Be careful what you wish for in city

Clearly it is welcome Bath Labour Party has finally caught up with many others and have made a pledge to consult on ‘pedestrianising’ the city centre. But cynic that I am I can’t help wondering if this is some clever ploy by the Bath Labour leadership to take the eye off the ball to the fact Labour have a controversial leader in Jeremy Corbyn, who would re-nationalise anything that moved. I imagine some Momentum ‘theorist’ sat somewhere in a darkened room dredging up some way to convert post Bath to Corbynism. Though I doubt Liberal Democrat/ Conservative Bath is quite ready for the communistic world of dear old Jeremy. But why does the vital question of clean air in Bath have to be a political football? Only in recent years a Bath party almost destroyed itself because it had a wrong policy. The recent conference on transport and pollution showed there is a will to do something although I did think it rather naive the chairman of the Federation of Bath Residents’ Associations said ‘cars don’t shop, people do.’ This seems to suggest his organisation is in favour of stopping motor cars entering the city centre altogether. Much more realistic and wise were gift shop owner Lucy Simon’s words ‘if the city centre is closed off to cars and access vehicles, it will rip the heart out of the city and kill it from the centre out.’ It must be remembered major high-street chains are already in trouble and we could have a wonderfully pedestrianised city centre - and no shops. Beware of those who would have Bath like some old Western ghost town. Peter Burns