Shopkeepers should sweep own pavement

Matthew Wales says that the local Chamber of Commerce wants Gosford Council to spend more on street cleaning and security in the local business areas.

My grandfather was a shopkeeper.

His first task at 6am was to sweep the pavement outside of his shop.

He did this along with all his fellow business men in the street.

They all undertook this morning hygiene ritual out of respect for their own and their neighbour's health, together with local community pride.

They probably believed in the saying "If you want a job doing properly, do it yourself".

They also inculcated in their children a similar civic pride and respect for their fellow citizen's property so that only an unarmed local policeman and local newspaper "naming and shaming" the guilty in the magistrate's court was needed for security.

"Has today's local society been improved by either rapine-like business morals and behaviour and/or religions that absolve the confessing perpetrators of their crimes?"

Equally, turning the other cheek without sanction merely encourages repetition.

Can the local ratepayers afford to give more subsidy to local business when the water supply is polluted and restricted, major roads are hazardous with falling rocks, potholes and collapsing culverts, council shows un-Australianism by investing overseas rather than in the local community, et cetera?

Richard J. Newby Woy Woy