Shoot the messenger

There was bound to be a bit of a cofufal when SLDC officers met the public last night in the Coro to explain  the outcome of the local development framework. This as I understand it has been a far reaching study because we need to build a lot of new houses in South Lakeland over the next 15 to 20 years. I downloaded the summary of this work and even that ran to over 300 pages, there's a lot of stuff there, and that's just about Ulverston.

We had a taste of what was to come at our council meeting on Monday where we had a small but very vocal group who were up in arms about the proposed development at Urswick road. So Wednesday was bound to see some fireworks, and we did.

The problem here, as I see it, is this. The public seem to see this as a done deal, they don't see it as a consultation exercise. The officers explained at the beginning, which I missed, that each of the sites proposed, was ONLY proposed and that they were a long way from enacting any building, if at all. These bits of land, inked in red on the map had been suggested to them by various  sources, land owners or public bodies etc.

Each of these bits of land had been visited by officers who had then consulted with various agencies, Highways, Environment, Utilities etc, who had fed in their two peneth. They had then given them scores, that is they evaluated each proposed site.

 Now they say we are going to need 1200+ homes over the next 20 years. Of course it's easy to poo-poo this as nonsense, but I'm not a statastition, I can't even spell it, but lets at least say they may have a point, and if we do need more houses we have to have a plan of where we're going to put them.

So out come the NIMBYS.

They were furious because they didn't hear what they wanted to hear, and they weren't listening to what was being said. The poor officers were being treated as if they were politicians. They can't make policies to bring more employment here, which some said they should do before building houses.The poor blokes were just there to try and explain what they have been doing and why they reached the conclusions which they have.

And this I suppose is what you get with democracy, it's messy, and it's messy because we don't want to see the big picture. We see the bit outside our front door, and convinced that the experts have yet again got it all wrong we squeeem and squeem and squeem. But not please at the messenger, what's the point of that, we need to engage with our politicians, local and national, all of the time. Go to meetings, I know that it's boring stuff, I do it, but at least your informed.

Anyway I thought the officers kept rather cool under fire, and answered each question politely. I don't think I would have managed so well, so hats off to you all, it was a tough call, but it's going to be a bumpy night.

The end of an era

The coach house has been home to our studio at Ford Park since 2002 giving the local bands around Ulverston a place to rehearse and record their music. Ever since we opened it's been busy with up to 80 musicians a week using the space, kids from as young as 12 to oldies like myself.

Recently we acquired funding to refurbish the coach house, build an extension and make a cafe downstairs. This means that for six months the building will be taken over by contractors to carry out the work, and today we started to clear all the equipment out of the building in readiness for the work to begin in one weeks time.

It's the strangest of feelings, because although we're going to end up with an amazing facility here inside of a year it feels like the end of an era. The coach house has seen lots of bands come and go over the years, and they came here because there was a certain rock n roll vibe to the place. That vibe has been etched into the walls of the building by some great bands who have grown their music here, Murry and the Skankers, The Mooncats, Streams of Whiskey and recently Bad Transmission along with countless others.

Over the years we've also used the building for intimate gigs, and audience and bands alike have agreed that we had a special little venue, a bit rough and ready, but one that had that had the x factor.

So now we are about to build on the success of the past and break a few eggs to make ourselves an omelet, as the saying goes. By this time next year we'll have a fantastic small venue upstairs, and a cafe downstairs with a new extension with offices and toilet facilities. The room upstairs will still be available for band rehearsals and we'll  have the recording facilities, albeit in a smaller control room.

But as I unwired all the equipment, took down the old posters and carried all the stuff out and over to its temporary home in Ford House I had those pangs you feel when you move house. The nostalgia of what had been some great sessions, knowing that what comes next will be altogether different.

Once the new coach house is up and running the group will be able to sell the main house, which will allow it to pay off the loan that they took out to buy the park and the future of Ford Park will be secure. That's why we all got involved in this project back in 1998, although I didn't get on board till 2002. In fact I walked passed this building when it was all boarded up in 1998 and thought it would make a great place for a studio/ venue and here we are thirteen years on about to see that daydream realised.

It's been a long and winding road to get to this point, and as I said it felt kinda strange to have to vacate the building today but I know that come next year Ulverston will have a great new facility for our community. It just feels like the end of an era, that's all.  

I don't believe it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now listen to this. A few weeks ago I saw a dog in Ford Park pooping on our field, it was off the lead and it's owner was turning her car around at our passing place, oblivious of what her dog was up to. Once she had turned her car round she got out of the car and called to her dog, which went bounding off in the direction of the car. I called out to the owner, but she chose to ignore me, opened the back of the car, the dog jumped in and she got back into her car sill ignoring me and drove off. I took the registration of the car, noted the position of the dog turd and went to report this to the SLDC dept. that deals with this sort of thing.

They were very pleased to receive my call, especially as I had the persons vehicle reg. They would pass this on to the enforcement officer, and told me that someone would come to clean up the mess and that they would keep me informed of the progress of tracing and prosecuting the owner. I marked the turd with a stake with the vehicle reg written on it. That was the last I heard, and it slipped from my mind.

Then yesterday I had a guy from SLDC come round to Ford Park to look at some hazardous waste we want to get rid of. In conversation it turned out that this person was actually the SLDC enforcement officer who was responsible for catching people who let their dogs foul public areas, among other things. Oh, that's interesting I said, and told him about the incident above. He was new to the job, but remembered this coming in, in the first week he started. He then went on to tell me that they had been unable to proceed with any prosecution because, and get this, because of DATA PROTECTION. Although they could trace the make of the car they were not allowed to know where the owner lived, or who they were.

So what's the bloody point, how ridiculous. What sort of a joke society have we got here. I had all the evidence save a movie, although I suppose that would have breached her human rights.

So much for the Big Society.
I feel a campaign coming on.

Countdown at Ford Park

And now away from the heady world of the town council and onto Ford Park. I'm sure you've all read about it in the local press, well this week has seen us take that first major step towards the future development of the coach house. I was privileged to sit in on the meeting with the contractors, the architects and trustees where the contracts were signed for work to begin on the 28th of this month. Reaching this point has been a monumental effort on behalf of our development manager, our project manager and the trustees but finally it's really going to happen. The work should take about 6 or 7 months, by then we will have a new extension to the coach house and the downstairs will be ready to be fitted out as a cafe/pizzarea. This will open in the Spring of 2012. We will also have a new car park at the top of the field.
Not only this but we also are about to start work on a large natural play area at the top end of the field on the other side. This will mean that for about six months we will have a lot of mud and heavy plant knocking about on the site. If you walk through Ford Park to the monument you'll be diverted into the top end of poplar grove, but bring wellies, if its a wet summer, you may need them.

We've had to clear out a tremendous amount of collected detritus from the coach house, which has been achieved by our stalwart volunteers who come every Tuesday and Thursday. Without them we would not be ready to get the job underway at all.

I'm now in the process of de-rigging the music studio, which will close on the 26th, and move to a temporary room in Ford house. I'm unpicking the spaghetti  of wires, packing tapes, CDs, manuals and all the musical equipment. Its a big task but one that will be well worth it when we move back in at the end of the year.

You can follow the progress of The Ford Park project by reading Jackies blog that she's started, to document the start to finish.

Ulverstonfordpark.blogspot.com

Website,webcams and tantrums

It's been a week full of news and events, so where shall we begin. A while back we had the spectre of our T.I.C. being threatened with closure, this caused a flurry of exchanges here in the blogosphere about how Ulverston needed a website that was aimed at the tourists that were going to visit us. I have been part of a small group of councillors that have been quietly going about making this happen. We now have a new official town council website dedicated to supplying the information that we think our tourists will find very useful. The address of the nattily entitled  site is www.ulverstonfestivaltown.co.uk. Please go and have a look and tell us what you think, tell us what is missing, tell us what is spelt wrong, etc. Ok, so it's taken a while but  I think it should admirably do the job.


Still on a UTC track we finally saw pictures streamed from the webcams in the Hoad monument. This has been a long and torturous task for the installers as they struggled to get the signals beamed from the monument to the town hall in Queen street. Originally they were going to be beamed to the coach house at Ford Park but for some reason the spec was changed, don't ask me why. The first week has been a little hit and miss. Logging on one sunny morning I found the stream showing a night time image, another morning, which was cloudy showed me the sun going down the previous day. But the last couple of days it seems to have sorted itself out. It's set to refresh every 15 minutes, so don't expect to see a lot of activity but I'm told this is to reduce the bandwidth required. You can view the webcam from a link on the ulverston town council website, www.ulverstontowncouncil.org.uk Once the stream has settled down we'll put a link to it on the Ulverston festival town site.


Away from the world of high tech and down in the council chamber on Monday we had one of our few exciting moments when at the end of the meeting, the bit when the public are allowed to speak, one of our councillors stormed out of the chamber. You see we're not allowed to comment or discuss things that the public may choose to talk about. Our erstwhile Mayor, Mr Lister was being particularly strict last Monday and when one of our long standing members tried to interject he was cut short by the Mayor, who in no uncertain terms reminded him of the rules, (silly rules I think) but that's how it is. Well, next thing we know our out of order member is stood up, saying he won't be talked to, or insulted, or humiliated, or something like that and promptly left the chamber, a gesture which left us all open mouthed. The woman carried on with her short speech and the meeting was closed, but just for a moment it was exciting to be a part of local politics...........wow.