Pensioner: Belfast is not a compassionate place for drivers
I am a law-abiding pensioner from Carryduff.My sister, Maureen, is in the Royal Victoria Hospital awaiting heart surgery.Although I don't drive into Belfast now, shortly after she was admitted, I agreed, as an act of compassion, to drive my very elderly brother-in-law to the hospital to visit Maureen. (The taxi-fare is very dear, and he's not fit to take a bus.) Unfortunately, on the way home at rush-hour I must have inadvertently used a bus-lane, although I was endeavouring to avoid them.That whole drive was extremely traumatic for me, especially after visiting my seriously ill sister.Yesterday I received a £90 fine, with accompanying incriminating photo. I was very upset, but paid the fine at once, which reduced it somewhat. However, the whole thing left me with a very bad taste in my mouth about Belfast. It is obviously a place without any compassion towards unwary drivers; the cameras snap, and the law comes down with the weight of the Giant's Causeway! Such a sad reflection on the city that is striving to show its better side. Alas, Belfast is not the place it once was, when my grandfather, John Long, smilingly directed the traffic from his point on Castle Junction in the 1930s.Helen LongCarryduff
My sister, Maureen, is in the Royal Victoria Hospital awaiting heart surgery.
Although I don’t drive into Belfast now, shortly after she was admitted, I agreed, as an act of compassion, to drive my very elderly brother-in-law to the hospital to visit Maureen. (The taxi-fare is very dear, and he’s not fit to take a bus.)
Unfortunately, on the way home at rush-hour I must have inadvertently used a bus-lane, although I was endeavouring to avoid them.
That whole drive was extremely traumatic for me, especially after visiting my seriously ill sister.
Yesterday I received a £90 fine, with accompanying incriminating photo. I was very upset, but paid the fine at once, which reduced it somewhat.
However, the whole thing left me with a very bad taste in my mouth about Belfast. It is obviously a place without any compassion towards unwary drivers; the cameras snap, and the law comes down with the weight of the Giant’s Causeway!
Such a sad reflection on the city that is striving to show its better side. Alas, Belfast is not the place it once was, when my grandfather, John Long, smilingly directed the traffic from his point on Castle Junction in the 1930s.
Helen Long
Carryduff
Airport bail-out is hard to justify
Our First & Deputy First Ministers truly must believe that money grows on trees with their £7 million injection of hard-earned taxpayers money into the forever money-losing City of Derry Airport.
The management of Ireland’s truly only international airport in Dublin must be smiling at the folly of NI’s heads firmly in the sand first ministers! They even make hard-left Labour leader Corbyn look like a fiscal conservative!
James Doyle
British Columbia, Canada