WHISPERING SMITH: We escaped the asteroid but retail is no therapy...

It also means, of course, that you have avoided a racehorse burger! But your day isn’t done yet…

It is right and expected that the chief executive of Arun District Council should come to the defence of officers recording the minutes at public meetings, and it is correct that such minutes are rarely verbatim.

However, Tony Dixon does have a point (Gazette letters, January 31) when he says the minuted answer to a question posed by a member of the public did not really reflect the importance of the question or the answer given and both were a little lost in those minutes as approved by Arun.

I would respectfully suggest that, given the fact that a great many folk in LA are not exactly enamoured by the current antics and decision making of Arun on their behalf at this moment, and that perhaps a little more sensitivity should be shown to a question that I am sure was indeed a very serious question, a valid point made and one no doubt echoed by many an LA ratepayer.

I only offer that suggestion with good intent and in the best interest of all concerned. We work together or we work apart and the latter is not in anyone’s best interest.

And so to Rustington again and the proposed new retail park on the A259. Readers have made their views felt and I echo those general sentiments. We don’t really need such a development on a greenfield site and the A259 is getting more and more cluttered, almost to gridlock, on some days.

Also, unless a great deal of consideration were to be given to the existing retailers in the area and the effect such a development would have on them and the village of Rustington, it should, like the asteroid, not happen.

It is at best a confused outline, and one muddled even more by the secrecy of who the proposed interested parties are and by the fact that there is already the existing planning permission for a new garden centre on the old Focus DIY store site when Sainsbury’s moves back to its original site.