Dear Councillor Reeves,

I am writing to express my deep concern regarding the proposed closure of Elm Road Library, which has served this community for over forty years. While I understand the council faces significant budgetary pressures, I believe that closing the library would cause far greater harm than the savings it would generate.

As the passage makes clear, libraries are not simply repositories of books — they are essential community spaces. For many elderly residents in this area, the library is the only place they visit regularly outside their own homes. Removing it would deepen the isolation that already affects a significant proportion of our ageing population. Furthermore, the library's free internet access is relied upon by families who cannot afford home broadband, and by job seekers who depend on it to search and apply for employment.

The passage also highlights the educational role of libraries, and this is particularly relevant here. Elm Road Library runs a weekly reading group for under-fives and a homework club for secondary students. These are not luxuries; they directly support the attainment of children in an area where educational outcomes already fall below the national average. To remove them would be to widen an inequality that the council claims, in its own strategic plan, to be committed to narrowing.

I would urge the council to explore alternatives before making this decision irreversible: reduced opening hours, shared premises with the community centre, or a volunteer staffing model. Other councils have successfully implemented such measures, and I would welcome the opportunity to discuss them further.

Yours sincerely,
Alex Harrington

THE SCREEN GENERATION: SMARTER OR JUST FASTER?

Walk into any classroom in 2025 and the first thing you will notice is the glow. Thirty screens, thirty bent heads, thirty pairs of thumbs moving in patterns that would have baffled a typist twenty years ago. Technology has not just arrived in education — it has taken up permanent residence, rearranged the furniture, and changed the locks.

The passage argues, persuasively, that digital tools have democratised access to knowledge. A student in rural Kenya can now watch the same lecture as a student at Cambridge, and this is genuinely revolutionary. Online platforms allow learners to pause, rewind and revisit material at their own pace, and for students with additional needs this flexibility can be transformative.

But here is the difficulty that the passage does not quite address: access to information is not the same as understanding. I can look up the causes of the First World War in four seconds, but that does not mean I have thought about them. The speed of digital learning can create an illusion of mastery — students believe they know something because they have read it, when in fact they have only seen it. And the constant notifications, the social media tabs, the reflex to check a phone every ninety seconds — these are not minor distractions. They are an architecture designed to prevent exactly the kind of sustained, difficult thinking that real learning requires.

Technology, then, is neither saviour nor villain. It is a tool, and like any tool, its value depends entirely on the hand that holds it. Perhaps the real question is not whether we should use screens in classrooms, but whether we are teaching students to use them wisely — or simply teaching them to use them.

Good morning everyone. I want to start with a confession: I did not read a single book for pleasure between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. Not one. I read what I was told to read for English, I read the backs of cereal boxes, and I read approximately four thousand Instagram captions a day. But a book? No.

And then, in the middle of a particularly boring half-term, I picked up a book my mother had left on the kitchen table. I cannot even remember the title. But I remember the feeling — the strange, almost physical sensation of being somewhere else entirely, of hearing a voice that was not my own but somehow understood exactly what I was thinking. That is what reading does. It does not just give you information. It gives you someone else's mind to live in for a while.

The passage we read this morning tells us that reading improves vocabulary, develops concentration, and reduces stress. All true. But I think those are the boring reasons, and if I stand up here and list health benefits at you, I will lose you in about fifteen seconds. So let me give you the real reason: reading is the only legal way to be someone else. It is the only way to know what it feels like to be a soldier in 1917, or a girl growing up in Lagos, or an astronaut watching the Earth shrink behind you. No film does this. No game does this. Only a book puts you so far inside another person that you forget, for a moment, that you are you.

So here is my challenge. One book. Any book. Before the end of this term. Not because your teacher told you to, not because it will help your grades — though it will — but because you deserve to know what it feels like to disappear into a story and come back slightly different. Thank you.

The station existed in the hour before it was needed. The departures board was a grid of amber letters that no one was reading, and the coffee kiosk was still shuttered, its corrugated door holding the ghost of yesterday's espresso in a faint, bitter sweetness that hung in the cold air like a promise.

A pigeon walked the length of Platform 3 with the careful, self-important stride of a building inspector. It paused at each bench, examined the underside with one tilted eye, and moved on, apparently satisfied. The only other movement was the clock, its second hand dragging itself around the face as if the effort of keeping time at this hour were almost too much.

Then light. It came from the east end of the platform, where the tracks curved out of sight, a thin gold line drawn across the rails and the gravel and the base of the signal post. It found the puddles first and turned them into coins. It found the edges of the benches and made them sharp. It crept along the platform floor like a tide coming in, slow and certain, and as it reached the place where I was standing, I felt the cold begin to loosen, as if the station were taking its first deep breath of the day.

A man appeared at the far end of the platform, coat buttoned to the collar, briefcase held close to his body like a shield. He did not look at the departures board. He knew where he was going — you could tell from the way he stood, weight on one foot, eyes fixed on the empty track, waiting for a shape to appear around the curve. Behind him, the coffee kiosk rattled open, and the station, at last, began to fill with the small, ordinary sounds of a day deciding to begin.

The envelope had been sitting on the hall table for three days before I opened it. It was not that I did not know what was inside — I knew exactly what was inside. It was a thin, cream-coloured envelope with a typed address and no return label, and the postmark said Cambridge, and Cambridge only ever sent one kind of letter to people like me.

My mother had noticed it first. She had come into the hallway with a basket of washing and stopped so suddenly that a pillowcase slid off the top and landed on the floor, and neither of us picked it up. She looked at me. I looked at the envelope. The pillowcase lay between us like a small white surrender.

"You should open it," she said, on the first evening.

"I know," I said.

"You should open it," she said, on the second evening.

"I know," I said.

On the third evening, she did not say anything. She put a cup of tea next to the envelope and went upstairs, and I sat at the hall table in the half-light and thought about all the versions of my life that were folded up inside that cream-coloured paper.

I opened it standing up, which I had not planned. I had imagined sitting down, taking a breath, sliding a finger under the seal carefully, the way people do in films. Instead I just picked it up and tore it open, quickly, the way you pull off a plaster, and the sound of the paper tearing was the loudest thing in the house.

It said yes.

I read it twice, because the first time I read it I did not believe it, and the second time I read it I believed it but did not know what to do with the believing. I put the letter back on the table and went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to my mother, and my voice, when it came, was steadier than I had expected.

"Mum," I said. "It said yes."

Now that we are homeward bound, I can reflect on this incredible adventure. We started out so excited, confident that our wet-weather gear prepared us for anything. I quickly realised how wrong I was when we hit the mountain pass and the hailstones began! I normally love the thrill of a descent, but the freezing cold numbed my hands, making it terrifyingly hard to control the bike. I can’t describe the relief of reaching Colquepata. Although the ride to Paucartambo took longer than the promised “40 minutes,” the smooth roads were a joy, and the picturesque town reignited my excitement.

The journey was physically tough, with constant downpours and flat tyres, but the jungle changed everything. The humid air and heady scents were the complete opposite of the high Andes, and cycling through a haze of butterflies felt like a cartoon. The bus delay in Pilcopata, while initially annoying, became an unexpected bonus. It allowed us to truly immerse ourselves in Peruvian life. It made me realise how we rush around at home, ruled by schedules, whereas nobody hurries in the jungle heat.

I was, however, shocked to learn how little tourism money reaches the actual townspeople. This trip has taught me to be an environmentally aware tourist and to buy locally to support the economy. Despite the gruelling challenges, I have grown as a person, learned the value of teamwork, and discovered a part of the world I knew little about.

Cycling to school climbs 28 per cent in record borough rise

The number of pupils cycling to school across the borough has risen by 28 per cent since September, the largest single-year increase ever recorded by the council, according to a survey published this week. The change has been sharpest at Northgate Secondary, where the proportion of pupils cycling has doubled in a single academic year.

The survey links the rise to three causes: new cycle lanes installed on Park Road, free helmets distributed through school councils, and steadily climbing bus fares that have pushed families to seek cheaper alternatives.

Northgate’s headteacher, Mr Patel, said the effect on the school day had been clear. “Pupils arrive more alert and more ready to learn,” he told reporters. “Several teachers noticed the change before I had said a word.”

The trend has not been without difficulty. Some Park Road residents report congestion where the new lanes meet busy junctions, and a small number of incidents between cyclists and pedestrians have been recorded. Council transport officer Mrs Aliyah Khan said a redesign of the worst junction was already planned. “We know where the pinch points are,” she added, “and we are acting on them.”

The survey also found that around one in four pupils still rely on public transport, either because they live more than three miles away or because parents remain concerned about road safety. Its authors concluded that wider investment in infrastructure, rather than pressure on families, would be the key to extending the shift.

A full review of the cycling scheme is due before the council in March.

Your leftovers are louder than you think

A third of the world’s food rots before anyone eats it, and according to climate researchers, tackling that waste would do more for the planet than almost any other single change apart from switching entirely to renewable energy. Yet most of us, if asked, would swear we hardly throw anything away. Surveys suggest that almost nobody sees themselves as part of the problem — which, of course, means almost everybody is.

The reasons are depressingly ordinary. In many countries, households generate the vast majority of food waste — not because people are careless, but because life gets in the way. Plans for home-cooked meals collapse under the weight of late shifts, last-minute invitations, and the simple exhaustion of a long day. Misleading packaging labels do not help: perfectly safe food ends up in the bin because a printed date has passed, and few people pause to check whether “best before” actually means “unsafe after.”

Young people, meanwhile, face a peculiar double bind. One university blogger points out that those aged 18 to 24 are labelled the worst offenders, yet the advice aimed at them — cook more, eat fresh, waste nothing — clashes with the reality of student life, where meals are grabbed between lectures and socialising, and the fridge contains little more than fast food and an ageing apple. There is something unjust, too, about blaming consumers when a third of all food grown never reaches a kitchen at all, lost instead to poor storage, extreme weather, or retailers’ insistence that only blemish-free produce deserves a shelf.

None of this, however, means that young people are powerless. Small, realistic adjustments matter more than grand ambitions that collapse by Wednesday. At home, buying smaller quantities more often and learning to read labels properly can quietly shrink the waste pile. At school or college, students could press canteens to reduce portion sizes and partner with local charities that redistribute surplus meals — and do so openly, because the stigma around such schemes fades only when ordinary people treat them as sensible rather than shameful. In the wider world, choosing imperfect fruit from bargain shelves and supporting businesses that sell surplus food sends a clear market signal: profit and responsibility need not be opposites.

Awareness alone will not empty fewer bins. But awareness combined with a few stubborn habits — a shorter shopping list, a honest look at the fridge before it is too late, a willingness to eat the imperfect apple — might just begin to. The world’s food crisis will not be solved by young people alone, but it certainly will not be solved without them.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming tonight. I know we all lead busy lives, so I will keep this brief — but I believe this proposal deserves far more scrutiny than it has received so far.

Let me ask you a simple question: when did you last pay for something with cash? If you are anything like most people in this room, you probably cannot remember. Contactless cards and phone payments have quietly become the norm, and for good reason — they are fast, convenient, and undeniably simple. But convenience for the majority is not the same as fairness for all, and that is precisely the problem with making our area entirely cash-free.

Consider, first, what going cash-free means for individuals. For those of us who are comfortable with technology, very little changes. But what about elderly residents who have never owned a smartphone? What about families on low incomes who rely on physical money to budget week by week — who divide notes into envelopes for rent, food and bills because that is the only system that stops them overspending? One writer warns that digital payments make it dangerously easy to lose track, and she is right: removing cash removes a discipline that many people depend on. Worse still, as one parent discovered, even teaching a child the value of money becomes almost impossible when coins and notes have vanished from daily life.

The effects on businesses are no less troubling. Street vendors, market traders and charity collectors all depend on the impulse generosity of passers-by reaching into their pockets. Take cash away, and you take away their livelihood — not because people stop caring, but because the friction of opening an app or finding a card reader kills the moment. Small businesses, meanwhile, face transaction fees on every sale, costs that larger chains absorb easily but that could push a local café or corner shop towards closure. And let us not forget the wider community: when a bank decides to charge fees simply for depositing coins — as one resident’s daughter discovered with her hard-saved pocket money — we have to ask ourselves whose interests this cashless future truly serves.

I am not standing here to tell you that digital payments are the enemy. They are not. But I am asking you to reject a proposal that treats going fully cash-free as progress when, for many of our neighbours, it would be anything but. What we need is not a ban on cash but a guarantee that it remains an option — so that no one in this community is locked out of the economy they helped to build. Thank you.