7:10am Thursday 26th February 2009
IT REALLY is one of those “you couldn’t make it up” stories. Worcester City Council has asked the local twinning association to consider a proposal to link up with Gaza City.
We find it remarkable that our elected representatives found the time to even discuss this issue given the parlous financial state the city council finds itself in. Yet they did and even voted to pass on the proposal from Councillor Alan Amos, in an amended form, to the twinning association for a decision.
Why? Could councillors not decide for themselves that it is a daft idea?
We do not doubt Councillor Amos’ honourable motives in seeking to help the people of a city he believes to be the subject of an atrocity. But surely calling for Worcester to contribute aid to Gaza would have been a more sensible proposal?
Twinning is an utterly impractical idea. The purpose of twinning is to learn about other cultures through visitor – and particularly youth – exchanges. We would love to know how that would work with Gaza City.
Would Hamas have a stall at the Christmas Fayre in Worcester along with our other twinning partners such as Kleve and Le Vesinet? Would we send schoolchildren from Worcester to one of the most dangerous places on earth on an exchange trip?
That is what twinning means. Every councillor who voted for the amended proposal to ask the twinning association to make a decision knows that.
We fail to understand why the council did not simply reject this proposal and we suspect many of our readers will share our views.
UPDATE: Worcester News Editor Kevin Ward has been interviewed about this running story for BBC Midlands Today. The programme can be seen on BBC1 this evening (Thursday, Feb 26) at 6.30pm.
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