THE Greens and their ilk are always critical of the modern world.

They seem to think that the pre-industrial, pre-technological and pre-scientific era was a golden age for the human race. But the very opposite was the case.

It was a world were people worked very long hours doing back-breaking work and faced starvation through this. Crops being ruined by disease and vermin.

They died from cholera through drinking polluted water in a world without antiseptics, antibiotics, anaesthesia, sewers and flush toilets.

Travel by land and by sea was slow and hazardous. Many women died in childbirth while the infant mortality rate was truly appalling. Few people lived to old age.

So ignore these modern-day Luddites and raise your glass to industry, science and technology, which have been a real blessing to the human race.

JOHN PORTER, Thwaites Road, Oswaldtwistle.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.