Lessons for the future (From This Is Wiltshire)

I in no way wish to offend either side in the controversial saga of the Croft Primary School.

Both sides have had their fair share of their informative, detailed, and in many cases, impassioned points of view in the Advertiser.

I do not have enough knowledge of the situation, only what I have read, to form an opinion. Neither do I live in the area, but may I make a point?

The school is now built, the children are already occupying the premises, the builder has been and will be paid a final monetary sum, regardless of anyone’s personal opinion on the financial aspects of the matter. The horse has bolted, too late to shut the stable door.

Lessons learned for the future is all that remains for everybody involved. Democracy and the ballot box, when the time comes, is the only redress left at this stage in the game for the people who opposed the issue.

In Greg Dunningham’s excellent, humorous contribution of September 20, he mentions another controversial build, Marlborough Gate. With no disrespect to the residents, may I make a point, speaking as a citizen of Swindon who has driven up and down Marlborough Road for over 40 years?

My opinion is that its construction is a visual eyesore which spoils the charm that the surrounding housing previously epitomised. Surely it could have been built in a form that would have blended in more with the rest of the dwellings surrounding it? We all make mistakes – the secret is to learn from them.

Bill Williams Merlin Way Swindon

Stop mooning about

As with so many who have written against the Apollo missions, Steve Halden offers not a single shred of proof in his laughable effort to disprove them, Letters ‘Giant leap for the EU’ of September 3.

The ‘evidence’ against relies on things like ‘no stars in the background’, but no picture taken from space, apart from those such as from orbiting telescopes, will show stars because to the show the faint light from a star on film needs a long exposure which would destroy the image.

Another theory is that the astronauts would get cancer from the radiation if they went to the Moon and several have developed this over the years. Not proof that they went, but another nail in the coffin of the detractors.

Another favourite of the detractors is that ‘shadows run in all directions’ as indeed they would since there were several light sources at work, the Sun and the Earth and reflected light from the lander.

His other suggestion, just as laughable, was that the British government took us into the EU because they feared we were losing the technological race with the USA and wanted to catch up.

One word disproves that – Concorde. Neither the Americans nor the Russians could build anything like Concorde. Both nations tried but Boeing never got their SST off the drawing board while the Tupelov Tu 144 (nicknamed Concordski because it was so similar in design to ours) did fly, not well, but it did. Sadly it blew up in mid air, killing all on board while giving a demonstration flight at the Paris air show in 1973.

Far from trying to catch up with technology in 1969, we British were world leaders.

One final point, Mr Halden wrote that the “USA tried to build a space station”. Has he never heard of the permanently manned International Space Station?

Greg Heathcliffe Okus Road Swindon

Accept the blame

Anyone ever noticed an increase in the use of a common tactic by public bodies after they screw up?

It seems to have become increasingly common for those at the top who justify their bloated salaries because they allegedly “shoulder a heavy burden of responsibility” to retreat into their bunkers and start throwing blame elsewhere.

For SBC it’s the residents, the ground or the rain and in front of Swindon station it’s “unforeseen pipes”. In the NHS cabal that is being formed in the West it will be frontline workers who lose out while managers, trust members and the like hang on to their salaries and expenses.

But not one of them, having thoroughly messed up, ever has the grace to apologise. And when did you last see one of them actually justify their salary, accept their responsibility, and resign forthwith? Never, they cling on like limpets in an ebb tide.

Guy Green Old Town, Swindon