Editorial

Happy New Year!

The start of yet another New Year; an opportunity to make new resolutions and new friends. The chance to do better than last year! Sound familiar? But it is true; we do have a chance to make life better for ourselves and for our neighbours. All it needs is kindness, care and consideration. And if we can throw in good manners or just good old-fashioned courtesy, what an improvement we would make to our lives.

Psychologists say it is a false feeling of potency created by the steel frame in which we sit. An Octogenarian friend of my has a different reason; bloody ignorance, she calls it. The problem is that all of us, as soon as we are old enough, develop a passion to learn to drive and own a car. No amount of propaganda from John Prescott or any other Minister of Transport will ever break the love affair we have with our car. I wondered if this was simply the personification of independence? Once we learn to drive and own a car we, for the very first time, believe we are totally independent of our parents, our friends, our neighbours. If we want to go somewhere we just hop in the car and drive. No waiting for busses or smelly old trains and in any case they don't actually take us where we want to go. They simply deposit us in the approximate location.

So lets all take a deep breath in 2002 and see if we really can restore some common sense to our roads. Care, consideration and courtesy; the three C's that could do for us what that well known dog food does for dogs: Prolong Active Life!

Happy New Year to you all. Do keep the material coming in, if possible by the 15th of each month. The more material you provide, the easier my job becomes.

Ray Thompson