PROTECT TUNSTALL COMMUNITY

#157: Life's Too Short ... and rarely simple - A multi perspective view

Agree totally with the spirit and concilliatory nature of your comments. Though my views and hopes for this plan are in direct opposition to your own, I respect your right to hold them and defend your right also to propound them. I am sure most of us want a just , sensible and sustainable outcome.

As a child growing up in the post war years in a rural environment, we had neither the wealth nor at that time the availibility of the double curse of television or computer games. Being in such an environment we were encouraged to read, which we did avidly and also to dicuss and construct an argument which would throw light rather than heat on a particular topic. One aspect of wisdom my mother would interject at times when maybe a little too much heat was being generated was that fifty per cent of the art of conversation or discussion was listening. A skill that seems sadly lacking in this current debate.

As for the large scale of these early learning facilities being the future or progress  I have my reservations, as the twin curses of television and computer games, once hailed as revolutionary and beneficial to all, have been seen to have a deletirious effect on family life and community cohesion. We are often told that 'we work so many hours these days there just isn't the time any more for family life' , but in my own and my fathers working lives 60-70 hour working weeks were not uncommon, yet the time was still found to cement the bonds of family and community. Again this is notably absent now.

Forgive my rant and personal social history, but I am just using it to highlight the difference in attitude, then and now.

I don't think I am looking through rose tinted specs as I can still feel the warmth of all those years past, it isn't evident now.

In conclusion ditch the screechers and wilfully deaf, let reason and generosity of spirit prevail.

Offered in a spirit of amity and good neighbourliness