I take up the editor's editorial comment in last week's Keighley News concerning policing in the area. His view that 'the confidence of many in this police division has been rocked' really does echo around Keighley and its outlying towns and villages.

Why, oh why, has there to be so much change so quickly in all areas of our community life? No sooner does the population become used to one way of doing things when 'those that know best' suggest there might be a better way.

When will these planners get it into their skulls that anything devised by the human mind is bound to be imperfect in some way.

That to replace then it with another product of mankind is merely to instate yet another flawed system. Nothing in this world is perfect but to be always breaking something that works creates uncertainty, inconsistency and, above all, apprehension in the minds of the vulnerable.

Many of us, I should think, have minimal contact with the police officers in our area.

Apart from the odd parking or motoring offence, few of us have cause to communicate with the legal system. Those that perhaps resent most the presence of community constables are the very people they are here to control.

I must say, though, for the police to use jargon like 'pro-active policing strategy', 'Community Action Team' and 'beat managers' merely emphasises the distance between those they protect and the protectors.

Whilst there are times when the police vehicles at the back of the police station clog up the road a little, most of the time that there is a police presence on the street of Keighley and elsewhere is reassuring.

I hesitate to say this but the Traffic Warden Service (although not wholeheartedly loved by the motoring community) also adds to a sense of security, especially in our town centres.

Whenever I have talked with the Traffic Wardens I have always been surprised at their good nature and helpfulness. Indeed, I have to say, they really are human like the rest of us.

In an ideal world we would not need the legal system nor those that enforce it. However, our world is far from ideal so we must put up with a system that grants some the authority to tell us when we break our legal code.

If it happens that we infringe that code we must, with as much grace as we can muster, accept the consequences. Some of the comments reported in last week's Keighley News only reinforces the worries that everyone else has.

We do not know the ins and outs of the economics that govern this situation, nor should we be expected to understand them, but we do know when we feel unsafe, exposed and insecure.

It is then that the weakest members of the community fear to come out at night, walk down narrow lanes and venture past their doorsteps. There was a time, I am told by older friends, when people left their houses unlocked, sure that when they returned everything would be where it should be.

This is perhaps an overstatement but it nevertheless makes the point that Her Majesty's subjects, living at the fag end of the twentieth century, demand not only to be free to pursue their legitimate activities but also to feel free so to do.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.