Should have called the Cones Hot line

It all started with a delivery of 20 tons of sub-soil destined for Ford Park, part of our new play area. However the lorry delivering it couldn't get into Ford Park Cresent because of two cars parked, legally, at the beginning of the junction with Hart st. I called the police, who managed to find one of the owners and the problem was solved. we got it sorted in about half an hour.

As we are having deliveries by large lorries on a frequent basis I thought I should try to organise for some cones to be put out whilst the work at Ford |Park goes on. The nice lady at police HQ up in Penrith had told me that they no longer do cones and that I needed to talk to Cumbria County Council.

I called Cumbria County Council and explained that I need to speak to someone about temporary cones. You need to speak to Amey she told me and gave me a number in Kendal.

I called Amey, explained the situation and she said she was transferring me. A man answered, who I had to explain the situation to all over again. He turned out to be in Barrow, and it was something they could do but........, they would need a traffic order before they could help. Who can give me a  traffic order, I said. You need to speak to someone at highways in Kendal he said, try Tony Beaty

I call Tony Beaty at highways, and a nice young lady told me that Tony was not available, could she help. I explained the problem.

After a rather long conversation she said that it was not going to be easy, I would need to speak to a cones agency, like Amey, for instance. They also had lots of problems getting areas coned off and the minimum charge was in the region of a thousand pounds. mmmmmm. but I only want two cones at the most. It would be much easier if your town had it's own cones, she said. I said that I believe we do have our own cones. Then I suggest you try that approach. Thanks says I

I phone our Town clerk, David Parrat, and his answerphone kicks in, I leave a message, could he call me please, when he gets my message.

An hour later there's a message from David, who knows me. He apologises, he's been at an Ulverston in bloom meeting, he knows the webcam is not working, which was not the reason for my call, but as I call so often about this he assumes that is why I've rang.

I leave a return message explaining about the need for some cones, and could he help, but by now it's gone 2pm and Davids office is closed until tomorrow.

Maybe I should have called the cones hotline, that may have got me a better result.

Battery Megastore blues

Our golf buggy at Ford Park needed a new battery, and these batteries are not cheap, about 150 quids, however I found a deal with Battery Megastore for 130 which I promptly ordered on the Friday. Monday morning it arrives, so far so good.

Now I wasn't on site when it arrived and the delivery driver gets a woman from the council adult day care service to sign for it, even though it's addressed to me, she signs for it in, I suppose good faith, and thinks she's being helpful. The driver is in a bit of a rush, which they always are, arnt they.

About half an hour later I collect the battery, which is wrapped in a sort of plastic cling film with lots of tape around it that says fragile, and it is strapped to a mini pallet with a bit of that plastic strapping. Curious thing is that the wrapping appears quite wet, although as its been raining I just assumed it was rain water. But when I start to unwrap it my hand, which has some cracked skin starts to sting. I think that the wetness may be battery acid that has leaked out somehow. When I finally get to the battery its has obviously been damaged, one cell stopper is bent over and the corner looks split, whats more there is no acid in that one cell.

No problem, I call the company, down in Gloucestershire, and inform them. They say ok, we'll get that sorted for you sir. But that's where it all unravels.

They come back to me to say that it was signed for as received in good order by a person called Wendy. This means that they are not responsible as the courier has delivered it in good condition. This item was so wrapped up that it was impossible to tell, just by looking at the packaging that it was in good order.

Seems that  the Battery Megastore rang the courier, they refused to take responsibility, so it's my problem and not theirs. Maybe I have caused the damage. WHAT!  So much for customer relations at battery Mega store. They say they'll try again but come back with the same excuse.

On Friday, 5 days now after the delivery, I talk to the managing director, Giles Briggs who tells me that they won't send a replacement but will try to persuade the couriers insurance company to reimburse us, but he doesn't hold out much hope, except to say they may go half way. He also suggests that the damaged battery may still be ok and he promises to send me some replacement battery acid. GREAT!

Today I refill the battery but it leaks through the casing, it is a useless battery, karputt.

I am very pessimistic about getting a replacement, but I am determined to keep on trying as at £130 pounds this is no small beer.

They tell me that the driver would not have delivered faulty goods, but he did, and because someone signed for it then that was that and they can wash their hands of it. Surely that can't be right, surely unless the recipient signs they are out of order.

Does anyone know the law on this one, is their some office of fair trading that I can go to, or is any signature acceptable, and should the driver ask me to examine the goods before signing. The woman who signed probably thought she was just confirming delivery, not confirming that the goods were in good condition. How does this work.

All in all a very poor show from Battery Megastore, a, on packaging, and b, on customer satisfaction. They have only been in business about six months I believe, and on this count won't be in business for very long.

The writing of the campaign song Keep Ulverston Special

My campaign song Keep Ulverston special,

Had an email on Friday,  from Kay whose part of the group "Keep Ulverston Special" set up to oppose the plans for a supermarket on the Old brewery site. It said, we can use Colins song to go with the video she was planning, a sort of flash mob type of thing. I'm not too sure what that means, but I had to reply to say, excuse me but which song is this. You see although at the meeting last week I had suggested we could write a song for the campaign I had forgotten I had piped up with that suggestion.

So now I had set a challenge for myself, too late to back out. Late Friday afternoon I sat down at the keyboard in the studio at Ford Park and messed about for a couple of hours, with little success. I sort of had a germ of an idea, sort of reggae style thing, and about four lines but I was stuck at that. I took it home and fiddled around some more that evening and managed a couple more lines and the semblance of a middle eight.

 Saturday morning and I combed through various leaflets we had, checked stuff on the Robinsons site, the evening mail and the wezzy gezzy looking for inspiration.

By about eleven o'clock I'ld almost got it nailed, just needed that last couple of lines for the last verse. When I borrowed the line from big yellow taxi, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone" that wrapped it up.

I fired up the ipod, plugged in the mic and googled the chords to Mrs Robinson, by Simon and Garfunkal, and dashed off a quick demo with the de de de deh bit from that tune on the intro and outro. Bingo the campaign song was born.

Next up, download to my pc. Then how to get it onto facebook? I've seen people using soundcloud but hadn't tried it myself, so googled soundcloud, joined up, confirmed my email address and easy as pie uploaded the song to their site. Clicked a button that said share with facebook and at 12.05 there it was posted on my profile. About five minutes later a notification on facebook from Kay saying Great song and the word, STAR. By the afternoon it had been posted out to radio cumbria and hospital radio and Ceri, who was collecting signitures for a petition in Market street had it playing on a continuous loop at her stall.

Now that is the truly amazing thing about the net and how we use it nowadays. I remember way back when in the good old days when we used to make records this instant response of the artist was impossible. If you wanted to write a song in response to a news event it could take weeks, maybe months before you could get it on the streets, even if you were Dylan,or The Beatles. I think Bruce did it with Philidelphia, was that about AIDS, not sure. Anyway isn't it amazing that we artists, songwriters can now contribute to the news as fast as the newspapers and TV. We should use it more, maybe we already do, maybe I'm not as switched on as the kids, perhaps it's already happening, I'm sure it is. A song can grab people just as much as any headline, sometimes maybe more, so here's to the power on the songwriter to get in there, and today we can make a big contribution to the debate, whatever it is.
Listen to Keep Ulverston Special here

Mr Robinson gets a grilling

Ulverstons' own version of the select committee grilling the Murdochs took place tonight in the Coro. The place was packed to the gills downstairs and the balcony, not a seat was left unsat upon. The reason we were all there was to question Robinsons as to why they wanted to build a super market on the old brewery site. On the panel were Mr Robinson, the architects, the developer, a guy who had done a survey and some chap who said nothing and seemed to be there to work the big screen with all the fly bys and plans for the site.

They were on a hiding to nothing as 99.9% of the audience were anti the proposal. They gave their presentation and then the floor was open for the public to demolish their plans. It made for great theatre.

Stand out performances came from all quarters but for me I think Doug Gillam was an early star witness, and soon followed by the theatrics of Dr Richard Rowlat who brought a touch of ad dram into the hall, which the mayoress found hard to control as Richard went into a rant about profit and refused to give up the mic. I thought they were about to call the master at arms to evict him but it never quite came to that.

Some body called for a show of hands on whether the crowd supported the plans or were against them. The Mayoress,Pat Jones tried to quash this, as it wasn't a question, but the speaker ploughed on regardless and 99.9% of the audience voted no we don't want this supermarket. From then on the Robinsons team became more and more glum.

The questions from the audience fell like hammer blows, one after another deriding all aspects of the plans. How many people take a walk into Dalton road and Portland walk after shopping in Tescos, was a cute observation.

Perhaps if we had also had some representation from SLDC then we may have had some clarity as often the Robinsons team would defer to conversations they had had with our leaders in Kendal. For instance they were led to believe that their site was earmarked for a retail development, but as one speaker pointed out it was sited on the local development plan as designated residential land. Who was right? where were the reps from SLDC to clarify this. And so it went on. Lots of questions with no real answers.

I personally think that we could have a much more imaginative use of this site, but it will take some time to work out what this is. There will be many ideas but to my mind a supermarket is simply not an option for the entrance to the town. Although the 450 people there at last nights meeting don't represent the whole town, it was a signal to Robinsons and SLDC that this debate has many miles to run before an acceptable conclusion is reached.

However it was great theatre.

Seems to me that we already have a perfect place for another supermarket, if we really need one, and that is the redundant building where Heron Glass used to be opposite Booths, lets put it there and put the old Brewery site to a more imaginative and fitting use than this  plan we heard about last night. 

Boycott the Brewers of Brewery St.

There was a meeting held last night to discuss the proposed development of the old brewery site which drew an attendance of about 50 people. The majority of those who came to the meeting were residents who lived close to the site, although there were others from outlying villages who were concerned at the proposed plans. The meeting was organised on the back of a questionnaire that was posted to almost 300 residents who lived in the vicinity. It was initiated by the two Labour councillors for town ward, myself and Judith Pickthall and assisted by Colin Pickthall, who chaired the meeting. The outcome of the questionnaire told us that people were 4 to 1 against the idea of building a supermarket on the site, so we called a meeting allow people to further air their views. We had a very lively meeting which also drew reporters from the Evening mail and  Radio Cumbria.

Many people spoke passionately of how this kind of development would ruin the character of our town, and how it could devastate the small shops and individual traders. There was also well founded worries about the increase in traffic, especially heavy goods vehicles delivering at inappropriate times and on roads ill designed for this purpose.

It was agreed though that we would have to fight the proposal on planning grounds, and not on emotional grounds, that is, for instance, it will spoil the nature of our town.

We also learned that it will not be Sainsburys' who move onto the old brewery, as they have their eye on a development on the outskirts of town, on land adjacent to the old bee hive public house. This is another story, and another battle that Ulverstonians will have to confront. But that was much less pressing than the plans proposed, and now submitted, for their Brewery St. site. This plan will come before the planners in October and so if there were to be opposition to the plans action had to begin right away.

So the call went out at our meeting for a small committee to be formed to get a plan of action going right away. Amazingly we had some quite formidable talents in the room who sounded to me just the sort of heads we needed to put up some very strong opposition to Robinsons. Six people agreed to meet again next week as the core group to put into place a plan of action.

One headline grabbing idea that came up was that we ask the public to boycott  Robinsons ales as a protest against this development, which in itself was small beer, but may attract publicity, which is always handy in a campaign.

I think we all felt that with the need for housing in such short supply that the site could be better used for a mixed development of residential and small workshops perhaps. One sticking point here though is that Robinsons will only lease the land which is why their proposal would seem to only suit a supermarket of some sort or another. This may or may not be true, I don't know. In fact there's a lot we don't know, but what I do know is that Robinsons have got a fight on their hands.

We need to convince the powers that be, that is the SLDC councillors, and planners that there is a better use for this site than the one that is proposed at present.

I know that there will be mixed feelings, and arguments on both sides regarding this development, but if last nights meeting was anything to go by Robinsons won't have an easy ride. Whether they win or loose is now in the balance.

Look out for a website, a facebook page, Twitter posts, and a vigorous media campaign  , this could run and run.

What's your opinion.