Your letters on Downham Market bank closure, TikTok and climate change
Here are the letters published in the Friday Lynn News of April 14, 2023.
BANK CLOSURE
Will bank change TV ad after branch shuts?
With Lloyds bank in Bridge Street, Downham Market, closing in early September for me, it will go from a 10-minute walk, to a 35-40 minute drive and walk to Lloyds King’s Lynn branch.
Therefore I trust that Lloyds bank will change their TV advert accordingly with the black horses as it will definitely no longer be by my side at 12 miles away, plus 12 miles return!
This is the last bank, building society, to close in Downham Market, following the Nationwide, Nat West, Barclays, HSBC, TSB, Norwich & Peterborough, and Woolwich.
We get the usual spiel from the banks, more customers are banking online. No: we are being forced to bank online.
The two Lloyds bank cash points are always busy, at times they have a queue of customers waiting to get cash.
Will those responsible for the Tesco and Morrisons cashpoints and Post Office arrange extra funding accordingly when those two cash points close? Bearing in mind two or three years ago, on one occasion every cash point in the town ran out of cash, extremely inconvenient for many.
I feel sorry for those who haven’t got a laptop or desktop computer and never will have. What are the banks doing for them in their situation?
There is mention of a hub, to cater for our future banking facilities.
This I find intriguing as when I semi-retired in 2008 selling my sub-post office in Clenchwarton.
I, along with all post offices, were already accepting deposits and withdrawals from both Lloyds and Barclays bank customers,15 years ago now, so what will be different with this hub?
I get the impression after all these years, many customers appear to be unaware you can use the Post Office for banking, for deposits and withdrawals for most banks.
My concern is, if I have an issue with my account at present I can walk to my local branch to talk to someone up until September.
Yes there is the telephone but we all know from experience trying to ring a public service company: i.e. insurance company, energy supplier, Inland Revenue, DWP, NHS 111 is often a long wait, plus a difficult or impossible call if you’re deaf.
In the meantime, I will continue to find where to insert my cashpoint/debit card into my laptop and desktop for cash, online banking indeed!
Thomas Eggett
Downham
DISCUSSION
Tolerance is where you allow debate
May I comment on those who have had a go at a certain Mr David Fleming, alleging his lack of tolerance, as their ideas of tolerance seem to me to be very misthought and even uneducated.
Tolerance is where you allow debate, not where you disagree, even strongly. That is basic to freedom of expression. Where we ‘all agree’ is somewhere like North Korea or Red China!
If David Fleming wishes to give us his views, we are being liberal and tolerant of him by allowing him to do so; and he is being tolerant of our right to disagree with him by allowing us to engage and lock horns with him - if any dare.
But no one has the right, surely, not to be offended, or to try to shut down debate by cancelling someone, deriding them personally, or by no platforming them - least of all David in his attacks upon the ‘Mainstream’, usually a minority but privileged view, fearful of criticism.
Snowflakes, often well-heeled and in the public sector, must learn that not everyone agrees with them; and they must learn too to allow others to say so. They are often the least tolerant of them all.
That is a kind of creeping totalitarianism masquerading as tolerance; and it is both fake, stupid and very dangerous.
David will doubtless continue to keep them on their toes; and they need that more than most of us do.
Rev Robert West
Holbeach
SOCIAL MEDIA
We’ve opened Pandora’s Box - we must curb it
Kris Johnston writes in Tuesday’s Lynn News of his concerns about the proliferation of the TikTok app with the young.
He’s plainly wary of whole world of this mind-rotting and corrosive drivel which seems to have become ‘meat and drink’ to many. I’m sorry to be so blunt but that’s what’s coming, there’s no stopping it now unless the government wakes up to the problem.
We’ve seen how schoolchildren used their smart ‘devices’ to coordinate protests and disorder in schools after toilet visits were supposedly ‘banned’ by teachers and this TikTok generation will use it again at some point.
We know children will always find ways to assert themselves and defy adults but why do we feel children ‘need’ mobile phones and computers so ubiquitously at home and especially at school?
Why in the name of heaven are schools permitting mobiles on school premises? Teachers will tell you of their pernicious presence in the classroom and playground and nationally there are endless calls for curbing and controlling the vile content which children can freely access.
Parents will bleat about their children needing phones for ‘security’ or general communications and there is always the spurious issue of ‘their human rights’.
There is no doubt unlimited access and use by juveniles of mobile phones and gawping for hours at tripe like TikTok is creating problems with discipline, bullying and are a general distraction in schools.
If you’re a parent and your child has a mobile phone I’ll guarantee they’re looking at stuff which will horrify you....and if your child hasn’t got one yet I equally guarantee they’ll see this toxic stuff in the playground on their mates’ phones.
Clearly Kris Johnston can see we’ve opened Pandora’s Box and can’t shut it now but we can still do our best to curb it. We should ban mobiles 100% on school premises... if there’s a coherent, sane, realistic reason not to do this immediately I’d like to hear it.
Steve Mackinder
Denver
CLIMATE CHANGE
Descendants may find we made total mess
David Fleming’s letter of the 11th continues to mislead on the issue of climate change.
In a previous correspondence he lists various authors who have questioned the currently held views on this issue.
These authors are from a range of fields and several agree that there is evidence of rising temperatures subsequent on human activity.
They differ on the extent and likely outcomes as well as on the socioeconomic implications of effect and mitigation. The arguments for and against climate change are based on interpretation of measured effects of complex systems and not on ideology.
As with any good scientific endeavor there will be critique and further hypotheses offered to prove or disprove them.
In this case the length and breadth of the argument has arrived at a consensus amongst scientists that is probably in excess on 95%. It’s a difficult figure to be precise about.
It is not the scientists who will make the changes but the politicians and diplomats as well as the citizens who elect them.
This is why it is important that we are well informed on this very complex and serious debate.
Another letter in the same issue reflects that this should be called the “ Age of Lunatics’. It already has a name, The Anthropocene’ as when they dig us up in millennia to come they may find we have made a total mess of it.
John Martin
Lynn
CHARITY
Webinar on chemotherapy
Lymphoma Action is hosting a webinar about what it is like to have chemotherapy on Wednesday 26 April from 12.30pm to 1.30pm.
Readers affected by lymphoma may be interested and can register to join this free event if they go to www.lymphoma-
action.org.uk/ChemoWebinar2.
The panel will include a healthcare professional, a Lymphoma Action chair and three individuals who have lived experiences of chemotherapy.
Claire McInerney
Lymphoma Action
