We all need cheering up, so let’s keep beautiful flowers

Published: 06 August, 2010

• AS a resident of the most northerly part of the borough, continually overlooked by Islington Council, the only thing that has gladdened my heart over the last two years has been the beautifully colourful hanging baskets from Highbury Corner right up to Archway, especially in the area round our ugly Tube station. 

I would urge the Tribune to organise a petition to Councillor Catherine West deploring her proposal to axe this small cost next summer and urging savings to be found elsewhere.

We all need to be cheered up in these hard times so please keep the flowers!
CAROLINE OAKES
Whitehall Park, N19

• HANGING baskets are all very well as long as they aren’t used to prettify barriers in the centre of the road which we don’t want. 

Having put up with months of replacement of paving which doesn’t need replacing on Upper Street until they finally change the crossing outside Angel station to the arrangement which didn’t work last time (when paving in residential roads really does need renewing), I hope the barriers will not be replaced. 

Other local authorities have found it is safer to allow pedestrians to cross where they wish, using their own judgment. The baskets can then go where they’re intended, hanging from lamp-posts.
AVIS BALDRY
Gerrard Road, N1 

• THE flowers of Islington seem destined to wither, yet if the post of chief executive was delivered a wreath and sent to the economic graveyard, the borough would be able to afford botanical gardens on every street, a free window box for every resident plus free tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show.

Or if the managers’ bonuses were cancelled that would produce a garden shed load of capital. 

These individuals don’t seem happy with just a six-figure flat wage, they feel the need to rinse the garden of decency. 

And I don’t understand why the council does not just organise a concert where the resources that are generated are ploughed into keeping this good idea.

Humour, perhaps, is an issue for the Fairness Commission. After all it is unfair on the flowers not being allowed to bloom in Islington.  
MG McELLIGOTT 
Amwell Street, EC1 

• IT’S a very nice idea to have our streets decorated with flowers.

But who chose them? 

They clash horribly with our buses and even more so with those lovely orange barriers which­ mark out the roadworks at the Angel, for example, which will still be there long after the flowers have gone (and some of us too, by the look of it).
TIC LEWIS
Oakley Road, N1