I’d like to start by wishing everyone in the village a Happy New Year and hope that everyone enjoyed Christmas and New year. I think credit should go to the team who produced the wonderful Christmas Display for us at the Village Green. Although I help, my involvement is very much limited to climbing ladders and wrapping lights around tree trunks, I cannot take any credit for any of the wonderful ideas or creativity on display. The team excelled themselves this year and I hope everyone got a chance to see the displays.
These lights, along with the village Christmas Tree, from the Parish Council, made the carol singing this year that little bit more special and thanks also to Tricia and the Shepley Band for braving the weather and making sure another of our traditions was back.
I also enjoyed visiting the Christmas fair at Cliffe House in November and again huge thanks to the Friends of Cliffe House and the staff there who helped put on that event. I recall that the weather wasn’t wonderful but it is great to feel that after the last two years we are able to hold village activities and events like these, it makes Christmas in the village feel special.
Looking forward I am hopeful that by the time you read this, we’ve seen off the worst of the pandemic and we can gradually open back up as a society and resume all of the village activities and events that make us a community and which have been missed for the last two years. I know that the Village Association has plans for more events this year and that other village groups are also be making plans and I look forward to us celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubliee in the Summer.
After Christmas, you may have noticed that the Library remained closed a little longer. This was to allow internal repairs to be carried out caused by penetrating damp. I’m pleased this has been done as I’d been pushing for this, asking questions at Council and even taking the Cabinet member responsible, Cllr Paul Davies, to take a look at the internal damage. I do hope you all notice the improvements when you next call at the Library.
Elsewhere in the magazine you will find two letters about climate change, both in response to a letter in the last magazine of last year. These three letters show differing viewpoints and I welcome this, it is healthy that we can disagree and be able to express a view. My position on this is that I like to try and look at where we can all agree, and as Jo Cox said, focus on what we have in common and I think on this issue we are all, I hope, as one in that we would like to see the planet that we pass on to future generations in a better state than the state we inherited.
I’ve had several discussions now with the new Service Director for Environment and Climate Change at the Council and we’ve talked about how we can bring people with differing perspectives together and across the generations. We have young people who are keen to make a difference and live more lightly on the planet and not live in a throwaway society and we have our more mature generations who grew up with the mend and make do mentality of the post war years. There is a great opportunity to bring people together and share ideas and ways in which we can all work together for the benefit of future generations. We won’t agree all the time and debate is healthy but let’s also look for the areas where we can find agreement. The idea of reduce, reuse, recyle is not new as the war and post war period showed. This approach itself is being recycled and that is a good thing.
