I am always saddened reading the negative letters in the local press over such issues as The Strand improvements and the new bowling alley in Exmouth and the Longboat Cafe in Budleigh. The writers typically moan about monstrosities this and carbuncles tha

I am always saddened reading the negative letters in the local press over such issues as The Strand improvements and the new bowling alley in Exmouth and the Longboat Cafe in Budleigh. The writers typically moan about monstrosities this and carbuncles that, but are basically against any sort of change.

Well, I have a question for them. How do they think any of the things they now hold so dear were ever built in the first place?

Everything that is now an established building or facility was new once.

If these same people had been around at the time when, for example, the original Longboat Cafe was built, they would have been writing to complain about the spoiling of the seafront with a commercial abomination, and done anything to stop it being built. Yet, because it has been there for a while, it is now "perfectly perfect" and has to remain exactly as it is.

I love Exmouth and Budleigh, and no one wants to see them spoiled, but a lot of the facilities are tired and in need of modernisation and improvement. Of course, we need discussions about the form of these changes, but please at least accept that change is not automatically bad. Just because something is new does not make it bad. It may well become a much-loved asset that your grand-children will write and complain about changing.

Geoff Tyler,

10 Booth Way, Exmouth.