Ulverston Lamposts

Well at last, I had to pinch myself cause I saw a cherry picker in King street and two men with paint brushes. Amey Mouchele have finally got round to painting our posts in the middle of town. I brought this to the council in January, so we could have the town spruced up for the unvieling of the stan statue. Oh well better late than never, I was beginning to think it would never happen. Although if it hadn't been for the dogged persistance of our town clerk I think this would never have happened. It might not seem like a big deal but let me assure you that this is about as big as it gets on Ulverston town council. A small victory for Cllr Col .

Croquet

I was out and about putting up posters for Wind in the Willows, and found myself in Greenod. I'ld stopped at the garage and across the road I saw a few cars parked at the lawn tennis and croquet club. That may be a good place to pop a poster I thought in their club house. I walked over the road and into the field where about six people were playing a game. I stood and gazed wondering what was going on here, it was an antiquated scene with these half a dozen people dressed all in white were playing this game of croquet. I had no idea what was going on but it looked intrigueing and curiously idylic. A lady in a straw hat left the green and walked towards me, it seemed to tell me I was on private ground but when we started talking it turned out she had come over to try to recruit me into the club which was obviously short of new blood. She was very keen to tell me a little about the game and how it was a bit like chess. It was much more complicated than I imagined, you didn't just knock a ball through a hoop but I didn't really grasp what it was all about but I did think it was something I would like to try and they were keen to find new members. I know it seems a bit of an upper class game but I think I'm going to have a go, It's such a beautiful spot and on a nice evening a game of croquet in Greenod could be fun.

Update on the lamp posts

News from the front, just back from a council meet, where I was informed that a workman had been spotted sanding down our dilapilated lamposts. This was news to me and to our town clerk so I went and had a look and sure enough there is evidence of sanding down being done. I am amazed, at long last movement, maybe they have even bought some paint. I'll keep an eye on this but it looks like at long last we'll soon have some nice newly painted posts.
Still waiting for the rest of the street furniture, but hey, you gotta celebrate these small victories.

continuing the curious lampost saga

This week we had a curious update on the painting of the lamp posts in the town centre. This came via Owen, I forget his second name, but he's yer man at Capita who's dealing!!!!! with this job. It would appear that they are now waiting on a paint specification from Amey Infrastructure???? It would appear that after 6 months someone somewhere had obviously slipped up on specifying the colour that these posts would be repainted.

Now seeing as they're all grey, well except where the paint has peeled off to expose a previous coat of green, that choosing the colour would have been a no brainer, as they say nowadays. And seeing as how they must be painting lamp posts somewhere in the county, or in the country, that a quick phone call, or better still a simple email would have nailed that problem in five minutes. So why is it taking so long, and why do the ecxcuses keep changeing.

First the painters got a hip problem, then it's a traffic management problem, now it's a wrong sort of paint problem.
We're paying these people- How much do they get paid?, never mind MP's expences, I want to know why they get paid at all.

You know, I confronted Nick Raymond about this back at the fiasco that was the community travel plan meetings. He told me then that we couldn't paint our own Lamp posts because they had to be painted with a special sort of paint. Well if he knew that back then, what's going on now. He also told me that if we painted them we could be done for criminal damage, or that we would have to take ownership of the posts we painted. Not sure if that meant me personally or the town council. Anyway I decided to go down the official route and now look where we are.

No wonder our constituents think that the Town Council are useless, and don't do anything. When faced with this sort of incompetance how can we expect anything to get done. All I can say is thank you to David Parrat, our town clerk, who has persued this on our behalf with some well crafted correspondance, relentlessly, but like he has stated in these exchanges, he should not have to waste his time berateing these heads of departments just to get them to carry out work that they have scheduled, and have a budget to do.

I can see the next excuse coming up, can't you. They'll be telling us next that we've now entered a new financial year and budgets have been reallocated, and due to an underspend of last years budget, there is no money to carry out this kind of work this year.