Council could do with some common sense
WOW! What educated idiot thought it was a good idea to close Castle Street, making life difficult for people taking buses by making them guess where they can now catch a bus home?
This is the main thoroughfare for taxis, buses, ordinary folk taking the quickest route from one side of the city to the other. But wait a minute, they are only the people that have to foot the bill for all this upheaval. Never mind them, they are only the many, so carry on regardless. And all this, just so that the few can dine alfresco and while they are at it, make one hell of a mess of the city.
OK, don’t worry, we can blame the seagulls, pigeons and rats. We already have pedestrian streets that could be used, the one side of St Mary Street, Working Street, Queen Street and even the very large patio area inside the castle but, of course, that is too obvious.
We don’t need special advisers, mathematicians, boffins and academics on the council, we already know what a mess they have made of our once beautiful city. Just get two people with lots of common sense and an organised mind. Just two, and they would do a better job. Pauline Lee
Rhiwbina, Cardiff
Free booklets for diabetes sufferers
LIVING through these past few months has been, and is, difficult for all of us and people with diabetes are no exception to this.
Along with many other people with underlying health conditions, people with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes have been isolating or having to shield if they are one of the most vulnerable groups.
It has been an anxious time because they need regular food supplies to maintain their diet to control their diabetes but also because they have been unable to have their routine health checks. In this situation, we would like your readers to know that we can help them to learn more about their diabetes and how to look after themselves with our free booklets.
The most useful are Diabetes – Everyday Eating which contains 28 days of menus of everyday, affordable meals to help people manage their diabetes. Looking After Your Feet is a booklet to help people know what to look for to try to reduce the risks of foot damage and amputations. Finally, Diabetes and Exercise helps people to exercise according to their abilities to help them manage their diabetes. Our booklets are free. Readers can obtain copies of Diabetes – Everyday Eating, Looking After Your Feet and Diabetes and Exercise by contacting IDDT: telephone 01604 622837 or email: jenny@iddtinternational.org Jenny Hirst
Co-Chair, InDependent Diabetes Trust
Will town embrace one-way system?
THERE is a new one-way pedestrian system in the town centre in Penarth, apparently based on regulating pedestrian movement in part of Windsor Road and Glebe Street in particular.
The new system came into operation on Monday. The rationale would be to facilitate walkers distancing themselves more easily from one another. It was not a coincidence that the new system came into force the day a much larger number of retail businesses reopened, their having been closed for about three months.
It is early days to evaluate the scheme. Administratively the new changes appear to have been introduced at very short notice and arguably without much consultation with the public either.
Time will tell, and the Vale council could arguably be given a bit of credit for taking an initiative which may do some good. But the usual critics online and otherwise are in full flow. If the system does not work, a minority not complying with the rules, it can always be withdrawn.
There was the scheme to introduce a pedestrianised area at the bottom of Glebe Street quite a few years ago but partly as a result of criticism from the retailers in the area, the scheme was reversed, at some loss to the council treasury presumably. The Vale council behaved like the fictional Duke of York on that occasion, marching up the hill, and then down again. Michael O’Neill
Penarth
What educated idiot thought it was a good idea to close Castle Street?
Let children follow their passions
AS AN ex-headteacher, I have come into contact (two-metre spacing of course) and also online with parents at home with their children. The majority have come to realise what a job teachers have in motivating their offspring and a new-found respect is forthcoming.
With regard to their children, they have in some cases noticed the lack of tension in their child and less irritation in their behaviour. One answer to this is the opportunity to bond with their parents and have more “quality time” as some armchair psychologists babble about. Certainly, the lockdown has reduced the guilt factor in parents.
There is rightly concern that there is a wide gap in what some children have done in regard to work at home and others. At some point, all children will return and it will be the daunting task of teachers and headteachers to square that circle.
When I started teaching there were no tiers of management control, schools and their headteachers were autonomous, and frankly, I find it insulting to say that those were the bad old days. If they were that bad how come they produced doctors, nurses, teachers, bankers, solicitors, and more importantly confident but less academic people who went on to be bricklayers, builders, plumbers, the backbone of our society? The latter group we have had to import from Europe as our apprenticeship system collapsed and every child was expected to be academic and reach some ridiculous “standard” that served only politicians and educational zealots, many of whom removed themselves quickly from the front line.
This is a great opportunity to put those people back in their box. The Assembly paid considerably for Donaldson to produce his ideas on our education. The virus has taught us one thing: that life must change and one of those things will be that individuals will have to find their way more so in this world. The days of cloned children all following the same mantra, like Victorian work children rattling off the same old maths and English, should be over. It
is the time to encourage individuality and make the system serve the children, not the other way around.
Everyone can remember passionate teachers, individuals in their own right, and they are still there in schools all over the country and they are much loved. They are artists, writers, sportspeople, musicians, eager to have the shackles of testing and assessment dragged from their shoulders. I want to see kids with medals and badges not schools with management plaques showing a superior contempt for their fellow teachers and their schools.
It is becoming clear that with the world of work changing rapidly, our children will need to specialise and focus on an uncertain future. They must find their own passion, one they will pursue with gusto.
I have taught many a child over my career and none has made me more proud than those who with limited academic ability have carved a lucrative niche for themselves. Under the present regime, I fear that any confidence they had in themselves would have been knocked of them.