I READ with interest, and astonishment, the excellent report by Jane Honey (Okehampton Times, October 24) on our councillors? self-satisfied comments on the enhancement schemes that have been inflicted on Okehampton over the past two years, and in particular the remarks by one councillor who suggested, ?Perhaps we should be blowing our own trumpet?.
All I can say, on behalf of a very high percentage of residents of Okehampton, is ?Please don?t. Your trumpet blast would sound a discord around the streets of our town.?
The greatest folly of them all, which passers-by have been looking on in bewilderment since the first of June, is, of course, the building site that used to be Fairplace Park. Perhaps now ? as there is so much European money involved ? this should be re-named Fairplatz.
For the planning, if there was any, with its concrete slabs and blue engineering brick, is more redolent of Albert Speer?s pre-war Berlin than a town on the lower slopes of Dartmoor.
At one end we have a circular concrete dish, waiting for what ? one of Charlie Dimmock?s water features? While at the other end we have what could well be described as Okehampton?s answer to the Millennium Dome, even to its totally unnecessary and disproportionate cost.
And in case no one has noticed, there is provision for six toilet cubicles. All right. That?s Ladies, Gents, Disabled and Nappy Changing. So for whom are the other two intended?
In these days of political correctness, one hardly has to ask.
Richard G Williamson
Cranmere
Castle Road
Okehampton