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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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7th June '09
I don’t know how many of you see or read the always interesting ‘Bideford Buzz’ but one of my favourite pages is ‘The Shipping News’ feature which gives amazing detail on those vessels visiting Bideford and also those going up or down the Bristol Channel. I was especially intrigued by the sighting of the Seabourn Pride on the 14th of May. This near 10,000 ton U.S.-owned cruise ship anchored on the eastern side of Lundy before sailing on to Southern Ireland. Having seen such vessels calling at Torquay and at various places in the Mediterranean and the business their passengers generate when they visit a place then it is to be hoped that we could attract one or two to Bideford. Given our historic links to North America perhaps we should explore this possibility? As vice-chair of the Harbour Board I will be following up this sighting to see if there is a possible new market here.
The Bideford town council newsletter isn’t the most cutting edge publication as it only appears quarterly but it does contain a lot of interesting stuff if you live in the town and want to know what the councillors are doing. Up until recently it has been delivered with a free sheet but for some unexplained reason the proprietors have stopped circulating their publication to much of Bideford. Indeed councillor Roger Vanstone put the number of properties not receiving it as high as 4000. Apparently piles have been left in some shops but clearly it is not reaching those it was intended for and the council have not paid to have delivery left to chance. This also affects the advertising of public notices and councillors are now looking at alternative methods of informing the voters. The newsletter can be downloaded from the council’s website and councillor Steve Clarke suggested we explore joint delivery with Torridge’s newsletter or even getting the dustmen to deliver it as they go on their rounds – although this did lead some councillors to cruelly suggest it might be a case of their delivering it with one hand and taking it away in the rubbish sacks with the other!
You may recall the on-going tussle between the town council and Torridge over the amount of litter being (un)collected in Bideford. Ricky McCormick the district council’s officer in charge of waste collection/recycling has now offered to show councillors all his data on cleanliness targets and achievements. Councillor Clive Bone, who has professional experience in this field, and our new Mayor are going along but looking at figures won’t do much about the litter out there and as councillor Caroline Church said ‘we need to decide whether or not to employ an extra street cleaner or not.’ I welcomed this support for my idea and we decided that we were willing to give Torridge 3 months - both to allow councillors Bone and Powell to examine the figures and, if need be, for the district to sort out its street cleaning service. I opted for 3 months as the Mayor, councillor Andy Powell, did point out that we agreed to print addresses of who to contact re litter in our town newsletter for that time to see if this could help. Unfortunately, as you will have read above, the newsletter is not now reaching every household.
As reported in the Journal, the last meeting of the town council saw a petition signed by 350 people being presented asking that parking charges be lowered to attract more customers to the town. At first sight this sounds a good idea but I do wonder how much the odd 20-50p would make to most drivers who, in my experience, fall into two groups – those who will park away from the town centre to avoid any payments at all or those who will use the car parks for convenience and don’t really think much of the cost. If you think the latter don’t exist then I can only go back to when I and my students twice carried out a survey of car park users throughout Torridge and found drivers were overwhelmingly satisfied with charges and facilities on offer. Of course all car parks could be made free but the last time this was tried they immediately filled up with shop and office workers who arrived first – with shop customers not getting much of a look in – all a far cry from 1949 when charges of 6d (2.5p) were first introduced on the Pill ‘to help the ratepayers’.
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