Readers' letters - January 13

How many years has it taken Preston councillors and Lancashire County Council to realise there is a problem with traffic around the Eastway and A6/ D’urton Lane junctions?

So the answer? Build not just one massive estate between Eastway and D’urton Lane but another one too.

Why, oh why, instead of causing years of inconvenience and allowing the building of the houses to proceed, did they not insist the infrastructure, i.e. roads, are constructed and finished, even before a brick is laid?

If this had happened, it would have minimised the chaos that we are having to cope with.

I hope to the heavens that there will be a link road crossing this estate from the new Broughton Bypass to Eastway, because if not, there has been a golden opportunity missed which would have cut the utter chaos that is the Broughton roundabout all day, every day.

It never ceases to amaze me the amateurish manner in which way these developments are allowed to pop up everywhere with absolutely no regard to anything.

I do pity the poor folk that are going to have to live in the two developments near Grasshoppers, where not only do they have the M65 on one side, and Eastway on another, but they will also have the mainline London to Glasgow railway line chugging all the way 24 hours a day.

Exasperated Fulwood resident

Pictured: The development being built off Eastway, opposite Grasshoppers

transport

Passengers are forgotten

It seems that the 113 Wigan bus service is going to be extended next month to replace our 150/1 half hourly transport, with an hourly run over shorter routes.

Already, we are without night and Sunday provision, whilst other services to Bolton, Penwortham and Longridge enjoy ten minute intervals most of the time.

Even the X2 Southport runs twice an hour.

Personally, I can manage my own travel by walking to Station Road, but how are others intended to cope, getting to work or college etc?

Even though a good proportion of us have the benefit of NoW permits, the total shown on a driver’s “duty ticket” runs into hundreds of pounds. And the extended 113 Wigan run will mean a four-hour stint for our drivers who, for the most part, have really served us very well.

Clearly, the cuts are planned by operators who appear to have no interest in the needs of passengers in this locality, where so many of us depend on the service.

Yet we pay our tax like everyone else!

G W Richards

Bamber Bridge

brexit

PM’s muddled thinking on EU

Mrs May’s apparent confusion over Brexit got another airing on Sunday when she suggested that Britain will leave the single market.

The PM insisted that the UK will not try to keep bits of EU membership and that she can secure control over immigration. However, only in December did Mrs May refuse to rule out paying into the EU for continued access to the single market, and in an interview with Irish broadcaster RTE yesterday, Chancellor Philip Hammond confirmed the UK has not made any decision.

Mrs May likes to play things very close to her chest, but the more she speaks, the less we actually seem to know. Despite the smoke and mirrors, it would be naïve of anyone to suggest that the UK could simply walk away from Europe within the next two years without some sort of replacement trade deal in place, or at least under negotiation. That would certainly make a mockery of our previous membership of the EU and its often stated benefits.

Additionally, as former Home Secretary, Mrs May failed to make any in-roads at all into Britain’s immigration problems. While many people seemed to vote for Brexit simply over immigration, Britain actually accepts more migrants from outside the EU than from the EU itself, and depending on which analysis you accept, illegal immigration is a much bigger problem anyway.

Paul Dodenhoff

via email

technology

Robots are taking over

They’re here and they’re taking over our jobs at rabid speed. Who are ‘they’ you might ask? They’re robots (or, to be more precise, technology).

People talk about immigration and jobs but whenever I hear of redundancies, technology is to blame. We can leave the EU, stay in the EU, limit immigration, have a no-borders policy. It will make no difference to those people who will one day lose their jobs because the machines are taking over, directly or indirectly.

But what can one do?

We shop online (resulting in high street shops closing, therefore people lose their jobs), bank online (banks then close), use self-service tills (supermarket workers lose their jobs). We even have driverless cars and drone deliveries to ‘look forward’ to but has anyone wondered if taxi and bus drivers will be made redundant as a result?

Big bosses can save money by using technology instead of employing workers and, I guess, whenever we ourselves choose the tech rather than the human option, we help this decision along. Maybe we should just accept that this is the way the world is these days – uncertain.

But what will happen in the future, I wonder? Will there be any jobs left for us humans? Technology can and does improve our lives but we should also be in control and I wonder if we are becoming its servants instead.

Jane

Lancashire

nostalgia

Fun on the revolving bar

Dennis Barton and Derek (Wally) Walsh are pictur ed aboard the ‘Revolving Bar’ in the Viennese Ballroom at Butlins Pwllheli, in Wales (see today’s Looking Back).

Dave Moon, sitting on the floor, has just created the original binge-drinking sessions...all on one night!

Yes, the bar continually revolved (without seatbelts)! No health and safety rules in those days.

To get off...you FELL off!

The Viennese Ballroom was NOT home to Johann Strauss dance nights, but home to pop group Tina & The Hotstrings, whose signature tune was Walking The Dog, a minor 1964 hit by the Dennisons. Great Stuff.

All lads, just before midnight, relocated to the Blinking Owl Bar.

Owing to the alleged ‘watering’ of the draught beer, all the boys switched to copious amounts of bottled Mann’s and Forest Brown ales.

Wilf Riley

via email