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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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20th January '08
Visiting the Caddsdown Recycling Centre just after New Year’s Day I bumped into the very affable manager Chris who runs the site extremely efficiently and chatted to him about one rather unexpected problem. Anyone who had travelled around Bideford over the holiday season couldn’t help but notice the large piles of black rubbish sacks awaiting collection – nowhere more evident than at the Buttgarden Street/Meddon Street corner where there was veritable pyramid of them. Some people evidently wanted to get rid of the bags quickly and so took them up to the Recycling Centre which, unfortunately for them, cannot take the food waste many of them contained. Some of these ‘dumpers’ actually became quite abusive towards the Centre staff – evidently not much Christmas spirit on display there then! I have suggested that for next Christmas Torridge supply a skip at the Centre which can take such waste. The council officers are now looking into this and I will let you know the result.
You may recall Torridge's current plan for the Burton is to hive it off to a North Devon Cultural Trust under Alan Giddings the present manager of the Queen’s and Landmark Theatres. The item had been sent back from Full Council for further discussion though as the committee chair councillor Gay Tabor pointed out she was still awaiting further information from council officers. I asked what this might be and was told it concerned the cost of delays and ‘going down a different path’, covenants on charging entry into the Burton and the whole, rather vague, set of financial figures the Trust has so far put forward. Councillor Geoff Lee admitted he couldn’t see a lot of benefit to Torridge ratepayers from the scheme we had been presented with and used the analogy of the Titanic to represent the council steaming ahead into what could be very dangerous waters. He wanted to look at what the ‘Friends’ were putting forward – a suggestion vetoed by the chairperson. Councillor Len Ford, however, backed councillor Lee and pointed out that when dealing with public money we had to go for the best option and he personally ‘didn’t give a monkey’s’ which one we went for so long as all the possible options had been examined. At this point the council’s solicitor Ken Miles stepped in to point out that the two possible ‘routes’ we could go down would not see us comparing like with like – a point generally if grudgingly accepted by the committee. Councillor Ken James then pointed out that we did not know the ramifications of this decision with regard to the Plough, the Beaford centre or the other museums in Torridge. The debate ended when councillor Phil Collins moved we defer any further debate until our next meeting in February when we would have all the requisite information – I noted, however, that seeing as this will not apparently include that from the ‘Friends’ we really do not seem to have made any progress. I have already offered to present the figures from the ‘Friends’ if they wish me to – mark my words, this one will run and run!
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