Barriers should be broken down and friendships made

LAST week saw the opening of two new stores in Hinckley. The arrival of Lidl and Aldi show the confidence of businesses outside of the town to invest in the area and have helped redevelop sites that have been derelict for many years.

Each of these developments have included landscaping and improvements to the surrounding roads and pavements. This brings jobs and more choice to local shoppers. Looking closer, one of the stores supports the GB Olympic team and has schemes for “kit for Schools” and the other one supports the NSPCC charity.

This is another example of how, though cooperation companies from across Europe can do business in the UK. In these cases the companies are part of German organisations. This is also true for other local employers such as EON, DPD as well as employers wider afield such as Mini (BMW) and some of the rail companies that are part of the Germany state railway DeutscheBahn (DB).

This represents the true nature of our world today and of the positive benefits of working with our European neighbours

With reference to the letter in a recent edition, it is much more appropriate that “Ode to Joy” is heard across Europe with its call to “Let us sing more cheerful songs, more full of joy”.

The other song that was mentioned from the musical Caberet was a song from 88 years ago should be left to the history books as they have no relationship with the modern German state which was founded 70 years ago. The authors of the Geman constitution (The Basic Law), including Britain, sought to ensure that a potential dictator would never again be able to come to power in that country.

For many decades Hinckley maintained a twinning with the German town of Herford and it is through such initiatives that ignorance and barriers are broken down and friendships are made.

E. Gabriel, Hinckley