Ed People still need cars in the real world Mcconnell Nostalgic for the good old days of full lockdown

There has been much comment in the media by those that see the lockdown as an opportunity to abandon our cars and dream of the demise of air travel as a way of achieving a cleaner world. Dream on, I say.

In the real world, the economy and people need air travel and their cars to get to work in order to earn the money that pays the taxes.

A good many have to drive 10, 20 even 50 miles or further to their jobs.

Some people have suggested that park and ride schemes encourage car use.

Maybe, but so do out of town shopping complexes.

The truth is with a lack of local industries and an ever-increasing growth in population, no amount of public transport is going change the need for the private motor car. several years that we could face a pandemic.

I would like to think that we were moving towards a socialist utopia. But this will not come from government or even Parliament.

If we are to emerge from the present crisis and face up to the climate crisis, with a society based on need not profit, it will only come about because the people demand and fight for it. The world is crying out for a cooperative planned economy in which the needs of people and the environment are the only objectives.

There is no defence for the free enterprise capitalist economy that Antony Ward seeks to defend.

Ralph A Tebbutt safeguard our air and put this into action as soon as possible. For many years residents have been calling for better connectivity in and around Canterbury and Whitstable; more paths to get children to and from school safely, directly and routes getting us seamlessly from east to west, north to south. There are so many options and we have so much expertise already in our local community, some who have in some cases already drawn up routes and maps of where these new routes could go.

Our council needs to provide a vision for the future and the creation of cycleways with this grant should be central to that vision.

Cllrs Mel Dawkins and Val Kenny acknowledged my application and said that they would be in touch. Since then, neither has contacted me so it seems that there is no shortage of labour. My guess is that the farms prefer not to employ local people as they would have to pay at least the national minimum wage, whereas if they employ foreign labour they can offset their wages against the cost of accommodation so the net outlay is less.

I have no problem if that’s what they want to do but please don’t criticise the attitude of the British to this type of work.

As I walk my eighth circuit of Mote Park, prodding toddlers who get too close to me with my two-metre social distancing branch and ignoring their outraged parents, I think about how I’d quite like lockdown to continue forever.

Whether it’s an apocalyptic Piers Morgan lockdown, an Isle of Wight-style appbased lockdown or a Daily Mail lockdown – where your level of exposure to the virus depends on your job and how much your union has played up in the past three weeks – there are now more varieties than Nando’s sauce.

And I think that’s what I love so much about it – the unpredictability.

In the absence of sport the next big Prime Ministerial statement takes on a deeper kind of significance.

What will Boris

Johnson say? What did he say? Who told him to say that? Can I go to the pub?

You huddle around your TV but just when your team needed a Pep Guardiola-esque half time speech, instead you’re presented with

1990s Diego Maradona and now even a trip to the garden centre is baffling the best of us.

I yearn for the good old days of full lockdown when we all knew where we stood and that government adviser Professor Neil

Ferguson was not allowed to meet up with his lover.

Now I’m none the wiser. Is he allowed to?

Maybe but definitely only outdoors and from two metres away – which may prove difficult. Regardless, I doubt he’ll be coming to me for advice.

How am I meant to judge all my neighbours on how well they’re following the rules if I don’t even know what they are any more. Madness.

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‘In the absence of sport, the next big Prime Ministerial statement takes on a deeper kind of significance’

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Does our reliance on cars make cleaner transport a possibility after lockdown ends?