Lighting up time
Like millions of husbands the world over I spent part of last weekend searching the loft for a set of ancient, under powered fairy lights. The mystery was solved on Monday evening when I discovered they'd been borrowed by High Peak Borough Council for the illuminations outside Buxton Town Hall.
The Market Place lights have been famously bad for years but I don't believe anything so embarrassing and pathetic has ever been unveiled before. It would probably have been more affective if the the town hall staff had stood on the steps waving cigarette lighters. They are so appalling they defy description here but lets show some sympathy for the hundreds of poor souls who stood in the sleet for an hour waiting for them to be turned on. The groans of disapointment must still be ringing round the ears of many parents. Most of the frozen little mites will have more excitng displays in their front windows at home.
Please, please if we can't do this in a proper manner lets spare the town the embarrassment and not bother at all.
Christmas lights should go up early enough in the season to entertain shoppers and stimulate Christmas trade and enough money should be spent to make them visible. If the budget is as ludicrously small as it appears to be then why do we have to spread it so thinly across so many streets. Decent lights strung across Spring Gardens would give a festive feel to our major shopping area and we could give up on the low energy lights scattered elsewhere.
Published Date:
13/12/2007
Modified Date:
13/12/2007
Binnovation or Innovation
Anyone listening to local radio recently will have heard a jingle in which the phrase Binnovation, Binnovation is repeated as if it is the latest wonder washing powder. Binnovation in fact is the boro council’s compulsory recycling scheme and it’s going to affect you whether you like the sound of it or not.
Rolling out from Glossop southwards it will be in Buxton by the autumn.
Very shortly a council employee will be delivering to each of us an extra green bin and a short sermon on the theory and practice of recycling, after that they just say the magic word Binnovation and hey presto! Your normal bin only needs emptying once a fortnight. And like all the very best magic tricks there is even a surprise ending that will leave you stunned – apparently it will lead to no increase in fly tipping, rubbish burning, rats, mice, flies or any of the sanitation problems that led our Victorian forebears to introduce weekly refuse collection in the first place.
As Paul Daniels used to say “That’s magic!”
Seriously, I live in a household of five who fill or over fill their wheelie bin every week. We already recycle our paper, glass and tins and have no garden waste, so the Binnovation scheme will do nothing to reduce the volume of our weekly refuse. Nevertheless we will now have to try and fit a fortnight’s rubbish into the same bin or find a convenient railway cutting to throw it into.
What my bin and my neighbours’ bins are full of is plastic, particularly milk cartons, bottles and other plastic packaging. It takes up a lot of bin space and its manufacture is expensive and harmful to the environment.
Very many local authorities now collect this plastic material and even supply householders with mini wheelie bins to put it in. However the leaflets on High Peak’s scheme don’t even mention plastic.
The real magic of Binnovation seems to be to transfer the problems associated with hitting recycling targets from the local authority to their voters.
Binnovation is 10% innovation and 90% rubbish!
Published Date:
09/07/2007
Modified Date:
09/07/2007
Food Hall Finale
So the food hall fiasco has finally reached the conclusion which it was surely destined to from the start. Everyone concerned are congratulating themselves but now it's time for them to step up and actually put forward a plan of their own which can actually secure the long term future of the Garden's buildings.
No one can now doubt the importance the people of Buxton place on the Pavilion Gardens and the affection they hold for the landmark buildings but those feelings will count for nothing without a viable business plan and restoration funding. Council tax payers across the rest of the borough must be shuddering at thought of signing a blank cheque for the future of something which could become an enormous drain on the already meagre funds.
How ironic though that the food hall scheme should be withdrawn on the same day that a local business consortium proposes a magnificent 34 acre leisure complex for the outskirts of Buxton. Lets remember that the Pavilion Gardens were not built by any public authority but by the Buxton Improvement Company, another consortium of local businessmen who were prepared to take a huge risk to secure the town's future. If Buxton and indeed the wider area are to have facilities for the future we need people who are prepared to follow the lead of our victorian forebears and be forward thinking, highly ambitious, and prepared to take risks.
Published Date:
10/03/2007
Modified Date:
10/03/2007
Food hall fudge
Having watched the best part of 400 people march around Buxton yesterday to oppose the plan to convert the Pavilion Gardens buildings into a regional food hall, it seems very clear that what is required is not a feasibility study but a desirability study.
Given sufficient money and political ruthlessness it would feasible to convert the Gardens into just about anything from a bingo hall to an abattoir. But being feasible does not make something desirable and yesterday's crowd which included not only Buxtonians but people from across the Borough were very clearly far from convinced that this project is the right way forward.
The one great use of the feasibility study though is that by reporting after next May's council elections it allows our hard pressed councilors to try and kick the issue into the long grass until after they have secured their reelection. I wonder whether the people of Buxton and the wider Peak will let them get away with such a cynical ploy.
Published Date:
27/11/2006
Modified Date:
27/11/2006
bonfire behaviour
I may be in a minority of one on this but I think the teenagers of Buxton should be congratulated on the way that the bonfire period has passed without the usual orgy of vandalism and broken wing mirrors. It seems to have been the best behaved halloween and bonfire season for many years - I even saw three menacing hoodies from Fairfield telling a group of younger children to behave themselves!
For me however the best thing has been the way that the fireworks have been largely confined the bonfire weekend rather than the usual month long bombardment that makes some areas of Buxton sound like downtown Baghdad. I'd like to think that this is due to a sucessful campaign by the council and police to stamp out the sale of fireworks to minors but I suspect it has more to do with the price of fireworks and the cold weather.
Published Date:
07/11/2006
Modified Date:
07/11/2006
Pavilion Gardens fiasco
Amongst all the furore about the proposals for the conversion of the gardens into a food hall, for me the most interesting thing is not the plans themselves but how this issue is going to put local democracy under the spot light. Here we have an issue that is of enormous importance in Buxton and seems to be to meeting almost universal opposition within the town. But everywhere else in the borough retaining the gardens buildings under council control simply means decades of substantially higher council tax bills.
And of course if they bow to public opinion and vote to "save" the gardens how can councillors then make an impartial decisions on the future of Glossop's various halls and the many other crumbling and largely unsuitable public buildings which they have inherited.
The political horse trading which normally goes on out of sight will now be under scrutiny by a great many people and will be given an added twist by the fact that next year the whole council are up for re-election.
Published Date:
03/11/2006
Modified Date:
03/11/2006