Readers' letters

I have just been reading about Wayne Hemingway getting involved with the Harris.

Great!

I volunteer there and think it’s wonderful but so out of date.

It’s dark, scary, austere and some of the exhibits have been there all my life and more.

The exterior of the building is beautiful but not welcoming because of the wall.

The cafe kitchen is too small so can’t cater for the numbers. It is often closed so it’s underused.

The information desk is back to front so there is no welcome as you walk in.

The shop is too small.

There are loads going on in the building but nobody knows because things are never properly advertised.

There are too many employees on temporary contracts or only part-time so there is little coordination.

As staff are constantly changing, the volunteers are underused.

I’m no Wayne Hemingway but some suggestions are:

More lights. Move some big exhibits to open up space.

Build the steps back outside that took you directly into the building from the market.

Move the cafe into the left hand wing of the library and leave the doors open.

Remake the information desk on the opposite wall and facing the doors.

Put all future information up LARGE for all to see.

Leave the shop where it is but double its size and man it.

Employ someone to do massive advance advertising of all events. Recruit more volunteers and use them.

Pat via email

Site for buses and trains

Whilst waiting for a train recently at Preston Station, I wondered whether our town planners had missed a wonderful opportunity.

The obvious place for a bus station is next to the train station, so why not build the area over the train station?

The existing roof to the station would be dismantled, saving the ongoing costs of repairing this roof, whilst the first floor would become a bus station plus car parking.

The advantage would be that it is at the same level as Fishergate. The floor above the bus station would be used by retail, restaurants, cinema, and so on, connected to the station and car parks by escalators.

Further floors could be for offices, with apartments and hotel on the top floor.

One criticism could be that the area could not cope with increased traffic (shades of Butler Street horror stories) but a solution could be to increase the width of the existing Fishergate bridge by at least a further two lanes so that through traffic can be keep clear of local traffic.

Several new exit roads could be constructed to link with Fishergate so Butler Street would not need to be used and would then purely service the car park at the rear of Debenhams.

I would be interested to know if this solution was ever considered and, if so, the reason it was rejected.

Name and address supplied

Epitaph for Labour Party

UKIP is the Jeremy Kyle show, the Lib Dems are, at best, Emmerdale and Labour is now Christmas EastEnders.

Journalists across the land are leafing through their thesauruses trying to find synonyms for ‘cataclysm’.

And while all the parties that claimed to be socially democratic race towards the cliff edge, the officially titled Social Democratic Party, now a grassroots Eurosceptic outfit, is re-emerging. Surely this is Labour’s epitaph?

C Devine via email