We always welcome a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch.
Here’s a letter written by OnTheWight reader Rowan Adams to Radio 4 when ‘You and Yours‘ asked ‘What will it take to get us moving as new research from the Ramblers says a third of adults wouldn’t consider walking more than twenty minutes to get from one place to another?’ Ed
Dear You and Yours team
Our culture has become lazy – we’ve got used to having our bodies transported by cars, trains, buses and planes.
We’ve lost the habit of moving our own bodies by walking.*
Changing our culture is possible.
Some of us are lucky: when we were children our parents took us walking in beautiful countryside and beautiful parks and gardens, and so we learned that walking was something we enjoyed.
If people whose less enlightened parents took them everywhere by car and who have never bothered to walk since are to discover later in life the joy of walking, they need encouragement and opportunities.
But national government policies have made it harder for people to have that encouragement and those opportunities.
- What incentive does anybody have to walk anywhere if national government encourages nothing but cars, planes and stupidly fast trains for HS2, does next to nothing to reduce noise and pollution, and does nothing to encourage walking and cycling, so that walking is often ruined by noise and fumes?
- What incentive does anybody have to walk anywhere if developers are allowed to build ugly houses and flats with no gardens or tiny gardens, in ugly housing estates with no pavements, no beautiful parks, and no footpaths leading to the countryside outside the town?
- What incentive does anybody have to walk anywhere if national government cuts mean that local authorities cut their planning staff so that developers are allowed to get away with building ugly places? (And if a bad application is refused, the local authority doesn’t have the money to fight the appeal.)
- What incentive does anybody have to walk anywhere if national government cuts mean that local authorities sell off school grounds, and cut their parks staff to almost nothing, so that parks and gardens are sold off or allowed to become boring wastes of grass, grass, and nothing but grass?
- What incentive does anybody have to walk anywhere if national government cuts mean that local authorities cut their rights of way section down to nothing, and public footpaths are not maintained or promoted?
- What incentive does anybody have to walk anywhere if national government cuts mean that local authorities cut their countryside staff so that important wildlife habitats and beautiful landscapes are not looked after?
- What incentive does anybody have to walk anywhere if national government cuts mean that local authorities cut their litter-picking and beach-cleaning staff so that our country becomes covered in ugly harmful rubbish?
- What incentive does anybody have to walk anywhere if national government cuts mean that local authorities close public toilets so that older people or people with children worry that they may be caught short while they’re out?
Services clashed by the council
Here on the Isle of Wight the Isle of Wight Council has already sold off our nationally important flagship park, Ventnor Botanic Garden. The council has closed most of our public toilets.
The council closed all the tourist information centres, so tourists have less support if they want to come here to walk. Our rights of way section, once one of the best in Britain, has been cut to almost nothing. Our pioneering archaeology team has been cut down to only one person.
Cuts to parks and countryside staff
On 26 February this year cuts by the national government have led the Isle of Wight Council to threaten to get rid of all the staff in our parks and countryside sections, and to stop paying people to pick up litter from our beaches (not exactly highly-paid jobs) so that our parks and gardens and beaches will turn into deserts of weeds and litter, and our wildlife habitats will be unmanaged and may lose everything that makes them special.
And those cuts by the national government have led the Isle of Wight Council to threaten to cut funding for the Isle of Wight Walking Festival, the biggest walking festival in the country. Will this year’s Isle of Wight Walking Festival, happening now, be the last?
Encourage the 1% to help the 99%
If the national government were serious about the health and happiness of their fellow citizens they would get money from the people and organisations who can afford it, the richest 1%, and use that money to support all the things that the rest of us, the 99%, need.
That includes support for local government countryside, parks, rights of way, and other staff who make sure that everybody has the encouragement and the opportunities they need so they can enjoy walking.
Reference for Isle of Wight cuts to funding for parks and countryside, beach-cleaning, sports centres, walking festival, cycling festival, support for children’s swimming (and many other appalling cuts): http://www.iwight.com/Meetings/committees/mod-council/26-2-14/Paper%20E%20-%20Appendix%206.pdf
* And we’ve got used to having our minds transported by television, and lost the habit of moving our own minds by thinking.
Image: James Blunt under CC BY 2.0
