New flats but where is green space?

I JUST love the SA as it is a newspaper that keeps on giving!

On the very day that you published a letter of mine about the town centre being overrun by flats (SA, April 6), what do you carry a story about? Developers wanting to add even more flats!

With the decade-old empty office block on top of the recently vacated Debenhams building, developers want to increase the number of flats there from 90 to 152. 

On the same day, due to rules on lockdown we wandered around a new estate not a stones throw from the hospital to notice a large, green, open space with generous play equipment, space for football (essential!) and basketball hoops – all provided by the builders of adjacent houses.

In the town centre, if these flats are given permission, where is their open space provision, play areas and places to simply play? They may be able to chain link fence off the old rooftop car park above ex-Debenhams but I can well envisage youngsters growing up living there not seeing any green spaces.

I would like to see the local council producing a town centre plan so the Town Gardens or Queens Park of the future on or are we to be swallowed up by a maze of flats and metal fenced tarmac kick-about spaces? That is not a future I want to see in Swindon.

Bob Pixton

Abney Moor

Liden

 

Soft on terrorism

In reply to Martin Webb (SA, April 9) his argument is that all wars are basically evil and that atrocities are committed by both sides in wartime. 

Of course what he says is true but that does not change the fact that terrorists start out with the aim of injuring civilians. 

The killing of innocent civilians is not collateral damage it is the primary objective of the terrorist. 

I was thinking in particular about parts of Africa where school children are routinely kidnapped to be sex slaves or are to be held for ransom. 

It seems to me that being soft on terrorism is not making the world a better place. It is quite the be opposite and is taking the be world back to the dark ages. 

Steve Halden

Beaufort Green

Swindon

 

Export loss of billions

Oh dear me – poor Des Morgan still doesn't get it, does he?

Admittedly, he may have not seen the recent figures I supplied to the Adver (April 10), as he was too busy ranting against me in his letter on the same day!

So, for his benefit, I reiterate – government figures show an export loss to the EU of £5.6 billion in January 2021, a drop of 40 per cent. At this rate, over nine months we’ll have lost a sum equal to all the money the UK paid to the EU over 40 years – absolutely no benefit there. Put that on the side of a bus...!

And his argument over the vaccine in that letter is fatuous, at best, as we in the UK has one of the highest Covid death rates in the world. Too little, too late, from this sad apology for a government.

In addition, we only have the vaccine in the first place, because of the many pre-eminent scientists in the UK, the EU and around the world, working together.

Finally, Des – please tell me how your beloved Brexit has benefitted Northern Ireland?

The current unrest we see there is a direct result of a reckless hard Brexit deal.  

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which helped to end most of the violence of The Troubles, is in danger of being blown apart (no pun intended).

As someone who lived in NI for six years, I am deeply saddened this and by Boris Johnson and his Tory government's lies.  

Steve Cowdry

Saddleback Road

Shaw

 

Rules to suit Eskimos 

On Monday, I put on my sheepskin coat and my trilby to have my first pint with a personal friend in over five months at the White Hart in Stratton.

The staff were polite and efficient. One problem – sitting outdoors drinking cold lager at 9pm in April is not be advised unless you are an Eskimo. I suspect more deaths from hypothermia than Covid if this nonsense continues. You can walk around a shop or supermarket, but not enter a pub.

By the time the idiots – I do not use that word lightly without careful thought and afterthought – running this country allow us back inside the pubs, it will be warm enough to drink outside.

Is that a common-sense statement, or am I missing something regarding a hidden agenda regarding control of the general public who pay these clowns' wages?

Bill Williams

Merlin Way

Covingham