FOR the past few days, most people in Okehampton will have been following the succession of disasters in New York on the almost non-stop news bulletins — in near disbelief.
It is difficult, as our American friends would say, to get your mind around it — the awfulness, the sadness, the sheer scale of the number of the missing. What does a crowd of 20,000 look like?
I simply could not grasp it until I thought of the population figures for Okehampton 5,557, and Bideford 14,234. Add these together, imagine both towns emptied and echoing and the picture become a little clearer.
But it doesn't help much
Richard G Williamson
Castle Road
Okehampton
ALL civilised people in the world must condemn the terrorist attacks that took place in America last week. The sheer scale of the attacks and the resulting loss of life are indeed terrible.
However ,what seems to have been forgotten by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic is the 30 years of terrorism that the population of Northern Ireland and England have suffered at the hands of paramilitary organisations.
These organisations also claim to be fighting for a cause. The only difference seems to be the scale of the atrocities that have been committed and the fact that this latest one took place on mainland USA.
Individual Americans have openly funded some of these paramilitary organisations for years. Perhaps next time the collecting box and its accompanying Irish American tours the bars of New York, Washington and other major cities collecting for The Cause, the result of terrorism action will be remembered by those who have in the past willingly made donations to these people.
Jim Goodwin
Okehampton