IN a week when the much revered campaigner, Sir David Attenborough, made another impassioned plea to save nature and concurrently – the planet, it seemed particularly nauseating to note a Craven district councillor namely David Pighills being disqualified for effectively upholding those life-supporting virtues.

The birds and the bees, literally, have told us that all the latest array of 'hi-tech' digital appliances, which Mr Pighills does not come to terms with, are not so much helping society towards becoming 'zoom and boom', but more a case of 'doom and gloom' by way of the aforementioned flights of nature conveying their own important message by themselves never venturing anywhere near the digital masts.

I do appreciate that the social media network does have its uses in the modern world, but it is sadly, and many times unnecessarily over-played as in this case, I would suggest, of Craven Council having to hold all its meetings online at the expense -besides all else, of the not-digitally savvy David Pighills.

Surely, the people responsible for purveying the entirely online meetings were capable of thinking outside the digital box and probing the possibility of staging some well socially distanced meetings in the pens at Skipton auction mart or in the spacious school halls which had not been used in the past six months.

Like David Pighills, I too am pretty hopeless with much of the modern day social media equipment, but – like David I do have my better values.

For example, I am well capable of crossing a road without gazing into and tampering with my mobile phone.

And, I can find my way around anywhere in the British Isles without even looking at any social media equipment. Unlike – I hasten to add – all those 'professional' Heavy Goods Vehicle drivers who insist on flattening the traffic island, and the pavement stanchions at the bottom of Skipton High Street, because their hi-tech equipment has sent them on a route which their lengthy vehicles simply will not negotiate without causing damage and havoc.

Bring back Mr Pighills a genuine people’s person, A diminished breed but still very special in this digitally obsessed world!

Roger Ingham M.B.E

Skipton