LIVING IN CLOUD CUCKOO LAND
Christine Tweed expresses absolute horror at the prospect of a May Day bikers rally in Paignton (Your View 7.4.05). I am sure she is not alone. Every year, there is sustained opposition to the Waste Managenent Fair, most local people dislike foreign students intensely, and routinely, holidaymakers are disparagingly called grockels.
Yes, certainly, bikers may be noisy, students push and shove, and holidaymakers make the place look untidy, but Torbay, if it is anything, is a holiday resort. It is the way the place earns its living, and too many people are willing to bite the hand that feeds us, simply because visitors are not 'suitable' people or of the 'right' social background.
In the old days, when Torquay was the Queen of resorts, perhaps we could afford to be sniffy about the quality of our clientele, but in this much more competitive age, that air of genteel superioity is dead and gone, or should be.
There is even so much opposition to a decent road link to the Borough that one begins to think many people would prefer to see Torbay cast itself adrift, and float gently off into the deep blue yonder like some latter day Titanic rather than let the 21st century arrive in our midst.
