WE NEED OUR GREENS IN ORDER TO BE HEALTHY

Open Space Is Valuable! A lack of green space is unhealthy for everyone. If our children are to grow up to be healthy, balanced, sound-minded individuals, it is important that they have access to wild open space and are able to experience nature and the pleasures of woodland and greenery. We should not be desecrating what green areas we have left in our towns and cities and any area that has been populated to within a certain density should have an equivalent and proportional area of green and wild open space built into its infrastructure. Places where people can go and relax on a walk. Where kids can play and exercise their sense of adventure. Places where people can walk the dog and where they can lose themselves, forgetting for a short while that otherwise they are in the middle of concrete and traffic.

Balance Is The Key! Balance is the key. Where this balance has been completely ignored, such as in the inner cities, the number of unhealthy incidents is greater, and the number of unhealthy children is greater. Wild open space and green space are as valuable to society as anything else is and we should all have access to some. It is time we were thinking about knocking down a few tower blocks and putting back a few trees instead. We do need to provide more housing, as we all know. However, we do not need to provide it all in the same place. We can spread out a bit and intermingle with nature. Woodland, marshland, grassland, flowers, trees, shrubs, birds insects and small furry animals - a good healthy environment. Good clean air to breathe and somewhere for the kids to play, this never did anyone any harm, quite the opposite.

Over Populating = More Problems! Local authorities that want to develop every last bit of wild open space and even our playing fields are doing the people that pay their wages no favours whatsoever. We need our greens and we also need to be able to get around without tripping over each other. Politicians often argue that new development brings jobs into an area, and in the short term of course it does, but what about the long term? The people living in this vicinity, as in many other areas, already have enough of a problem going about their business and do not want to inherit the additional problems associated with greatly over populating an area.

Little Idea! Local councils appear to have little idea of how to manage traffic and traffic scheme efficiency. They have little idea of how to manage schools and school placement. Hospitals cannot cope and you're lucky if you can even find a parking space a lot of the time. This feeling, shared by many, is not just an opinion; it is fact, experienced in the eating of the pudding that the government and the local authorities have baked. It has got to be time for a serious rethink before the people in charge mess it up completely. We need to hang on to some of the greenery we have left and we need to spread out a bit. There is a limit to how many beans you can get into a tin without squashing them into an unrecognisable pulp.

More development? Since Mr Livingstone introduced congestion charging and forced the poor people off the road, he has said that he now wants to attract more business into the city. Hold on, isn't that defeating the object? Surely introducing more business and therefore, more people into the city, and then charging them for the fact that they cannot go about their affairs without causing problems and getting in each other's way is completely wrong and ill-motivated. It is also not what the people want and, therefore, London's Mayor, with all due respect, is not serving the people properly. Money seems to be more important than people. However, it is not just money that should count. People should count also!