Scrapping traffic lights? It’s a no-go for the disabled
I am disappointed at the uncritical way proposals to scrap traffic lights and have more ‘shared spaces’ (mail) are being presented.
By naming his organisation Equality Streets, martin Cassini implies that ‘shared spaces’ are beneficial for everyone, including the disabled. The opposite is true.
I doubt whether his group has considered the negative impact of such developments on people with a wide range of disabilities.
This is evident from feedback by disabled people who have been injured in, or are now too scared to go into, shared spaces, known to many of them as ‘scared spaces’.
In Coventry, an elderly man died in an area he could not negotiate safely after it was altered, and there has recently been a tragic bus crash there. Pleas from disabled people not to implement shared spaces were ignored.
The Guide Dogs for the Blind association has done extensive research on the impact of shared spaces on those with a wide range of disabilities.
a study in Holland found visuallyimpaired people did not consider such schemes to be positive, as their i ndependence has been severely compromised. any drop in accident rates can be accounted for by the most vulnerable people avoiding those areas.
as someone with severe mobility issues, who has tried to discuss this pernicious philosophy with traffic planners, I am appalled at the almost missionary zeal with which such schemes are being pursued, making many areas no-go zones for disabled people.
We need a review of the training of town and traffic planners so that they base their plans on evidence rather than doctrine.
SHEILA HAWKEN, Bath, Somerset.
SNP’s unhealthy politics
THE SNP conference was a dissenter-free, controlled affair that would not have been out of place in an Eastern European country during the Cold War.
The roof rung with self-congratulatory smugness at their success and the mandatory leader worship. Instead of smugness, alarm bells should be ringing – in every party.
The electoral success of which they boast does not even signal that a majority of the people are in agreement with the SNP’s policies – and most certainly not the breakup of the UK. This was proved conclusively in the referendum.
It is politically unhealthy for the country for the SNP to have the power it does.
Cracks are beginning to appear and the selection of some of its candidates and decisions by ministers suggest a worrying ‘We can do what we like’ attitude, so typical of power abuse.
as it was when Labour held the hegemony, this kind of one party state is not something to boast about – but something that should worry every thinking person in Scotland. ALEXANDER MCKAY,
Edinburgh. NICOLA Sturgeon’s admission at last week’s SNP conference that, guided by opinion polls, she alone will decide when the next independence referendum is to be held is jaw-dropping.
Can someone list for the First minister the significant differences between a referendum and an opinion poll?
Can she be reminded what ‘promise’ means in the context of ‘once in a generation or even a lifetime’? Then will someone please explain to miss Sturgeon the meaning of democracy? MARTIN REDFERN,
Edinburgh.
Navy is all at sea
THE Royal Navy is considering asking the australian Navy to lend it sailors with specialist skills to man our warships (mail).
Two years ago, our daughter, her husband and their three teenage children went to live in Sydney. Her husband had been second- incommand of a British warship, taught diving, was trained in bomb disposal and was a gunnery officer.
His future in our Navy was poor, however, and he applied to join the australian Navy. It accepted him with open arms, organising his flights and accommodation. Returning to help the Royal Navy is the last thing our son-in-law will want to do, after the way he was treated.
TREVOR HOULTON, Walton-on-the-Hill, Staffs.
Back Scottish steel
LaST night on the news, following the announcement of job losses at Tata Steel, alex Salmond was calling on the Westminster Government to intervene.
Sadly, in January 2012, none of the 37,000 tons of steel destined for the new Forth bridge was to be produced in Scotland, but Poland, China and Spain instead. Despite mr Salmond’s doubts they would be up to it, the motherwell plant filled the breach in December when other suppliers failed.
Perhaps the British steel industry would be more solvent today if, instead of sending work abroad, the Holyrood Government supported and expressed faith in the Scottish workforce. Had mr Salmond never heard BMW always requested Ravenscraig steel when that plant was in production?
The old adage that previous governments had let the industry down is wearing thin, especially when the Scottish workforce is overlooked. JESSIE MACMILLAN, Wishaw, Lanarkshire.
Trampling over history
THE depiction of Emily Davison at t he Derby in t he new film Suffragette is yet another example of ignoring the facts if they get in the way of a good story.
For dramatic effect, i t was essential that Suffragette concluded with Davison’s death at Epsom and her funeral. But by 1912-13 she was acting alone. By 1912 she held no post with the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Despite what the film depicts, she went to Epsom alone, her action was not off-the- cuff, and it was impossible for her to dash half a mile through dense crowds to Tattenham Corner minutes before the ‘off ’ and somehow find a prime location on the rails.
She did not ‘target’ the King’s horse: she had no i dea where anmer was in the field. No one knows what was in her outstretched right hand, but it wasn’t a scarf: it did not demonstrate f abric properties when flying through the air after the collision.
The actress playing Davison is also too young. Davison was 40, and photographs show her looking years older, thanks to the hunger strikes and force-feeding she had already endured.
This merely reinforces the myths which have been allowed to grow up around Davison rather than stripping them away to reveal her true colours: brave but foolhardy. But suffrage had its martyr.
MICHAEL TANNER, author: the Suffragette derby, Sleaford, Lincs.
Naked stupidity
ANY normal person supports breast cancer awareness, but how does a young woman clad only in killer heels and the tiniest pair of knickers walking down a street raise breast cancer awareness?
Why wasn’t she wearing a skirt or trousers? Will she be talked about and remembered f or bringing breast cancer to public attention, or for stopping the traffic?
Mrs I. BASHAM, Bristol.