Accident waiting to happen on pavements
I’M angered at the growing number of cyclists who persist on cycling on the footpaths.
Even more worryingly, is the many cyclists who you see in the dark with no lights and no high-vis clothing.
Some of these new models, i.e. mountain bikes, are sturdy and heavy, and capable of high speeds. It’s an accident, or worse, waiting to happen.
I had a bike as a teenager, and you didn’t dare to attempt to ride on the pavement.
If a policeman saw you without a light, you were told off – and we always ensured we cycled with care and with lights at night.
I think laws should be imposed to ensure all cyclists obey the Highway Code. To be made to wear protective headgear and, at night, to have lights on and wear high-vis clothing. Why not?
You say anything to some of these people and you’re met with foul abuse. Name and address received
Thanks for us getting home
A LETTER just to say thanks to everyone involved in getting us home from our holiday in Spain after the sad demise of Monarch Airlines.
We had flown on many occasions on holiday with Monarch, and always found them excellent – nice staff and good on-board service.
The help we got at Alicante Airport from HM Government officials was very good at a very worrying time.
Losing Monarch is a sad loss to Manchester Airport. Mr Jack McAvoy, Longsight
BAe should turn green
NEWS of the loss of hundreds of regional jobs in BAE Systems is devastating for those directly involved but to be expected as the government gets hooked on money black-hole projects such as Trident renewal and the American stealth fighter.
The irony is that whilst we will be shovelling billions into American corporations for weapons we should never use with diplomacy (let’s pass by Boris’ skills in this regard), British engineering prowess will be cast on the scrapheap and we pick up the poverty bill. At least we will have the satisfaction of knowing that it was not our hardware that was being used by despotic Gulf states to repress people; the argument that if we didn’t make and sell them their tools someone else would can hardly be countenanced as moral.
However, there is a win-win solution open for long-term investment.
BAE should move to developing and building renewable energy hardware.
Isn’t their expertise in solid shapes interacting with fluids in clever ways?
Rather than concentrate of a production run of a couple of hundred, constantly vulnerable to a policy change and being rendered obsolete by new technology, how much more secure to build efficient turbines needed by people to speed up our liberation from fossil fuels and the powers that control access to them. Tom Clarkson
We must vote on this deal
IN recent weeks, Viewpoints has lived up to its name, carrying many letters on Brexit and post-Brexit trade coming from different viewpoints.
Slogans have been repeated ad nauseam and we should respect the sincerity of those differing from ourselves, but could I please get over a couple of points which to me have not been aired?
Firstly, a couple of linguistic points.
Of course, Mrs May and her team will seek the ‘best deal possible.’ I don’t deny it.
But we have to ask: ‘Best for whom?’
For corporations with power or for consumers and small and medium sized enterprises?
The government is reported as having secretly met lobbyists for the former dozens of times compared to few meetings with ‘little people’ who depend on their MPs to hold government to account.
Secondly, we should note that ‘best’ is not ‘good.’
If we had to choose between a paedophile, burglar, rapist or murderer as our next door neighbour I guess many of us would chose ‘burglar’ as the best; but we would not call it ‘good.’
More fundamentally, we have the question of a confirmatory referendum.
Granted we didn’t all vote on going to war, but where that lacks public support look what problems that causes - leaving the EU is not something like the existential threat of Nazism in 1939.
When you buy a house you say yes knowing roughly what is on offer. Then you look closer and negotiate.
If at the end of the day it isn’t good enough, you can still withdraw.
Whatever happens in Catalonia, the EU must change as it isn’t just us who are sick of being bullied.
Very few people grasp what is involved. Shouldn’t we have a chance to positively support our government with whatever it gets – or to reject it to ‘remain and reform’? Joan Pleasance, Didsbury