An Uplifting Week

I'm far from being sloppy and emotional but every now and then something happens to really renew your faith in human nature.

This week I read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. It tells the story of Mitch Albom's Tuesday visits to his former lecturer and mentor Morrie Schwartz, who is dying with ALS, or MND as it is known in the UK. Over the course of the months Morrie imparts his unique wisdom to Mitch on a range of subjects such as love and human relationships. It would be a hard human who wouldn't be moved by this amazingly touching book. All the more poignant for me as I worked for the MND Associaton from 1996 to 2004, and met so many brave people like Morrie.

Then this morning we shopped in Booth's in Carnforth. If you don't know Booth's they are a small supermarket chain, mainly in Lancashire and North Yorkshire, and they do an amazing range of locally or regionally sourced produce, especially meat and cheese. Anyway, the uplifting part was that there was a group of people in the car park doing free car washes while you shopped. It turns out that they were from Carnforth Free Methodist Church and do it once a month. When Mrs B. offered a donation they refused, telling us that they only did it to help people, not to raise money.

Quite an amazing end to the week.

Ludicrous PCSOs

Below is a letter of mine printed in the Morecambe and Lancaster Citizen on 10 October. It was a response to a letter from the chairman of a local busybody group who actually thinks that PCSOs are a success! Not only that but he had been extremely rude about me, in a totally unnecessary way, which I can more than take but felt merited a suitable response.



We simply need more bobbies

HAVING lived and worked in various parts of the UK I must say that the Citizen letters page is one of the most stimulating and enjoyable I have seen. Some ideas proposed are wacky, some brilliant and some decidedly bizarre. Debate is often heated but usually within acceptable bounds. Then up steps Mr Lewthwaite, of Carnforth PACT (October 3), to indulge in gratuitous personal abuse, always handy when you have to defend the indefensible, in his case PCSOs.

'We should do away with PCSOs because they are a failed experiment. The public are being fooled'. That quote is from Paul Kelly, chairman of the Police Federation in Manchester. I think that his view has much more credibility than Mr Lewthwaite's.

What we really need are bobbies back on the streets, freed from the bureaucracy and politically correct red tape that has destroyed morale and takes them away, hour after hour, from doing what they wanted to do when they joined. The last thing we need is a highly visible PR exercise dreamed up by the Labour spin machine that is an obvious failure and fools few people.

I might be tempted to attend a Carnforth PACT' meeting one day. But then again I trust the police and would prefer them to be getting on with their jobs rather than wasting time in even more 'consultation meetings', so I probably won't.
Gregg Beaman, Carnforth.