Planning again

Well I might moan about planning, but there's no doubt that it's important to people. A four and a half hour Planning Committee meeting last night, with a couple of controversial issues and quite a crowd. People get quite passionate and it's good that they get to see the Committee deliberating. What does annoy me though is the Committee Members who get up and go as soon as the issues in their Ward are dealt with. There was nothing for Truro, the nearest was in Malpas, but I stuck out the full session. One Tory wandered in and out during the first matter, voted and then left. Not good enough

Railway Club

Well I'm afraid we lost the fight to save the Railway Club. It will be swept away and replaced by modern flats. Truro is changing rapidly at the moment, the Co-Op, which is popular with older folk who live in the centre of town, is to be demolished and replaced with smart new shops. And Luke's, an old fashioned hardware come all sorts of stuff shop, is closing, because they can't afford the rent and rates.

I know we can't get get stuck in the past, that shops change, but here we are with a number of places that are popular and provide a service to the community, are indeed part of the community, that are disappearing and we can't do a thing about it. We just sit and watch the Coffee Shops open and Truro become anywhere UK. Actually we don't just sit there, we're busy spending hours deciding whether someone can have a Victorian Conservatory on their 1960's bungalow in the middle of nowhere.

Just a little bitter at the moment. I guess it's the same everywhere. When are we going to get some legislation that will allow us to protect our local communities? to do the job we were elected to do?

Wreckers

On Saturday night Timewatch ran a programme on Wreckers, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008pyps , telling the story of people who supposedly lured ships on to the shore, and murdered the crew, in order to plunder the cargo. The programme focused largely on Cornwall, and despite only being able to produce evidence of one person ever having been convicted of Wrecking, gave us the whole Daphne du Maurier Jamaica Inn experience, with knowing nods and winks from local characters and fruity West Country accents.

Obviously if a ship did come on to the shore, it was a bonanza and not a scrap was waisted. But ships foundered so regularly on the North Cornwall coast, that there was hardly any need to lure them in. Really, this whole story is a slander on the brave men who lived, and still live, by the sea. The men of the lifeboats who go out in the worst of weather to save lives, sometimes tragically loosing their own. Look at the lists of lives saved, posted outside any of the lifeboat stations. The men of the Pilot Giggs who rowed out into the Atlantic to guide ships safely in. And the fishermen who work the sea. Really the story of life by the sea is one of hardship and great sacrifice. The Timewatch team should be ashamed of themselves, for it is them that's making profits dishonestly.

Allotments

We have quite a waiting list for allotments in Truro, about 84 people at present. If you applied today you would probably be looking at a four year wait, and here I should declare an interest my wife having been on the list for about two years. But it seems that under the Smallholdings and Allotments Act 1908 we are obliged to satisfy demand on receipt of a petition with six signatures on it. Our Parks Manager has been searching high and low for some suitable, and affordable, land. Affordable being a key point with every garden being regarded as a brownfield site, he's competing with developers. But he seems close to a solution and the Parks Committee are keen to back him, allotments being so obviously 'a good thing'. I look forward to the peace and quite once my wife disappears off to her allotment. And the vegetables of course.

New Year

I had intended to resume blogging on New Years Day. I did the run from Jamaica Inn to Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall. It's quite a tough run being uphill through bogs and across rocky paths on the way out, and not helped by most of us having New Year hangovers! I thought I would work it into a metaphor for the year ahead, saying that only by being bold, taking on the big challenges and working hard could we achieve our objectives personally and as a party. But then I read up country blogs moaning about all the personal content in blogs and thought, well it was just a pleasant jog across the glorious Cornish countryside.

But we all blog for different reasons. My only interest is Boscawen Ward and the City of Truro. Well, alright, I do fret about my waistline a bit. So I shall ignore up country folk and throw myself into 2008 and the fight against Sainsburys extension, saving our Post Offices, providing affordable homes, maintaining the unique identity of Truro and whatever else I'm asked to do by the only people that count.