FOR organisations as well as people, it’s all too easy to take a wrong turning. It’s no good moaning about missed opportunities – humans will never have perfect hindsight. It’s also important to remember that you can learn from your successes as well as your mistakes.

At the weekend, more than 700 people, some from as far away as Australia and Canada, enjoyed a glorious early autumn day on top of the Transporter Bridge. The open day is one of many occasions marking the bridge’s centenary.

But it could so easily not have happened.

It isn’t so may years ago the bridge was plagued by technical problems and spiraling maintenance costs. We had plenty of people saying it should be scrapped or at least turned into a non-working structure – which would have been a form of living death.

It would have been easy for local authorities, then as now, strapped for cash, to have given in. But they persevered, because they realised some decisions are irreversible – and equally that all can’t be based just on hard financial calculations.

There’s a lesson here that while we have to deal with the here and now, we can’t mortgage the future and, at times, we do have to stand out against the crowd.

I’m sure the Transporter explorers had a Saturday afternoon to remember. I also bet they’re glad they weren’t up there 48 hours later!

LAST week, I mentioned the repetitive nature of many stories about health. Well if you can’t beat them join them.

Because it is time to raise again the need – the need that grows more important by the day – to introduce minimum unit pricing for alcohol.

At the Bradford Science Fair this week, all the old – and to my mind unanswerable arguments – were made, by the medical profession and a new charity Alcohol Research UK.

A minimum unit price of 50 pence would cut consumption by seven per cent and save us £10bn in heath, policing and productivity costs. It would end the ludicrous situation whereby moderate consumers or nondrinkers pay for someone’s else’s hangover.

But you know all this. The arguments and the science behind them are the same. So is the reason for the lack of action.

It is the power of the supermarket and the drinks lobby that paralyses politicians of all parties.

It is a shameful story and one that a future and hopefully braver and more enlightened age will be right to condemn us for.

SOMEWHERE, in some college or university, there must be a pioneering course in how to state the obvious.

A couple of years back, Unicef put the UK at the bottom of a table for the well-being of children and young people.

It was the cue for a lot of pointless, if wellmeant hand-wringing about the state of society.

Now the “experts” are back with the news that the secret for a happier childhood lies in lots of time with family and friends and getting active and outdoors as much as you can.

Material possessions, particularly if you go into debt to buy them, don’t make for happy families.

Is there a grandparent out there who would not have given that sound advice for free?