotaph to Cranmer Square now that the decision has been taken to restore the cathedral. The Cenotaph has been locked away behind walls and fences, denying the citizens who own it access to it.The real issue here is whether that lock-up should be allowed to continue now that the decision to rebuild the cathedral has been made.
The Cenotaph sits square in the middle of what will be a massive construction site. Belton has not considered how it can be protected from the engineering activity and heavy machinery that will have to work around it to accomplish the rebuild over several years.
Belton’s group has created significant delays in the regeneration of the Square through their legal actions over the cathedral. Now he wishes to further deny people access to their Cenotaph for a further very long time. The RSA believes it is time to hit the fast forward button and move now to relocate the Cenotaph to Cranmer Square where it will stand in its own right as an important monument to Canterbury sacrifice, no longer over-shadowed by other large structures and confined spaces. a lack of books, or busy parents deprive them of experiencing the joys of reading.
At school they are introduced to a swarm of funny shapes (letters) they are told to master as a way of learning lifelong skills. The trouble is that in English these shapes have to be memorised individually rather than in groups that follow the rules.
Herein lies the major contributor to the illiteracy plague: our spelling. It is so dysfunctional our learners can’t rely on it for help, and take more time to reach the level of proficiency attained by learners in other languages.
We changed our currency to make it easier to deal with. We need similar action on our spelling. The recent call for an international English spelling congress to address this problem is timely. early-morning foggy brains, we need to be able to comprehend its contents to get our daily fix. How hard can that be then? Well, it turns out to be harder than we probably realise. A 500-word long sample of text from Rob Mitchell’s article on illiteracy reveals that on the Flesch Reading Ease Score the article is ‘‘fairly difficult to read’’. Does The Press test its content for ease of reading, or does the editor assume that its readers are educated enough to understand a fairly difficult article? Thank goodness for the The Little Things and Munro to ease the strain on the brain! Like Rodney Laredo, Jock Sibbald (June 16) makes the classic mistake of equating traffic in Cathedral Square with previous bustling liveliness. The truth lies elsewhere in his letter – it is land use activity that makes the difference.
Bring some engaging activities back near the Square (and we are getting a new library there) and you will see the liveliness return – without the need for traffic to drive through it.