Tuesday, July 19, 2005
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10 comments:
What makes local people think that visitors bring money into the town?
They used to, when we had Hotels ETC...But not now. Why? Simple really! We have 2000 holiday homes here, these people that come on holiday bring everything with them. The lot!
They do not provide employment. Nor do the day trippers.
All these folk do is clog up the town, While if you go in the local cafes, they are virtually empty..
So why have them? Admitted they will shop in our two big stores, but you can hardly claim that they provide much in the way of extra employment! For instance, try waiting at the checkouts!
No, all these trippers do is wander around, then go home. So where is the money that is supposed to come in for the benefit of the town???
If you take into consideration our council tax, it seems to me that we subsidise these people that clutter up our home town.
Now I know that there will be "Incoming fire" but first tell me what money is brought in here by day visiters or holiday homes.....For there is nothing else!
Dancing Ledge
Those stupid Wheelie bins!
Seldom have I seen in print an article as that in this weeks (28/7/05) advertiser about the Wheelie bins.
This statement; “we have a responsibility not only to our government, but to our children and our grandchildren to make this work”
What responsibility? For what? Sounds rather garbled to me….
“If we start to deviate there will be no clear lines” What is he on about. Translate please?
Come on, lets face it, this is a stunt that someone dreamed up. It will save nothing. it will make the beautiful stone cottages and narrow streets look absolutely ridiculous, with big green bins stacked up outside. The mere thought is mind boggling! Then to top it all off they will charge you £25 if it is pinched.
In the mean time, during the Summer months, the place will stink to high heaven, as the wheelie bins are left out in the broiling sun for 14 days…It is the local government of the madhouse!
What they are really doing is cutting down, instead of a constantly rising standard of service, they are asking us to go backwards. Not even in Victorian times was the local service as bad as this will be.
How much will these bins cost.
Who clears up the mess as late night revellers go round tipping them up?
Who will provide the service of going around cleaning up the fly tipping that will undoubtedly take place?
Could any one really be expected to put up with the stench of rotting left overs? Out on the pavements! The mind boggles!
Is there someone on our council stamping their feet in a fit saying “ I will make them have wheelie bins, so there!”
Dancing Ledge
Will PDC use its share of the below allocation to our planning system online? The article is from the Government Planning Portal:
"Government allocates £170m to speed up planning performance
The government has finalised the highest ever allocation under the Planning Delivery Grant (PDG) to further improve and speed up planning performance.
Local authorities will receive their share of the £170m of PDG, Planning Minister Yvette Cooper has announced.
The grant rewards local authorities for progress in online planning, speed in determining applications, improving housing stock provision, and developing plans for their communities.
Yvette Cooper said: “The £170m finalised today is the largest so far, up £40m on last year. The grant is having a major impact on planning services both in improving their performance and in raising the profile of planning departments within local authorities.
“Since 2003 we have now allocated some £350m which underlies the importance of a well-resourced local planning system to delivering sustainable communities. Some high-performing authorities will receive in excess of £1m this year.”
PDG is often used to invest in planning staff or new IT systems, although the funds are not ring-fenced. The grant has contributed to a six per cent increase in deciding applications on time against a six per cent rise in applications.
The final PDG includes adjustments for some errors made in last year allocations following incorrect performance returns from some local authorities.
To ensure the grant is not rewarding poor performance, elements will be withheld where there are problems such as failure to defend against appeals and non-compliance with planning directions."
Miracle on Swanage Seafront!
Nelson's Eyesight Restored
If you can bring yourself to look up at the ghastly homolculous which has appeared on the column on the Seafront you will see two eyes staring back at you. As the great man lost his right eye three years before he lost his right arm shouldn't the perpetrators of this monstrosity climb up and put an eye patch on in the interests of historical accuracy.
Comment on “A Cultural Strategy for Purbeck”
Purbeck District Council recently put out a “consultation draft” for a Cultural Strategy for Purbeck, with an appended “Draft Action Plan” for comment by “cultural stakeholders,” a term which would seem to apply to the whole population of Purbeck, so I take the liberty of responding.
The aim of the paper is unquestionably laudable. It is circumspect and liberal to a fault, exuding an almost pious political correctness; bending over backwards to accommodate “diverse” points of view. It is in short a sincere contribution to debate, presumably compiled by a committee of the Purbeck District Council, (the members are unnamed); but it is fatally flawed to my mind by its labyrinthine structure, by circumlocution and euphemistic jargon, which end up by rendering it virtually unreadable. It is a confusing mass of tautology, abstraction and tortuous platitudes
Take for instance the title, which exemplifies the authors’ mystic redefinition of Culture. The title is: “Castles, Carnivals, Coast, Heaths and People,” they might have added “Cabbages and Kings” for real portmanteau inclusiveness.
The paper attempts gallantly to bridge the gap between such diverse concepts as: history, environment, anthropology, places, Cultural figures, events and processes.
To preclude confusion you will find that, for what it is worth, the “scoping” of Culture is definitively defined in Section 1.4.1. Ultimately, anything they want to talk about is labelled “Culture”- in its broadest sense – sort of!
This produces a strange juxtaposition of the sublime and the ridiculous, the pretentious and the mundane, so that after acres of verbiage, a kind of anti-climax occurs, it appears that what we are aiming at realistically is improved ping-pong and toilet facilities for minorities and people with disabilities in every Purbeck village hall.
With very few exceptions, the writers have a horror of the concrete and particular. There is no mention of the lively cultural pursuits of theatre, opera, choirs, musical comedy, book clubs, creative writing, sculpture, local history, town-twinning, historical pageants, ballet and Morris Dance, to name but a few of Purbeck’s cultural pastimes. You wouldn’t think that Poole had a great tradition of pottery, or that Purbeck had an Arts Week with hundreds of exhibits; that Purbeck can boast creative furniture-makers or tapestry-restorers. Even in the much emphasized area of sports, there is no mention of scuba-diving, rock-climbing, jet-skiing, wind-surfing, yachting, fishing, shooting.
All these pursuits are taken for granted, the authors will doubtless argue, and are subsumed under “Culture”, but each one deserves at least an acknowledgement in any outline of plans for the future, lest they be overlooked, and they are far less abstract, more immediate and relevant to the public than questions of “access” or “biodiversity funding”. Some of these unlisted activities could potentially change the face of tourism in Purbeck, and revolutionise its economy and culture.
And how can we talk about “access” just in terms of bus services and wheelchairs, when the Ministry of Defense has denied access to the best of Purbeck to resident and tourist alike for 10 months of the year over a period of 65 years. I’m sure the army pays a peppercorn rent to the county for these thousands of acres, just as they pay lip service to environmental considerations while devastating the terrain, but the fact is that the Army Ranges constitute a blatant theft of Purbeck’s cultural resources, as flagrant and mercenary as BP’s theft of millions of tons of oil from under our feet. It is ironic that Purbeck District Council should list dozens of Public-Private partnerships who might be persuaded to put a few coins in our yawning cultural bucket, without even a mention of these fatcat beneficiaries of Purbeck’s rich resources, who spend more on public relations and advertising than they do on their Dorset poor relations.
As I see it, there are at least three cultures in Purbeck – the vestiges of a rural culture, the culture of the tourist and tourist provider, and the culture of the unemployed, the retired and second-homer. The competition between these groups and their conflict of goals makes it very difficult to devise a single improvement strategy.
However a few cultural measures that are in the common interest come to mind and should be added to the concerns of the Committee, which are legitimate despite the critique above and despite the tedious prose of the draft Strategy. I think the draft should be redrafted in plain English so that anyone in Purbeck can understand its call for action.
I believe the following measures would help to reverse our cultural slide:
Pedestrianisation of town centres to reduce congestion, noise and pollution.
Revision of Bye-laws to combat vandalism, littering and hooliganism.
Emptying public litter bins when and as needed, not just once a day.
Creation of an auxiliary community police force to combat disorders.
Creation of Public Works Projects for the unemployed and volunteeers.
Banning of alcohol consumption in public places.
Make shop-keepers responsible for cleaning the pavement outside their premises. Provide a scrubbing machine and water to clean pavements
Council sponsorship of a non-profit Purbeck weekly newspaper, a public radio station and free municipal wireless internet service to improve communications.
Ian Lowson
We took a bus to the end of the Ferry Road last night to eat at Shell Bay. If the bus driver had not “jumped” the queue the bus would have been stuck for ages and missed several ferry crossings. Cars had to duck into the occasional parking space to allow the oncoming wrong sided bus to pass. I understand that the whole affair is a nightmare for the bus drivers.
This morning I cycled in the same direction and the car queue for the Studland beach began in the village!
Surely some simple solutions would be to widen the road where vehicles wait to turn right into the main beach car park so other cars etc could pass. To remove the hard shoulder car parking say 1/2 mile from the ferry on one side to make a "bus lane". Maybe electronic warning signs at Norden, describing car parking, and waiting times to encourage people onto the train to Swanage and out to Studland on the prioritised bus?
May I remind people that I have now put a second version of our Culture in Swanage response to the PDCs Cultural Strategy on cultureswanage.blogspot.com
Please feel free to read it. I'm hoping to send it soon. Thanks to Keith Roker I've put in a great deal more about the economic importance in cultural activities and their relevance to tourism. See what you think.
why can't they make Church lane one way in the other direction,(upwards) so that you can access Durlston etc without going round town. I expect people will think this annoying because you can rat run all the way down from the top of Queens road to Co-op if you fancy. Shame- you could still get to town quick enough, down Townsend rd, along High Street and into Court Hill.
The Police.
Being old fashioned, I am one of those that like to see a policeman on our streets. That begs the question; Where is the friendly local Bobby that walks around the town, keeping in touch with what is going on, and is immediately available to talk and to listen to what folks have to say?
It is some time since I’ve seen a Policeman in the town. I am also unimpressed with the local cop shop. It seems to me to be the most distant, and unfriendly place. A ‘don’t come in here’ place.
Bring back the days when we had police in the town, when we could actually have a real Copper to talk to, and to rely on to uphold our law, our way of life, and our society.
Dancing Ledge.
TORCH Services at Hahnemann House, Bournemouth
Dorset MPs will meet today (Friday 14th) in a closed meeting with the board of the Dorset Healthcare NHS Trust in order to hear the Trust’s latest decisions and opinions on how best to remodel the existing services provided by the TORCH facility at Hahnemann House, Bournemouth.
Relatives and carers are extremely concerned with proposals and moves made by the Dorset Healthcare NHS Trust to conduct what the Trust describes as “reshaping” and “modernising” the services provided by the Treatment, Outreach and Rehabilitation Centre (TORCH). The carers are further concerned that such closed meetings give a one-sided perspective on the situation to the MPs. They have asked the Trust for full open and frank public consultation and are to date they are far from satisfied. And they are not alone. They have the support in principle of a number of local MPs and back in July at Bournemouth Town Hall, councillors from across the area meeting as the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee unanimously showed their disapproval of the Trust’s actions to date and made certain recommendations. The carers consider that these recommendations have by and large been ignored.
Dorset HealthCare NHS Trust has about 4,000 people in their care who live across Eastern Dorset (Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch, Wimborne and Purbeck) and who suffer from mental health problems or severe learning disabilities. TORCH is a vital, specialised service provided by the Trust and it’s dedicated team of trained clinical NHS staff and is offered to individuals who are at a vulnerable stage of their treatment and road to recovery. It is open every day and provides care and support for many people who have severe and enduring mental illnesses, notably schizophrenia, psychosis and bi-polar disorders. It gives these people a reason to get up and go somewhere 365 days of the year. It provides grass roots, hands-on care as part of individual and group treatment programmes to encourage and support independent living in the community. It also provides help with finding and arranging accommodation and work, and gives relatives some respite in the confidence that their loved ones are being looked after professionally by trained NHS staff. TORCH does so much more than just provide a valuable social and drop-in centre.
Carers fear that many of these services, and the structure and stability provided by the centre will effectively be replaced by voluntary and charitable workers and institutions, with home visits and with a much fragmented organisation. This in turn will lead to many of the vulnerable people cared for at TORCH losing their already slight foothold in the real world and relapsing into hospitalisation.
In addition, the carers consider that so far they have been treated very unprofessionally by the Trust, with a lack of consultation, consideration and discussion. The Trust has now made some steps to remedy this situation, but the carers and service users consider that the Trust is still paying no more than lip-service, due to the publicity that they have generated, appearing in the media, with considerable local press coverage and with the support of a number of local MPs.
A petition of over 5,500 signatures was delivered to the Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, but once again carers consider that so far this has just been passed over, as the real reason for the changes are cost cutting measures forced on local Trusts by central government.
The carers ask that anyone concerned please read their petition and see other details on their website at http://www.freewebs.com/savetorch/index.htm and if you support their actions, please endorse this by making a statement at the “Your Comments” page.
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