LETTER: Smoke issue must at last be tackled

Last week the media reported that ‘‘Britain Chokes on Toxic Smog’’.
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If the media think that was bad, they could come to Billingshurst any day of the week.

As a youngster who grew up in London in the fifties, I know a good smog. There were days when we could hardly find our way to school or the shops.

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Now, thanks to totally misguided thinking by politicians at both central government and local level, we suffer the same unhealthy and unpleasant environment in this village today.

All through winter, we suffer the effects of ‘real fires’ and as soon as spring arrives, it is bonfires.

Of course, it is never the people who have these fires who suffer, but their neighbours.

One neighbour has two ‘real fires’, approved by the District Council, which being enclosed do not bother them. We, however, cannot open a door or a window without the house filling up with smoke.

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It is the same with neighbours who like bonfires. They are invariably lit at the bottom of the garden, so the smoke blows on others, not on the inconsiderate people with the fire.

It is good and a relief, that at last it is recognised that smoke from fires and bonfires is harmful, but those of us who like to breathe clean, fresh air, wait to see what the council will do about it.

Talk about a clean and healthy environment is useless unless the issue of fires is tackled.

Robert Bishop

Broomfield Drive, Billingshurst