Readers' letters

Museum will be missed
The Museum of Lancashire, Stanley Street, Preston, will be closed from todayThe Museum of Lancashire, Stanley Street, Preston, will be closed from today
The Museum of Lancashire, Stanley Street, Preston, will be closed from today

Many people will be unaware that Lancashire County Council will close the MOL, the Museum of Lancashire, on September 30.

Housed in the Georgian court building, the displays tell the history of the county, the many industries and the beautiful countryside and coast. There are also aspects of life during the First World War and Second World War.

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Over 30,000 visitors visit each year, many of them children.

If no one can be found to take over the museum in 2017, it will remain closed and the collections, which cannot be disposed of or sold, will be put into storage.

On behalf of the Friends of the Museum, may I express warmest thanks to the staff and volunteers for their dedication, help, courtesy and friendliness.

They and the museum will be greatly missed.

Audrey Forster via email

Pragmatism or social change?

Now that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership will undoubtedly last until the next general election, the British public now have to decide what sort of society they really want to live in.

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Whether the Labour PLP likes it or not, the electorate will be offered a collection of mildly socialist reforms that has arguably not been on offer since the end of the Second World War. And why not?

While Tony Blair won two elections under the banner of ‘New Labour’, his ‘third way’ brand of politics was arguably as dead as a Dodo long before he resigned as Prime Minister in 2007, and long before New Labour lost power in 2010. The Iraq war being just one reason why. Arguably, it was Ed Miliband’s failure to completely disentangle Labour from the political pragmatism of ‘New Labour’, including Blair, Brown, Mandelson and Campbell, that also cost him the 2015 election.

Despite the ‘pragmatic’ style of politics New Labour liked to think it projected, such pragmatism failed to substantially improve life for many of Britain’s poor nor its middle classes, and did very little to protect the rights of British workers.

In reality, it offered a brand of political pragmatism akin to a woman having to put up with domestic violence from her partner, simply because she has nowhere else to go and no one to turn to.

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It’s a political pragmatism that totally accepts the dominance of the dominant, without recoil and without exception, but hoping that a few extra crumbs will be dropped from the table of the high and mighty in return for the favour.

Paul Dodenhoff via email

Remainers, do stop whingeing

Barry Freeman seems to be delusional regarding Brexit (LEP, September 26). The fact of the matter is that on June 23, 2016, the British people were asked a very simple and unequivocal question: “Remain or Leave?”

This was to ensure that the public knew exactly what they were voting for, and it was agreed by all parties. The public voted leave, and if Mr Freeman is not sure what that means, I can enlighten him: “Remove oneself from, an association with, or participation in.”

I can also advise him that many people’s decision to leave has been taken over decades and not, as he incorrectly assumes, during the six-week campaign.

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I have seen the UK (apart from London) decline markedly over the last 40 years.

And as for democracy, the British people have given the British Government the mandate (approval) to leave (by definition) by a substantial margin – that is the democratic wish of the British people and must be endorsed in full. Anything less would be grossly undemocratic. It’s time Mr Freeman and his ilk accepted the will of the British public, accept the democratic referendum decision, and stopped whingeing.

G P Wildon, address supplied