Readers' letters: Spare a thought for our feathered friends

You may have noticed that there are very few swallows around at the moment.

They should have been back with us by now but unfortunately many have not survived their journey back from Africa because of a violent hurricane they encountered en route.

Many of the swallows that survived the hurricane arrived in Greece and died of exhaustion, dropping dead in their hundreds onto rooftops, balconies and roads.

Some recovered to make their onward journey but it is feared that thousands have died.

Swallows are incredible birds – able to navigate 6,000 miles across the Sahara and pinpoint their exact nesting place from the previous year – truly amazing, yet they are among many species threatened by loss of habitat, climate change and persecution.

On our farm we welcome the swallows and it is always a delight to see their return in the spring. For the last few years one pair have returned annually to refurbish their nest on a lamp in our front porch. They might make a mess for a short time but, to me, it is a small price to pay for the delight they give us – they are also a talking point when visitors used to call.

If you are fortunate that swallows choose your home to nest, do welcome them.

Kath Walling

What this virus has done is highlight who really are the key workers in our communities.

It is those selflessly provide nursing, social care, vital supplies and food. They are often on low wages and they have not been valued as they should have been. This should not be allowed to continue as the country tries to recover.

Care workers in hospitals, nursing homes and in the community have not always received the PPE they needed either. We have seen the tragic results of this lack of planning and under-funding.

Council services have been severely reduced in the last 10 years because of lack of funding from the government. I hope that councils will be uniting to ask for changes to be made so that this does not continue.

I would also challenge the justification for spending billions of pounds on Trident Nuclear Weapons and HS2.

During this pandemic, the air has been cleaner and we have been able to appreciate our local wildlife and countryside on daily walks.

People have been working from home and having meetings online.

If some of this could continue, it would reduce traffic congestion. Looking at flexitime working and shift patterns is a sensible step so that public transport would be less congested when people return to work.

We also need to prevent deaths from air pollution by encouraging people to walk or cycle to work whenever possible. Creating more safe cycle lanes would improve the health of residents in the borough.

We all need to ask ourselves if we want a society that continues to be wasteful with limited resources or do we make changes which will make lives better by having a more equal society in the UK but also for people in countries who have so very little.

Jane Wood

Friends of the Earth

Film archive

The North West Film Archive (NWFA) has released a selection of its extensive archives online to entertain during the coronavirus pandemic.

The archive is part of Library Services at Manchester Metropolitan University, holding 50,000 amateur and professional films from the region, dating from 1890 to the present day.

Films include cinema newsreels, documentaries and home movies on a wide range of subjects.

To explore the collection and view films online visit https://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk/

Will McTaggart

Cataloguing and Access Assistant at the NWFA