Category: Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor, I have recently become involved with a group of people who are trying to set up a Transition Town iniative here in Thame. The idea behind Transition is that our society is facing two big challenges: the peak in the production of oil and climate change.

The transition movement tries to build links in communities in order to face these challenges positively and to build a better future. Look at this website if you would like to know more:

www.transitiontowns.org

On the 27th February at 2pm, we will be holding an open meeting at Thame Town Hall to talk to local people about transition and to get their ideas for taking this work forward. It would be great if you were able to join us and Iook out for the posters advertising the event around Thame.

If you are not able to attend, please do forward the email to any one you know who might be interested in attending. Otherwise, look forward to seeing you a week on Saturday!

Best Wishes
Lindsey.(Addressed supplied)
18/02/10

Dear Editor, If the layout printed in the Thame Gazette in its February 12 issue is correct, it seems the proposed ?East Thame? development would create a new suburb rather than bring about any integration of the east of the town with the centre.

It covers a larger area than originally described. From the aerial photograph printed in the newspaper, the development appears to cover areas A1, A2, B1 and B2 as laid down in the Oxfordshire core strategy, i.e. from Moor End Lane down to the Phoenix trail and incorporating the Show Ground site and the Rugby Club.

The by-pass was clearly envisaged, when planned, to be a natural boundary for the town. If it is breached, next stop could be Aylesbury. If I have misinterpreted the layouts I would be happy to be advised of that.

Yours sincerely
Norman Brand
6 Fanshawe Road, OX9 3LF (by e-mail)

Copies to:

ThameNews.net

Mr John Howell MP

South Oxfordshire District Council

Thame Town Council

Dear Sir, I arrived home today to find the letter relating to an exhibition to the public regarding plans to develop East Thame. I am grateful to receive notification of the exhibition.

However, the date chosen, Saturday 13 February, falls in the half term holidays. As very many residents of Thame are families with children many people who would be greatly interested will be away and unable to attend. Those who are not away are likely to have already made plans which prevent them attending as the date is now only 9 days away.

I therefore hope that a further opportunity will be given for the public to view these plans.

I also trust that as very many people will be unable to participate on the day you have chosen that this invalidates this as a public consultation. I presume that any requirements to consult with the public will not be considered to have been fulfilled by holding this event. I trust that due to the short notice and date chosen that SODC or other organisations who protect the public interest through enforcement of obligations to consult will ensure that this event is disregarded in assessing whether such obligations have been met.

Yours faithfully
Diarmuid MacDougall See LINK
to referenced item

Dear Editor, This morning I attended an Oxford Radcliffe outpatient clinic at Thame Community Hospital. Not for the first time in the past 12 months I wish to record here how much our local hospital?s existence and the services it provides there are to be valued.

Incidentally the consultation, in a warm and friendly environment, went well and to time despite the awful weather.

Small really is beautiful.

Yours sincerely
Norman Brand
Fanshawe Road

Dear Resident, On behalf of staff and councillors of South Oxfordshire District Council, I would like to wish a very happy Christmas to all our residents.

During my year as chairman, I visited many organisations that greatly help the disadvantaged and those requiring assistance. At this special time of the year, please give a thought for those less fortunate. We should all make extra efforts to ensure the elderly, lonely and those in poor health can enjoy the festive period.

May we also spare a thought for our armed forces and their families, who give so much on our behalf, and especially those on active service this Christmas.

Enjoy your Christmas and I wish everyone happiness, health and prosperity in 2010.

Yours faithfully

Malcolm Leonard
Chairman
South Oxfordshire District Council

Dear Editor – I see the Abingdon Arms, which carried the name from 1830 (See Thame Inns, Discovered by Allan Hickman and David Bretherton, Daal Publishing, 2000) has become the James Figg Free House. The book records James Figg, a champion prize fighter as having used a pub on this site, then called the Greyhound, in the early 18th century.

Good that a local connection remains. Sad, however, that a pub?s name, which goes back 180 years, has been lost (don?t Conservation Area rules apply to pub names then?). And sad too, that the plight of pubs throughout the land has been accelerated, caused I believe, by the total smoking ban which, it was originally proposed, should allow landlords (and customers) some choice.

Norman Brand
Fanshawe Road
Thame

Dear Editor, I am just writing to say that the letter to yourself from Norman Brand touched me deeply. As he said there are over 12 million peoplle that
are now being de-normalised by their habit of using a perfectly legal product and are suffering terrible isolation.
Brenda Orsler
23/11/09

Dear Editor, I do not expect many who read this site to agree with me. Perhaps not many are pub “regulars” – remember that term? But there is a wider and very sad perspective to the revival of the Cross Keys pub, if pub is what it will still be, according to my 50-odd years experience of them. I raise this because a national, political and social issue is involved.

The wider background I refer to is the relentless decline of the traditional local, all over the country, as mentioned in your report . The death blow, of course, was the total and totalitarian smoking ban, brought in by the Government in July 2007. Note that this was a departure from the Labour election manifesto which provided for pubs to decide whether or not to allow smoking: to provide for a degree of choice, indeed.

The result of that has been the collapse of social networks, of organic resorts of camaraderie among some people, often the old and frail. Look at some of the sites on the Net devoted to campaigning for an amendment of the smoking law and read of the sadness and bitterness, not only among pub regulars but among elderly and isolated folk, whose one day out was a visit to a Bingo hall, now closed – because of the ban.

The new licensee is quoted, as saying that one of the first things he did on arrival was to get rid of the pool table. One need not feel sad for any people who might still have enjoyed using it. They will have already decided to give up going to the pub, I suspect. Why pay serious money for a pint of beer and then go outside to drink it in the rain?

I have loved pubs all my life. And so often they have not been the friends of their regular clients. Apart from the present assault, nay the social cleansing of them from their premises which has occurred since 2007, the other attack was the atrocity of keg beer, 40 years ago. I campaigned against it when a pint of Double Diamond or Red Barrel acid attack was 2s 8d – if anyone visiting the Cross Keys would understand how much that was. It was a lot out of

Dear Editor, It was quarter to eight in the evening and dark when the doorbell rang. I suppose we?re all on our guard these days when there is an unexpected caller at the door. I rushed from the phone where I had just finished dialling a number and opened the front door. A burly and rather sad young man in jerkin and jeans and with a large bag on his shoulders stood there.

“Thank you for smiling,” he began. There was an implication in that comment that he had faced enough rejection for one day. I sympathised privately but in a way, I fear, his comment was counterproductive. There, in my warm house and in my comfortable slippers I wondered, heaven help me, whether this was a clever bid for sympathy.

Anyway I had several things going on in my head at the same time and then the phone rang again ? presumably the puzzled recipient of the call I dropped when the doorbell rang.

The young man had an identity card on a tape around his neck. He clearly wanted to sell me something from his bag. This was just not the moment when I wanted to give him time. He offered to come back and I declined.

He might well have been genuine. He might, given the reports which occur on your site from time to time, have been some type of crook. He was also, as we all are, someone?s child and I have children. I sent him away. Rejection is a horrible thing to deal with. But even had it been the right moment, this time of evening would not have been a wise one for anyone to entertain a strange caller.

” . . .Be not forgetful of strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels

unawares.” (St Paul)

Oh dear.
Norman Brand
Thame 05/11/09

Dear Editor – In the eight years my wife and I have lived in Thame we have found our postmen always to be friendly, reliable and an asset to the area in many ways. In fact that?s been true of postmen everywhere we?ve lived. It?s a reassuring sight ? I write only as a resident ? to see the red bike parked opposite our house and know the postman is on his way.

In a radio programme I heard a postman from some other area talk about a computer system in which, he said, a post round is tracked, with a little chap on the screen walking up and down garden paths and putting letters in letter boxes. The computer decides how long it takes to walk the round and, then, the human postman has to keep up the speed dictated by the screen. The system is reportedly called Pegasus ? but I thought Pegasus was a horse!

According to the postman on the phone-in, allowance is made for the delay caused by eight packages, which require a ring at the bell. The caller said he could have dozens more than that (I forget the figure). Another caller pointed out that dogs could cause delays.

Postmen, with a friendly word or a passing chat, can brighten people?s day. I don?t think the computer allows for that either.

Which all means that, although I have no knowledge or grasp of the issues involved, I would not blame any of the postmen and women I have met for going on strike. Because I have met them.

It also means that any comment-loaded headline like one in a national paper today which called the postal workers ?Lemmings? is unjust and unfair.

Yours sincerely
Norman Brand
Fanshawe Road