Letters - Monday, November 22, 2021

In response to Ron Smith’s letter (Your Say, Gazette, November 19), I really don’t know what he expects from society.

Children are children and always pick items up in the supermarket and pester Mum and Dad to buy sweets or chocolate or whatever. It’s what children do!

Touching things and playing with things are part of a child’s development. I’d be more concerned if they weren’t doing these things.

It is perfectly normal for adults to pick up items too. Perhaps to see exactly what is in it – this is very important for those with allergies, or to see if it looks fresh etc.

Just because most of the Government have over-reacted to this virus, it doesn’t mean we all need to act as if just touching something is going to kill someone else.

It’s getting beyond a joke.

Have you ever thought how many people touch food and packaging, from its beginnings to the supermarket shelves?

Or maybe everything is made in the air and happens to just land in the shops as if by some kind of Harry Potter spell, without it touching anyone or anything?

Do you put gloves on to open your mail because several people have handled it before it reaches your letterbox? Do you ask someone else to hold the petrol pump because dozens and dozens of folk have touched it before you got there?

It’s time to realise that germs are all around – always have been and always will be.

It just requires a little bit of common sense, or, as it should be called sadly these days, uncommon sense.

Bewildered

Via email

HERITAGE

Can you help with sidecar search?

The Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust (JDHT) is busy planning its celebrations for 2022 for the Centenary of when in 1922, William Lyons and William Walmsley started the Swallow Sidecar Company in Blackpool.

The major event of our year will be a full day at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon on Saturday, September 3 2022 and then on Sunday, September 4 we start a tour coming ‘Back to Blackpool’, arriving at Stanley Park on Friday, September 9 2022.

As part of our planning we have been doing a lot of research into the Blackpool days and would like to request some help from Gazette readers.

At the moment we are focusing on Swallow Sidecar Company’s original factory in Bloomfield Road, which is now The Armfield Club. We have already written up the history we know, on our website, https://www.jaguarheritage.com/bloomfield-road-blackpool/.

There used to be a blue plaque on the building when it was the No.1 Working Mens Club which has disappeared, and we will have a new one produced and re-installed during 2022. But there are a number of gaps in our knowledge of the history of the building. Any help with the following will be gratefully received:

* Does anyone have any photos from 1922 to 1926 showing the factory while Swallow occupied it?

* Does anyone have any photos of the buildings in Back Woodfield Lane and John Street when occupied by Swallow Sidecars?

* Was the Mr Outhwaite who ran the electrical business at Bloomfield Road in 1920 anything to do with the Mr Outhwaite who was headmaster of Arnold School in 1970s? (William Lyons went to Arnold School).

* Does anyone know the dates when the building occupied by the No1 Working Men’s Club?

*l Does anyone know any of the other uses of building from 1926 to when No 1 took it over?

Please contact Tony Merrygold at the JDHT direct either via email to [email protected] or on 07802 455 217

Tony Merrygold

Vehicle Collection Manager

Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust

DIPLOMACY

Nazanin’s plight lies at PM’s door

I’m very relieved that Richard Ratcliffe’s hunger strike outside the Foreign Office highlighting the ongoing detention of his wife Nazanin in Iran has come to an end.

That she’s still detained is in no small measure due to Boris Johnson. In November 2017 as Foreign Secretary he incorrectly told a Commons Committee that she was “teaching journalism”. This misinformation meant that three days later Zaghari-Ratcliffe was suddenly hauled before an Iranian court where Johnson’s words were taken as proof she was using propaganda against the state.

Johnson was clearly embarrassed and briefed the Telegraph that the UK would repay the £400m it had withheld for arms that had never been delivered. Four years on the debt has not been repaid and Nazanin remains in detention. How could any politician with an ounce of principle allow this mess of his making to continue? However, our PM is a man with no moral compass and this is just one of many egregious acts that rest at his door.

Terry Riordan

via email

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