Heart aches for little Charlie Gard Coventry is on the up – how else can it grow?
SANDRA Camwell (Letters, July 6) has tirelessly defended the greenbelt against being developed but does not like high-rise buildings. She cannot have it both ways.
Coventry is a fast-growing city in need of more accommodation/ housing and business development. Like most of the UK, the city faces a shortage of all types of dwellings and business units.
Over the centuries, Coventrians have built using the latest styles and using the materials of their times. This is exactly what is happening today. To save using even more greenbelt land, buildings in the city are rising to new heights, like many cities around the world.
Why should present-day Coventry follow a policy of building out-offashion buildings that waste land, as Sandra Camwell seems to want?
Provided that the buildings meet the best safety standards (unlike, perhaps, Grenfell Tower) we should build for our times and not some kitsch view of the past.
It may be that the buildings will fall out of fashion, as has much of the post-war redevelopment. Over the centuries this has led to demolitions and refurbishments. After a century or so they will return as ‘old favourites’.
All over Coventry, old buildings show this process and no doubt, new buildings today will undergo the same at some future date.
Ms Camwell goes on to say that the city looks tired and lacks vision. She, like Bob Arnott in the other letter, refers to the lack of cleaning in the city. This is a direct result of government austerity cuts on the council budget. Our councillors are trying to meet the demands of a fast-growing city as shown by the wealth of developments but with less money. I would bet that many of your readers could not maintain their lifestyles with major cuts in their income. Yes, it should be cleaner – but who makes the mess?
Coventry’s developments demonstrate that the city is able to attract significant private sector investment. It would be sheer folly for the city to follow a backwardlooking old-fashioned development policy. The future may be daunting but is the only viable way forward. Myles Mackie Earlsdon I FEEL desperately sorry for the parents of baby Charlie Gard, who have been fighting for months to stop his life support being switched off. The trauma they are going through must seem unbearable.
I have even more sympathy however for the baby himself.
He is deaf and blind (and what a terrible combination that is), he is brain damaged and has a muscle wasting disease that can only get worse.
He cannot breathe without a ventilator and must remain hooked up to machines, it seems, forever.
What sort of a life is that? Could he be suffering pain but is unable to let anyone know?
This poor little mite must be allowed to die, however sad that may seem. I know if it was a child of mine, even though I would be devastated, I would let him go.
The greatest love his parents can do is to remove all the machines he is plugged into and let him peacefully pass away in their arms. Sylvia Seeley Nuneaton
Excellent point on driverless cars
RE: Driverless cars. Carol Huckvale (Letter, July 5) makes an excellent point about why these devices should not be allowed to grace our streets.
She states that terrorists will simply load these vehicles to the hilt with explosives and drive them into crowds of people which will not risk the life of a terrorist.
Apart from that, we don’t need rubbish like this in our lives.
You inventors that are responsible for these ridiculous pieces of engineering need to get back to the drawing board and invent something less stupid. Joe Fordham Henley Green