Pub bombs justice fight

Dear Editor, This Saturday, March 9, Justice for the 21 will be in Victoria Square in Birmingham from 11am.

We are appealing to Brummies to come and join us to support the Hambleton family in their quest for justice for their sister Maxine and the 20 other victims of the Birmingham pub bombings.

We will be collecting signatures as usual but also protesting at the inaction and seeming indifference of the current Birmingham City Council regime to our campaign.

Justice for the 21 is a growing number of ordinary people who are standing up for what is right and looking after our own, people like the Hambleton family, victims of terrorism who the authorities thought they could callously abandon.

In just 12 months we have gone from standing on street corners with spray-painted dust-sheets to meetings with senior police officers and politicians.

We have a booming paper petition containing well over 6,000 signatures and a defined strategy and list of objectives for the next 18 months.

It is time for the authorities to accept one cold hard fact: We’re not going away.

Mike Watts, Justice for the 21

24/7 wheelie bins eyesore

Dear Editor, If people live in houses where they can easily store their bins so they are out of sight then I agree that wheelie bins are an ideal way of collecting their rubbish.

They usually have at least slightly larger properties where having bags for quicker collections has no advantage over wheelie bins, because the lorry has to stop at each house anyway.

No matter what your views are, you can’t deny that in this scenario, front-of-house stored wheelie bins are a 24/7 year-on-year absolute eyesore.

The beauty of black bags is the fact that it is mostly only one day of being an eyesore and then roads are clear again.

A T Baker, Longbridge

Talk of a new city Super Prix brings back bad memories

Dear Editor: I read with horror in the Birmingham Post (February 28) the article headed ‘iRacer battery car could put electric Super Prix on the road’, and the possibility of reviving a Super Prix on the streets of Birmingham.

There will be many people who, like me, experienced the first one held over the August Bank Holiday weekend in 1986, and I certainly do not look back on it with ‘huge enthusiasm’ or remember the ‘heady days of the Super Prix’, which the article assumes. I made sure I was not in Birmingham over the weekends of the later ones!

If it should be held again on the same route (Bristol Street, Belgrave Road and island, Sherlock Street and Pershore Street), do we really want to inflict complete and utter chaos on the area and the city as it did then?

There were preparations and barriers on the entire route which took two weeks to construct before the race, the event took place over a weekend, and it took another fortnight to clean up after it, including masses of the spectators’ rubbish!

While the race was on, the engine noise (constant) was a very irritating aspect too for the whole areas, which included private residences and further afield, and spread to my home two miles from the site.

During these five or six weeks, bus services on the major roads and routes involved were horrendously affected and diverted, causing tremendous delays and inconvenience to bus and car users alike, both commuters and shoppers.

This was bad enough in 1986, but with the enormous growth in traffic in 27 years, the city would come to a complete standstill, particularly at rush hours - which it often does now!

I don’t know what the attitude of the City Council, Centro and the police would be to the suggestion of a repeat of this stupid venture, which was disastrous for inhabitants in the area and its effects probably rebounded on other parts of the city too.

It should not be allowed to disrupt traffic and transport in the city with far worse consequences than all those years ago.

Helen Berry,

Selly Park