Millenium Festival: Readers Reply

A party for the year 2000? Do it yourself or find something more solid to do with the money.

We don't need a national millennium party/exhibition/ festival, but some show is inevitable. The British government says it wants less government and more private enterprise. So let's take them up and have a millennium celebration all over the UK. The fight between Greenwich and Birmingham is grotesque; let's celebrate in Greenwich, Birmingham, Land's End, John O'Groats, and ... you name it. We'll all hold our own mini-celebrations anyway, so why does Birmingham feel let down? Let them go ahead, like all the rest of us!

P.E.O. Babler

Coulsden, Surrey

We don't need a festival if we finish all the good things we've started on - the new Tate Gallery, Rogers' crystal-clad South Bank, etc etc. People will flock to them anyway.

Then spend all the surplus cash on houses for the homeless, hospital beds for the sick, getting rid of excess prison populations. But we should start now, not wait for 2000.

E. Cooper

Worthing, Sussex

I agree that the millennium festival should be questioned; they have waffled too long as it is and what most of us really want to celebrate seems to be a change of government.

AD2000 is a meaningless number except to Christians. Christians should therefore be encouraged and funded to celebrate it. Those non-Christians who enjoy indulging, a mite hypocritically, in Christian traditions, can join in if they want as at weddings and christenings.

As an agnostic I would spend the money on placing and maintaining a sizeable piece of green in the heart of every major city, calling these the Millennium Gardens.

Giles Velarde

Pett Level, East Sussex

How right Jonathan Glancey is! Why not mark the millennium with a more lasting memorial?

Recently the Independent featured an interview with Richard Rogers which made it clear that here is a man of real vision who could make a positive contribution to our ailing capital.

Why not hand over any millennium fund to Richard Rogers and give him his head? Then we might have something posterity could be proud of, instead of another transient, tacky committee-created concession to 'bouncy castle' Britain.

Nickola Smith

Lindfield,

West Sussex