Readers' letters - September 8

I note there are efforts to help left-handed children in learning to write.

However, as a left-hander myself, I think it is very important that not too 
much emphasis is placed on this.

Left-handers will, throughout their lives, have to get used to living in a right-handed world.

There is no help on a day-to-day basis.

If children grow up thinking there is, they will be sadly mistaken.

Writing in English itself is right-handed.

If you are left-handed, you have to push a pen rather than pull, and you can’t see what you have just written.

Books are right-handed.

Cheque books (remember them?) were particularly difficult.

A wired computer mouse is set on the right.

Scissors, tin openers and potato peelers are right-handed.

Yes, you can buy left-handed versions but they are expensive and not always available to you.

ATMs are right-handed.

The only thing I can think of that is left-handed is the gear lever and hand brake in a right-hand drive car.

The righties are even designing these out.

I could go on, but please don’t treat left-handed children as having a disability because, as they grow older, they will have to get used to a right-handed world.

David Collins

Address supplied

environment

Hen which laid the golden egg

Slowly but surely, we are now seeing what appears to be the truth about the Broughton by-pass, which is not to ease the congestion around the village but to open up the North Preston area as a massive building site.

No matter that the residents were told that, other than two developments already agreed upon, there would be no more building in the area. If so, then why are plans being submitted to build on Whittingham Lane, Sandygate Lane and sites up the A6 to Barton and beyond.

It does not matter if sites get turned down the first time. They will always pass the second time as builders know that parish councils don’t have the finances to pay for more fights so they bide their time and eventually succeed.

But why more housing around the whole of Preston? Who really will come to live here? Why unsnarl areas of traffic only to fill them up again immediately?

Houses are not selling so quickly now.

Does Preston really think that all these houses will mean more footfall into the town? Is that why they never have shops, schools, doctors, public transport in the mix?

Well, folk won’t be encouraged to go into town unless the place is cleaned up.

I am horrified at how unkempt the place is and I know that is due to folk, and not the council, but they need to address the problem as it is off- putting. Preston is a city for goodness sake!

There are dirty side streets, beggars and litter.

It used to be so good and might have been still if the powers-that-be had a bit more vision.

Who turned down the Grosvenor scheme that could have really made us look like a city or, if you wanted a small-town atmosphere, who ripped the centre apart?

With the canal running into the middle as it did, we might have become a second Skipton with restaurants and canal cruises. Kendal to Preston – what a lost opportunity!

Who passed the ring road through the town, not around it, or allowed the demolition of lovely buildings and agreed to the ugly statues, what few there are, being commissioned?

Who decided the Guild Wheel, that ran through glorious country lanes, would now become simply a road, running for the main part through built-up areas, and, dare I say it, causing havoc to pedestrians?

Thankfully, we still have the parks but for how long the way things are going?

Who was daft enough to pass a youth zone for an area where buses go in and out?

The public objected to many of the schemes but, as usual, were over-ruled. All these so-called highly educated folk who decide these things have a lot to answer for because they make a hash of much they touch.

Why do they never listen to Joe Public? Where are people of common sense?

But the biggest mistake, and worst of all, is who decided to destroy the glorious countryside that we were surrounded by?

Don’t they realise they have killed the hen that laid the golden egg?

The surrounding green belt that made this part of Lancashire so stunningly beautiful and worthy of visiting is no more.

Who will want to come now? All the folk in these new houses will do is get on the now very handy M6 and M55 and clear off to shop elsewhere.

Oh dear! No wonder people get weary of it all.

Whoever said we, who live in these areas, accept it are QUITE mistaken.

We are sick of being taken for fools but know it is a waste of time to protest.

It sickens those of us who have always lived here.

C Cross

via email

transport

I’m forced to use my car

I have to agree with Mrs J Yates’ letter (Bus service is vital for rural areas, August 25).

The lack of buses is affecting me in my tiny village of Wray.

I am being forced to use my car more and more to get to Lancaster or Kirkby Lonsdale because there are hardly any, or no, buses at all.

What with new housing developments everywhere, the roads are just going to get busier and busier.

I am 77 and there will be a time soon when I won’t want to drive any more so will have to spend the rest of my days isolated in Wray.

Please bring back a decent bus service,

please.

Anne Midgley

Wray