• I AM writing this after reading the July 9 CNJ.

I agree that Camden Council, though in dire straits over many issues besides money, makes decisions that at the time, or even in hindsight, seem they should have been annulled from the get-go.

For example, HS2 cutting out valuable green spaces in the midst of the borough of Camden; or big and ugly blocks erected for housing without any architectural or town planning involvement. And last, but not least, as it affects the air we breathe, widening the pavements.

We have already experienced how the idling, jam-packed, cars inching down Parkway have made us put our scarves over our faces. Then they repeated this road-narrowing on Camden High Street. Why?

Not only is Parkway polluted by congestion but Gloucester Crescent, Inverness Street and Arlington Road too.

During the week it takes an age for me usually to even cross my own street, as there are bumper-to-bumper cars! And the pollution that seeps into my windows has also increased. These smaller old residential roads were not built for heavy traffic.

In the same issue I was taken by the mention of the John Mills and Bryan Gould book, Call to Action: Britain’s Economic Problems and How They Can be Solved, which I confess I haven’t read.

But as to its gist, I agree wholeheartedly with it. To keep increasing the debt in Britain exponentially with non-needed infrastructure projects such as HS2, is a death wish.

With Covid-19 demonstrating the way forward, and climate change hovering in the wings, surely manufacturing is the direction to tick all the necessary boxes.

Not the boxes of useless manufacturing, but of designing and fabricating a totally non-fossil-fuel economy with an energy grid and vehicles utilising only renewable sustainable energy.

This would provide so many new jobs, and would save the planet, apart from rescuing this debt-laden economy. If countries like Greece and Egypt can do this, why can’t we?

The money thus saved, could even help the NHS! And healthier air would mean less illnesses for them to mitigate.

PRIMAVERA BOMAN,
NW1