Girls flushed with anger

Teenage girls at a new college in Brighton don't like the closed circuit TV cameras that have been installed in the loos and are planning a protest.

Their feelings that their privacy has been invaded are understandable but they should remember that this school has had serious problems. Cameras in the loos are a small price to pay for improvements.

Once Stanley Deason and then Marina High School, it has been revamped as East Brighton College of Media Arts. It was failing fast and big changes had to take place.

New head Tony Garwood wants to make sure that girls and boys all feel safe and secure there. School loos, as any pupil or parent knows, can be threatening places.

The cameras cannot peep into the cubicles and are monitored only by the school.

It's not easy to turn round a school, but it can be done by pupils and staff pulling together.

Instead of making a clamour about the cameras, the teenage protesters should do their best to ensure the new college gets off to a great start.

Save that home!

Make sure you sign our big petition to save the French Convalescent Home in Brighton.

Pensioners will lose a place they love and a fine building will be razed to the ground if plans by Bovis Retirement Homes are allowed to go ahead.

Councillors have a good case for turning down the application to replace it with sheltered housing.

But their reasons for rejection will be much stronger if they can show there's overwhelming public opposition to the scheme and that's where you can make a difference.

We could even persuade Bovis to ditch the scheme before the application reaches the planners.

Missing smile

Everyone whose used the car park at Brighton Station likes attendant John Hambridge. But now he's to be replaced by a machine.

The machine may be efficient but it won't give out cheerful advice in the way John has over the years.

Connex may yet regret the day they decided that old John had reached the end of the line.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.