Letters - Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Apparently the new version of the Highway Code introduces a hierarchy of road users, with those who can do the most harm having the greatest responsibility to reduce the danger they pose to others.

So drivers of motorised vehicles have to take more care and are more culpable than cyclists or pedestrians.

Can someone explain to me how this squares with the often seen scenario of the car driver driving along perfectly correctly only to have some idiot engrossed in their smartphone stepping straight in front of them without looking?

Surely, in that case, the most vulnerable road user is responsible for causing the most harm?

Perhaps a rethink is required.

Paul Morley

via email

Changes to the Highway Code allowing cyclists to ‘hog’ the middle of the road only confirms a practice which has been commonplace for years.

Peter Rickaby

via email

RESPONSE

Decline of written English to get worse

Our English teacher during our last school lesson strongly advised us that we should read every day, newspapers, magazines, join the library and to even acquire pen friends so we could keep our writing and reading skills up to standard.

All of these and more I put into practice from that day on so, I fully agree with Barry Clayton regarding a dramatic fall in reading and writing skills of children entering secondary school and sadly, adults (Your Say, January 28).

Texting and abbreviation of words or just four single letters standing for a sentence is slowly becoming normal in written language. Our English teacher would be mortified!

Grammar and words becoming one or with a dash in-between, the computer spell check has decided this is the way, yet it never was.

While Mr Clayton feels reading and writing should be given urgent attention, I’m sure he has little hope of it ever being corrected as up and coming generations will carry on and the situation become worse until the written English language will be minimal and snail mail become obsolete with just texting and email contact left.

Clifford Chambers

Blackpool

POLITICS

Boris doesn’t have to worry about rises

Blundering Boris is still at it, this Bullingdon boy who is so out of touch with the real world and still refuses to grow-up. He uses sound-bites to avoid answering direct questions and thinks he can bluff his way out of everything.

He talks of levelling up, but in practice he is just looking after the rich, ensuring that they don’t notice any changes to their wealth. In April the MPs get a £2 000 rise then go and get food and drink subsidised by the taxpayer. The Tory MPs just need paper hats as they already have their jokes with Boris and his Cabinet... and then they have Party Time.

On the other side of the scale, the poor are already feeling his way to raze the poor. Those on Universal Credit have already felt the cuts and will be heavily impacted with the rises in energy and food bills and the choices they have to make just to exist.

The pensioners have seen his broken manifesto promises on the TV licence, and the Triple Lock on the pensions. They are due to get a 3.1 per cent rise yet the bank of England have stated that they think inflation will be 6 per cent by April. The National Insurance will rise, the tax threshold has been frozen and he is not offering any Vat cuts. In his world these are not things he has to worry about - all his bills are paid by the taxpayer.

Many of the poor have had to cut down on portion sizes and try to manage without turning the heating on. He seems hell-bent on freezing and starving pensioners out.

The NHS has done a good job with vaccinations; this is despite Boris not because of him. The NHS saved his life. How does he repay them? By giving them a below inflation rise. Since we got Boris as Prime Minister no one talks of Great Britain any more. How can they call it Great with a Prime Minister who cannot tell the difference between work and parties, who continually lies, who has no backbone, who is craven, has no morals and no nous. He seems totally unaware of the damage he is doing to this once great country.

He should go but he has no honour and so will not do the Honourable thing. It is up to his MPs to remove him and then see if they can find an honest Tory to replace him, this will be a mammoth task.

Terry Bennett

Blackpool

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