Simply Smith

I enjoy living in Keighley.

The town has most things one could ask for: a more than adequate shopping complex, a town centre in which tired shoppers can sit and relax for a few minutes, train and bus stations, and a host of other facilities of which many other small towns could justifiably be proud.

However, what do I often notice as I'm walking through the town?

I listen to people running down the town, saying that they can't wait to win the lottery and get out of the awful place. I see people spitting and hear them swearing and, not infrequently, dropping litter where they stand (often close to a rubbish bin).

I firmly believe that a town gets the population it deserves, so I say to those who treat Keighley like a rubbish tip - think again!

If someone drops a crisp packet or a cigarette box someone else has to pick it up. If someone spits on the pavement it is not very pleasant. I someone swears all those nearby have to listen to it.

I have to applaud Keighley's Town Centre Management Group on securing Keighley's place in history. But, as the saying goes, beauty is only skin deep.

Those Keighlians (if, indeed, these people come from the town) who rip up loved one's gravestones, offer a taxi service in 'cut and shut' vehicles, and decide that the Town Centre is a wonderful place in which to get drunk will give the place a name that does not attract.

This scribe feels that Keighley deserves better. If it has ambitions to separate from Bradford district then it had better get its act together. Each one of its citizens has a part to play.

From someone who thinks twice before discarding a sweet paper to the drunk who gets his (or her) kicks by vomiting outside the pub.

I don't want to be priggish about this issue, the worst thing one could be called is a do-gooder, but the quality of our environment does not stop at our front doors.

None of us would spit in our own front rooms, empty our rubbish in our kitchens or knowingly put our lives at risk in defective cars.

So, why do it in public? It's all very well to look good on the outside, but if the inside is corrupted what can the future hold?

A fruit that is eaten from the inside soon rots away. A river that is polluted looks well enough but supports little that is good.

A town that despises itself, while looking healthy enough, must inevitably decline. I would not wish to live in such an environment.

It is good that Keighley has been recognised nationally as a place with an attractive town centre.

It is even better when Keighley, as Malcolm Hoddy said last week, whopped Bradford. However, what is best is when all Keighlians treat their town as a place to respect, value and see as their home.

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