OPINION: Letters to the editor of the Newbury Weekly News
Traffic flows very well along new link road
Regarding the front page report regarding the new Kings Road link (Newbury Weekly News, August 15), the first few lines state that drivers are in a rage about the new link.
In my opinion all drivers are in a rage about stuff that they don’t agree with, like 20mph speed limits.
It will not be because of lack of or poor signage that will cause the inevitable accident, it will be poor driving and the inability to read the road.
How I wonder do theses drivers navigate in a new ‘to them’ town or city where awareness is key?
Strictly speaking, the first drivers who have this inevitable accident will be local who have not read the road or the NWN.
One thing that we don’t need is more traffic lights.
At the moment traffic flows very well along the new link.
Richard Baker
York Road, Newbury
We can’t lose our only public squash courts
Myself and many people in Newbury strongly object to the proposal to close Newbury’s last public and accessible squash courts.
West Berks should be encouraging sports, especially to youngsters and especially when squash will be in the next Olympic Games.
Newbury has enjoyed the use of the squash courts since they were built for us in 1980s and it will be a massive loss to the town.
There is a thriving squash club and league at Northcroft – promoting both physical and mental health, and the younger members have been steadily increasing.
Funding – why is there massive funding support for a new gym at Northcroft?
I am a member and use it now and it is perfectly suitable.
Why spend massive amounts on a new gym when there is one already… and many others in Newbury town?
Squash courts take up minimal space... there is ample room to accommodate these within Northcroft along with other facilities – at the very least one court should be maintained.
This is also very much against the local and national development plans.
Please help us retain a valuable local facility.
Simon Bunce
Newbury
Infrastructure in UK has declined so much
Travelling through several Balkan countries this summer we were impressed with the upkeep of the roads and pristine condition of lakes and waterways.
Returning to England, we were distinctly unimpressed.
As a cyclist and a motorist I spend a large amount of time wending my way around potholes, partly as a matter of self preservation and partly to save on costly wheel repairs which councils are becoming extremely reluctant to compensate.
Rather like river pollution, it is the insidious creep of acceptability and resignation that allows such decline in quality of infrastructure to be tolerated.
Other countries with fewer resources make these a priority as they contribute to quality of life.
Perhaps we should bear this in mind with the projected 9,000 houses or more planned for Newbury’s future; building the house is the easy part, maintaining the surrounding environment seems to be the hardest.
Tom Brown
Gore End
The many problems with tackling net zero
Unlike climate change denial, which has become relatively marginalised, net zero is still highly contentious.
Many writers to this page appear to accept that we should reverse biodiversity loss, and stop emitting carbon drawn down over many millions of years, back into the atmosphere in just a hundred or so years.
The problem is, how do we do this in a way that doesn’t unfairly impact our standard of living, or prevent others aspiring to similar standards of living?
As we debate this, we should probably try to avoid ‘doom-ism’, ‘finger-pointing’ at others, ‘cherry-picking’ failed net zero policies to claim all net zero policies are bad, and also consider the evidence that it is becoming cheaper to saveclimate and nature than it is to destroy them.
Finally, I agree with recent letters to this page, that we should resist personal attacks and unsubstantiated claims on these pages, as ‘free’ speech can easily be overtaken by ‘hate’ speech’.
Dr Pat Watson
East Garston Eco Group
Important to get facts from multiple sources
I note that ‘climate change’ has been somewhat of an ongoing topic in the letter pages of the NWN.
A mention has been made of the importance of studying peer reviewed papers, which of course helps with establishing further research in subjects from engineering to medicine.
It is interesting that the official narrative points to CO2 as the primary driver of ‘climate change’ and this is highlighted, for example, in the interiors of buses encouraging people to travel by bus instead of car in order to cut ‘harmful’ CO2 emissions.
However, a recent paper by Kenneth Scrable et al concluded that “the percentage of the total CO2 due to
the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to
2018 increased from zero per cent in 1750 to 12 per cent in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming” (DOI 10.1097/HP.0000000000001485).
For me, it is always important to note if the authors have any conflicts of interest and none were declared in the case of the above referenced paper.
Science is of course, never settled and is the reason why we progress because study and research moves everything forward.
I think this is a prime example of how important it is to gather information from more than one source, especially when it comes to research and to look at things objectively without bias.
Gary Gardiner
Newbury
