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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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30th November '08
Both Torridge and the town council are employing ‘Environmental Crime Officers’ who will be out in the community tackling those ‘low level’ offences which many find extremely annoying. Such offences include littering, uncontrolled dogs, graffiti and fly-posting. Enforcement initially will be by ‘education’ i.e. talking to offenders but, as Ricky McCormack, the council officer in charge of the scheme said ‘Sometimes a polite word doesn’t have the desired effect’ – and officers will issue on the spot fines. I was intrigued to hear that ‘nuisance parking’ will merit a fine of £100 – and this can refer to people who ‘dabble’ in second hand car sales where their stock is displayed along the road. I did ask whether the offences included the noise from car alarms some of which seem to go off with any puff of wind – and received a promise to look into the possibility. Councillor Len Ford did hope that the new ‘Time and Tide’ bell in Appledore wouldn’t fall foul of the new regulations! It will be interesting to see how well this new approach to tackling problems in Bideford works out.
Given the recent exposure of senior bankers as inept twerps who have cost the public billions of pounds through their stupidity and greed it was intriguing to listen to Torridge’s auditors going through the council’s accounts for the last financial year. I won’t bore you with the technical details, even if I fully understood them, but at one point we were discussing the transfer of the council houses in Bideford and elsewhere which, astonishingly, through the circumstances we found ourselves in last year, we had to give away for nothing to Tarka Housing. Councillor Bob Hicks wondered aloud that having been told the houses were worth nothing then did it now mean, given the banking crisis, that ‘they are worth less than nothing?’
There has been some correspondence over the last year about the perceived deterioration in the appearance of Victoria Park since maintenance went from Torridge’s gardeners to an outside contractor. John Adams, the officer in overall charge of the Park, came to the last town council meeting to discuss the situation and he reckoned that although weather conditions this year had created a range of problems the contractors were doing a good job. He added, in reply to a question, that the annual running cost of the Park was £26,800 – and that Torridge were thinking of applying for a Green Flag for the Park this being the equivalent to a Blue Flag for beaches. If such a flag is applied for then Torridge might also re-instate a small leaflet guide to the Park that used to exist a few decades ago. Certainly the Park is a fascinating place with its misdated plaque honouring US troops billeted in the town during the war along with the flagpole which comes from an old sailing vessel moored for many years in the estuary as an emergency isolation hospital. Speaking at a meeting for senior citizens some years ago I was also reliably informed how a local ‘wise woman’ used to hold a regular outdoor ‘consultation’ session near where the cricket square now exists. In addition, of course, the entire area was the town’s nineteenth century rubbish dump. The waste tipped here actually filled in a large marsh where local basket makers used to obtain their withies – all this history in a wonderful Park which is visited every year by thousands of people from all over the area. Truly a gem in Bideford’s crown.
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