I HAVE been reading, with great interest, the recent journalistic compositions in your weekly chronicle regarding parking in Tavistock.
I have also read, with equal interest, the communication offered by Mr Lansdell (Letters, October 31) and feel compelled to respond.
His mission to seek out a strange New World whereby intrepid parking space explorers would go boldly (note correct use of the infinitive) and share means of transportation in order to seek out new vehicle parking opportunities, whilst undoubtedly laudable is fundamentally flawed.
Mr Lansdell?s proposition is, I fear, doomed to fail for a number of reasons, the main one being that human beings are
intrinsically selfish and none more so than your average motorist.
Indeed, If car drivers were to be brutally honest, very few of them would welcome sharing their vehicles for the greater good of mankind (or indeed Tavistock).
Generally speaking, the car owners of today are encouraged to consider themselves to be the masters of their own destiny and not to ?run with the pack?, to be a free spirit if you will. Therefore, the very thought of sharing their personal space and the potential disruption this would cause to their daily routine is little short of an anathema to most drivers.
Causes for this motoring malaise are many and varied, car advertising and rock music being the main culprits. In their hit song ?Born to be Wild?, do Steppenwolf mention a socially responsible car-sharing scheme?
In all his vehicle-based musical compositions, has Bruce Springsteen ever offered a solution to urban parking problems?
It is a sad indictment on our society that it was left to the Osmonds to display the courage to make a stand against global pollution with their heart-rending hit of the seventies, ?Crazy Horses?.
Whilst an amusing and clever play on words, Mr Lansdell?s message (despite being couched in a mask of vacuous flim-flammery) should not however, be dismissed as his usual, obvious attempt to court controversy. His message is, in fact, deceptively uncompromising.
However, his ?evolve or die? intimation will, I fear, fall on deaf ears, not only in Tavistock but in every town in the land.
To paraphrase the driver of the Glasgow to London train which broke down just outside its destination: ?Euston, we have a problem.?
On a personal note, so impressed am I with the standard of journalism within the Tavistock Times that I am planning a motoring odyssey to the South West in the very near future. Naturally this vehicular peregrination will be timed so as to comprise several passengers with similar destination oriented ambitions.
Richard Wall
Suckley
Worcestershire