Letters - July 16, 2018

It’s good to see the ambitious plans to improve Blackpool’s town centre.

I spend a fair amount of time on Facebook extolling the town’s virtues, past and present.

However I wonder if anyone of influence has noticed the dirty state of the pavements and roads. I am not talking about litter; we see that being picked up regularly. But the ingrained beer, blood and vomit stains that cover the decorative tinted brick and stonework that was so carefully laid in Church Street, Abingdon Street, St John’s and Cedar Squares etc only a few years ago.

Do the streets of Blackpool ever get washed?

Because of the nature of our the town, we unfortunately draw in more than our fair share of the lower underclass of society who think nothing late at night of getting drunk, fighting, throwing up and even defecating in the streets.

Surely there are machines available and capable if not nightly, at least once a week (or a month) of scrubbing clean the streets of our town centre.

Leslie Melville

Via email

SOCIETY

Young today will 
be old tomorrow

We hear much these days about an ageing population and the burden of increased longevity on the state and on society in general.

Old age is seemingly portrayed as the fault of the individual, who, from the state’s point of view, should have paid twice, not just into their state pension but into another more fruitful benefit and thus better planned for retirement or conveniently ‘popped their clogs’ earlier, thus making life easier for politicians by freeing up jobs and houses for the young.

There isn’t anyone on earth who isn’t going to grow old and ultimately feel the burden and bewilderment that may come with age and retirement.

Incomprehensible at first, but like winter it finally arrives.

First the feeling of idleness, then hopelessness, and finally despair, stemming very much from the shock of exchanging the helm of one’s own ship for a leaky rudderless rowing boat with one oar.

Don’t get me wrong, retirement can be a great time for those with huge pension pots, large loving families and perfect health but, for the less fortunate, old age can be a testing time, especially with no more than four walls and a TV for company.

Automatically sidelined and forgotten, able-bodied pensioners are left staring out of windows, watching the world speed by, oblivious of their plight. No local buses anymore, shops hard to get to, no prospects to speak of, no one to speak to, perhaps for days on end – too proud to ask, too proud to pick up a phone.

What goes round comes round and busy today soon becomes idle tomorrow and those vitally important meetings are now no more than memories in a faded diary.

A shadowy fragment of the past, one of so many fragments, like the mildewy Filofax sat on a tin of Simonize in an empty garage that once held the wheels of fortune; lost in what looking back

now seems like an instant.

Sadly, omitted from the diary are the words: Save! Save! Save!

Joseph G Dawson

Address supplied

BREXIT

MPs represent 
their constituents!

MPs should remember that they were chosen to represent their constituents. If their constituents voted for Brexit then they should do the same, regardless of their personal view.

JB Haggas

via email

BREXIT

The hypocrites 
are to blame

During the hot weather, we are now faced with water shortages to homes and industries, not because the reservoirs are low, but because distribution systems are inadequate.

Demands for patient care, school places, travel etc and now water supplies are apparently at breaking point and still some people wish to see our population of 66 million grow even faster.

To suggest the obvious you’re called ‘a racist’ but in time the true bigots of our society will wake up to pending crises all be it when it affects them directly. When, as I believe, full Brexit fails, time will probably show the damage that was done mainly by non-democratic methods and many may conclude that hypocrites were to blame.

Mike Dodgson

Address supplied