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Hackery

Posted by The Echo Editor on April 16, 2007 4:26 PM | 

Last week we printed a special report on how the members of the South East Wales Transport Authority travelled to a meeting in Cardiff City Hall.
Despite their strong statements on carsharing and public transport we found out that a good percentage of these council and transport chiefs were using their own cars to travel.
And that's despite the easy access for buses and rail within just ten minutes of City Hall.
Now this story, understandably, has not gone down well with Sewta.
And reader Martinez Barrios takes us to task over it in today's paper, accusing us of attacking local government 'at every opportunity' and of 'tired and cynical hackery.'

Now Martinez is of course entitled to his opinion - and I am happy to give him the platform to vent it.
But, to my mind, this was an important story.
After all this is an important public debate as to how we cut down on the numbers of cars on our roads.
And Sewta are key influencers in this debate.
By their own figures half of the members of this committee arrived by car, even though three were carsharing.
I think that one of our roles as a newspaper is to ask questions of those who represent us in public life, to challenge their statements and to ensure that they live by their statements.
I don't agree with Martinez that we attack local government at every opportunity. When they do something well - like Cardiff for instances with its events, fantastic parks, recycling improvements and city centre development, we praise. When they don't, well we're hardly going to turn our shoulders and hope our readers don't mind us ignoring that aspects of local life, are we?


 

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