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Twickenham Letters to the Editor |
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If you have a view you would like to be expressed in these pages here please send it to the Editor. Full details of how to do that are on the contact page. Letters about the Twickenham Riverside Plans are here JUNE LETTERS
re: Ethical Investment
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from:
Ron Harvey Dear Editor Maurice Benson's astute letter prompts this comment. At one of Mr. "opportunities for all" Hancock's public meetings I was especially struck by a remarkable admission: It would have been easy enough to achieve but, notwithstanding an extensive public consultation, there had been no attempt to contact any entrepreneur who might actually be willing to run an Arts Cinema! Similarly, there appears to have been no attempt to explore whether or not a public facility likely to be regularly flooded would ever be insurable or allowable with respect to health and safety. In view of this and the history of the Richmond Ice Rink replacement charade, I am not therefore inclined to take the Arts Cinema proposition seriously anyway. The one mistake that our Council has never yet made is to overestimate the intelligence of it's electorate. Ron Harvey
Sir, I was a film exhibitor, in the business for most of my working life and retired just a few years ago. I am fascinated to see that Richmond Council not only proposes to provide land for the building of a new cinema complex in the centre of Twickenham, a very courageous move for any suburban exhibitor in these days of satellite tv, video hire and DVD's, but that this is to be a triple Arts Cinema. Did I really hear that right? A triple ARTS cinema? Even if these were not Arts cinemas but commercial cinemas showing Titanic, James Bond and Pearl Harbour type of movies I would have thought three cinemas in Twickenham, where all previous cinemas have gone out of business, is an extraordinarily brave venture for any business, foolhardy springs to mind. However three Arts Cinemas showing B/W films by directors like Ingmar Bergman, Jean Luc Goddard and Sergei Eisenstein might have difficulty paying the electric bill let alone business overheads, film rental and the council rates. Surely it cant be that by "Arts Cinemas" the council is using a euphemism for "adult film" cinemas? I just cant see how else it will pay its way. Do the good people of Twickenham really want this? There must be some very courageous and imaginative decision-makers at Richmond Council investing public resources. Yours Maurice Benson |