There is still money to burn here……

I use the Chester Greenway every day to get to work so I take a bit of interest in what is going on with it. At the moment there is huge earth works going on to create what looks like an unneccesary ramp to allow direct access onto the Greenway from the Deva Link road. I say unnecessary because they’ve also created a path to link to the Canal path – and hence the Greenway only 25m away….. I got so annoyed I’ve created a video to explain and annotated a map. Perhaps there is a logical explanation but I am struggling to think of it. There are loads more cycle type projects that could have been much better done in the area. How about continuing the canal path tarmacing down to Tattenhall for a start?

Map

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Video

Firs Kids Singing Christmas Songs

Cute

Long term consensus needed here!

Much as I support the Chronicle’s campaign to “Save the Gateway” I find it ironic since they are inadvertently responsible for the fact that Chester does not have any plans for a theatre! The unfortunate series of events started with the Chronicle’s misguided campaign against “The Slug” aka the new council offices on Gorse stacks car park which formed an integral part of the Northgate development. The Conservatives campaigned on the issue in the May 2007 local election. Unfortunately for Chester the Conservatives didn’t see the signs that the boom was about to bust. Hindsight says they should have finalised the contract as soon as possible. The whole house of cards had been laboriously put in position and all that remained to do was to sign the dotted line. This would have meant that part of the billions of pounds given to the banks by the government would have gone the way of Chester. Instead they re-opened negotiations based on cancelling the slug and building the council offices cheaper and somewhere else. In the meantime the credit crunch arrived in the autumn of 2007 effectively killing the deal and leaving us without any prospect of a theatre!

The Conservatives have a point when they say that no-one foresaw the size of the current credit crunch in June 2007 when they were re-opening negotiations on the Northgate scheme but they refuse to take any responsibility for what happened. They insist there was still a planning issue to be resolved but to my knowledge have never been specific about what exactly remained to be done. I had a letter through my door the other day again trying to absolve all blame by saying the scheme was late anyway and their negotiations therefore had no effect on the subsequent collapse of the Northgate plan. Yes the scheme was late but a highly complex deal is not going to be setup overnight. Consultation and planning often takes longer than planned in order to give everyone their say. The finances involved were huge and don’t get approved overnight. The Tories have done some good things since coming to power in May 2007 (i.e. Councillor Tom Parry has been very helpful in recognising the problem of studentification in City ward), but I would respect their position much more if they could just say “Yes, if we could go back in time we would not have campaigned against the slug and would have signed the deal ASAP, however we did campaign on the issue and therefore we were honour bound to re-open negotiations”. I hope the other parties would then accept this graciously and not seek to take advantage, thereby negating any possible chance of future honesty.

The Labour Lib-Dems are also at fault for not getting Conservative support for the scheme during its long planning phase so that after the May election whichever party had won would have signed the deal as soon as possible. What Chester needs is long-term planning and consensus building in order to move forward. What we get is continuous points scoring. The national party system does not work well with local politics and we have seen evidence of it in the demise of the Northgate scheme. I do believe that most of our councillors of all parties want broadly the same thing for Chester and West Cheshire, to make it a place where its citizens can prosper and reach their full potential, the weak are protected, the environment is protected and the council runs as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately the system we have put in place does not produce the behaviours we need to achieve those objectives. The Conservatives have 76% of the seats of the new Cheshire West authority based on winning 49% of the vote. They have will have complete control in founding the new authority and will thus establish it’s ethos and traditions. May I make a plea for the good of West Cheshire that they use this power humbly with consideration for all views and the recognition that they are in this position temporarily (as for all parties in a functioning democracy) for the long term good of the area?

Tryfan on Jan 6

Living up North it’s pretty easy to get into North Wales and the great mountain scenery around. We (i) decided to go up Tryfan and then back via the saddle. I did the whole horseshoe ages ago with the famous adam and eve and cantlever rock, but I’d forgotten how much of a scramble it was. We ended up avoiding the main Tryfan peaks and looping back via the Cwm Tryfan path. Great day out though.

It’s a bit steep isn’t it.

The path we took is the shoulder to the left of my right ear….

Summer holidays…?

The last few weeks have been absolutely frantic. The summer holidays are the time when the teachers and pupils all head off for a nice break but for the estate guys it is all go. In the last 6 weeks we have knocked down and rebuilt the main gates, refurbished three toilets, refurbished the school pantry, repainted a large part of the school, installed a network for the office admin and greatly extended the existing network for the school out from a single room into the 5 classrooms. Installed a new learning content system for the teachers to use the shiny new interactive white board and projection systems…….. Everything should have been finished by last Friday but work was still continuing today. The pupils arrive back on Thursday and it feels just like we are trying to get ready for the opening night of a huge production. On top of all of this I am trying to maintain my job at Nortel…. fun and games indeed! Jo went off for a couple of days to see her sister and I am ashamed to find out how I rely on her to tell me when to go to sleep. Hopefully once term does actually start we can take a little rest.

It’s not bad round here

We’ve been doing some exploring of the local country side and hope to entice some visitors up north. First off we went to Conwy (about an hours drive from Chester) and did a walk to Penmaenmawr. This is the village which Gladstone the famous liberal prime minisiter of the 19th Century used to go for his holidays almost every year.

The countryside is spectacular but unfortunately Penmaenmawr has rather seen better times. It suffers from the A55 swooping past it seperating it from it’s shore where Gladstone regularly bathed. Here is the station. It’s hard to imagine fashionable Victorians getting off the train here to go on their annual holiday

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Next up it was off locally to a walk around Burwardsley and Hartshill. There is an outcrop f rock on the cheshire plane and it is a popular place to get some fresh air. It’s on the sandstone way, so we could do a really big weekend walk. On the way round we came across grass boarding (see 2nd photo), looks similar to snowboarding but more uncomfortable if you fall over!

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Easter holidays on Friday we did a huge 57km bike ride round the wirral. There is a disused railway track that goes 23km through the Wirral countryside ending up by the coast. There is even a restored station complete with station cat in the station masters office.

Next day on Easter saturday we were back in wales to the Newborough forest in Anglesey. We really liked this place cos it reminded us of France and places like Royan, lovely beach, dunes and pine forests where we went on holiday.

So all in all not bad so far!

Jo’s update

Hi Everyone,

So we have been back in the country for almost two weeks now and I thought it was about time I filled you all in on life up North! We have got the intention of sending you all a change of address card with a little letter included but we are still talking about it – so in the meantime here is our news.

We are still a little bit shell shocked after returning form our two month holiday and while recognizing it’s time to settle down to life and get on with it, we have discussed running away on a number of occasions. No actually it’s not that bad. The flat in Chester is really nice. Tim’s parents have worked very hard and redecorated throughout so it’s all clean and fresh and looks pretty good. I am doing my best to add classy and elegant touches so when you come and visit you will be wowed by my interior design style!! Actually let’s call it Ikea style as that’s where so so much of our stuff comes from! Lets also call it ‘school style’ as there is no escaping the fact we live at the top of a school with a view of a playground. It does make the commute to work pretty good though – we can roll out of bed and walk out of our front door and we are ready to go.

Chester seems very lovely and I think I am already acquiring a northern accent. Everyone is very friendly – it’s true they really are. We have joined a gym down the road and Tim has already had me out on my bike checking out the local area. We are very friendless currently but all in good time hey. I am going to a food party tonight so maybe I’ll make some mates there! It’s girls only so Tim will have to continue friendless for a little bit longer than me!! We tried a local church on Sunday but just the notices went on for 40 mins, by midday we walked out – that ones not for us. Clearly we are not spiritual enough to sit in church for too long. We will try a different one this week.

Everyone has been very welcoming at the school too. We are a little overwhelmed by it all I must say and I am really struggling to remember everyone’s names. I have already been into quite a few of the classrooms and am getting involved on the teaching side of things. At the moment I’m filling in for people, and doing lots of the fun things without the responsibility of organizing any of it. Tim is certainly facing more of a work culture shock than I am. The pretty much all female chat of the staff room is a world away from Nortel! Thank goodness he is still working part time for Nortel I honestly think it’s keeping him sane. He is also going to get involved in some of the sports and has already joined the parent/teacher choir – imagine!!

We are certainly missing France though and all our friends there (the food and wine too), but it’s great to be back in the Uk too and we are looking forward to catching up with all our friends and family here. If only all our French and English pals could all move to Chester everything would be perfect!