Readers' letters: Plans for Harris Museum makes it look more like Primark than a museum

I drink in its splendour, which derives from its magnificent architecture, it’s loftiness and its hushed acoustic.

I climb the lovely old staircase to the very top and gaze down over the rail to the atrium below, which I used to do as a child, aided by my mother to revel in the vertiginous thrill.

I go back downstairs and say hello to Foucault’s Pendulum, staying just long enough to observe the effect that it is there to demonstrate. And then, best of all, the library.

As a kid, it was the sheer quantity of books that thrilled me; ones that helped me with schoolwork, certainly, but there was such a rich variety. That was it though, just books.

Now they seem to want to turn it into some sort of rest room.

A shame.

There was something marvellous about getting lost amid the old book-stacks.

On page 4 of the Post, I see pictures of intended changes that sadden me (LP June 24).

All that brightness and whiteness!

It’s more like Primark.

Surely there are rules against such desecration?

I know the old place could probably do with a bit of a clean and there are various places that could do with a bit of maintenance and sensitive ‘touching up’, but it is a museum after all and a museum piece in its own right. Anyone agree?

John Stopford

New Longton

reforms

Scrap the bathroom ban

Lancaster Pride, a celebration of diversity in our community, should have been brightening our city’s streets last weekend.

Instead we find our government planning to scrap the proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act which are intended to reduce the obstacles to trans people gaining legal status for their acquired gender.

It is also suggested that government plans to introduce a ‘bathroom ban’ preventing trans people from using public bathrooms for their acquired gender.

Such a ban would force trans people identifying and living in line with their acquired gender whilst awaiting gender recognition surgery to use bathrooms of their birth gender subjecting them to risk of abuse and violence as well as significant harm to their mental health.

As a Liberal Democrat I support the proposed reform of the Gender Recognition Act and urge the Government to press ahead with reform and to scrap plans for a ‘bathroom ban’.

As a community we must understand that trans people are amongst the most vulnerable people in society, at risk of abuse and violence and as a community having a much higher suicide rate than the general population.

Liberal Democrats stand with the trans community and are calling on the government to reform the Gender Recognition Act and scrap the ‘bathroom ban’.

I would encourage people to write to our local MPs urging them to support reform of the Gender Recognition Act and scrapping of the ‘bathroom ban’.

Peter Jackson

Chairman, Lancaster and Morecambe Liberal Democrats