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Memories dredged up

New surgeries are planned as part of changes to care (SA April 27 2019.

What caught my eye as I browsed the Adver was not the headlines, but the image of the Wilts & Berks Canal with Beavans bridge in the back ground.

Some years ago there was an article in SA that fancifully suggested that the bridge was ‘painstakingly re-built from a 150 year old photograph’.

The truth is a little different. Rebuilding of the bridge was part of a lottery-funded project that involved the excavation of the infilled canal from this bridge to, and beyond, the M&SWJR bridge, re-watering and then dredging with both land and waterborne excavators to provide the length of canal we now have.

Prior restoration work on the canal including the bridge was undertaken by Wilts & Berks Canal Amenity Group (as it was then) Swindon branch volunteers.

Beavans bridge was a typical rural Wilts &Berks bridge that was reputed to have been blown up along with others as military training during the Second World War.

One that wasn’t blown up was Marsh Farm bridge, behind the ambulance station on Queens Drive.

The writer surveyed this bridge, excavated the remains of Beavans bridge with the team, checked dimensions and passed the information on to Swindon Borough Council Landscape Dept.

A set of 12 working drawings were produced for planning permission purposes and subsequent construction, a bound copy of which was issued to myself and is still in my possession.

The rest, they say, is history.

Henry Smith, Past Director, Wilts & Berks Canal Amenity Group (Wilts & Berks Canal Trust)

Temporary betrayal

Once again I disagree with John Stooke.

Nigel Farage actually said he would be happy if we made him redundant by voting to leave the EU.

If through Teresa May’s dragging her feet constantly delaying the UK’s departure from the EU, we have to get involved in the European elections, those selected to be MEPs should veto every new EU project.

If they don’t the UK will be liable for an even bigger divorce bill, as we will have supposedly committed to fund these projects.

The betrayal of Parliament to honour the referendum result will only be temporary.

We certainly don’t want May’s half in half out deal, which doesn’t address any of the UK red lines.

At the next UK general election, if the 17.4 million people who voted leave get their act together and vote for the only party that will deliver a genuine Brexit, the Brexit Party, they will break the current two-party system and have a majority in Parliament.

Then we will leave, and once the EU knows we are serious, probably with a reasonable deal.

If they are totally intransigent as usual, it will have to be NO deal.

That will hurt the EU too, and they know it.

Give it a year or two other countries will vote to leave the EU and join the UK as trading partners.

Alan Spencer, Swindon

Changed minds

It appears to be perfectly reasonable for elected Labour councillors to change their minds and morph overnight into Conservatives (Courtliff, SA, April 26). Could someone ask David Renard, Justin Tomlinson, and other hardline Brexit supporters, if the same opportunity to change our minds could be afforded to us please.

John Stooke, Havisham Drive