SON OF GRIDKNOCKER

An absolutely brilliant bit of sleuthing, John! And doesn't it just show you that with FoI requests (as I think Bill 'Scoop' Tanner will confirm) you've just got to be persistent. The excuse about 'commercially benefitial information' is just laughable (always a popular ploy of the late and unamented Brother Bretherton). By his own admission, Cllr Bramer wants the St Owen Street building demolished for housing, so why in Heaven's name can't HWFR tell us just how little their current building is worth?

@ Dippy@ 'Ugly Beast' absolutely sums up this item of non-designed dross. Even in isolation - say 'parked' somewhere inconspicuous out at Rotherwas - it would be offensive. Now just imagine it being brought in by a couple of Chinooks and dropped down on the cleared site of the boys home? Two doors down from Venns Close? I have the very greatest respect for all Britain's firefighters. I've collected for them; I've even stood on their picket lines. And I've a sneaking admiration for the notion that the public facade - the 'shop window', if you like - of a fire station should be bold and assertive. A reminder that they're in there, ready to rescue us when needed. I even get a buzz when I drive along St Owen Street on a Saturday morning and they're washing down their huge red monsters! But, please, not in Bath Street. Never.

Or is it a library? Or perhaps an arts centre? No, its the proposed new fire station for the site of the former Working Boys Home on Bath Street. Tomorrow's Hereford Times should provide an image of this hybrid monster, which Cllrs Bramer and Johnson are determined to inflict on the city, in place of the handsome group of Victorian buildings known as the Working Boys Home: one of the largest surviving testaments to one of Hereford's most distinguished citizens, Rev John Venn. Such is the paucity of 21st century design thinking, that this production line architectural extrusion (by Cushman & Wakefield) could quite easily masquerade as one of half-a-dozen building types. He behoves us all to watch vigilantly for notice of Hereford & Worcester Fire Authority's formal planning application in July and send in our comments.

@ Two Wheels: send all smokers - including King Bobby - to the roof of the Garrick House multi-storey? You must be JOKING! This is the location which is currently ranked as Numero Uno on the new 'Where Can I Go Dogging In Hereford?' website (under Hoarwithy Bridge ranks number six).

Central casting has just confirmed that Cllr Johnson has accepted the role of the Wizard. Also, Cllr Phil Edwards has agreed to take the role of the Straw Man and will lend his bicycle to Dame Olwyn for the Wiked Witch's cycling-through-the-sky scene. Casting for munchkins is currently extremely competitive out in the staff car park of Plough Lane's Lubyanka, due to massive impending redundancies. The Tin Man role will probably go to Cllr Blackshaw (he's tall, thin and clanks a lot); but the one un-filled part remains the timid lion - likes to seem ferocious, but is really a kitten. Chris Chappell?

@ Cambo: sorry, casting say the role of the Wicked Witch was promised long ago to Dame Olwyn Barnett of Mortimer. The munchskins are currently being auditioned in the staff car park at Plough Lane. Any suggestions for the Wizard - who, as we all know, is finally unmasked as a patrhetic old duffer hiding behind a curtain using a megaphone to enhance his feeble voice?

Hey, nice thought Dippy! Let's have a Voice comp for nominations for Cabinet lookalikes for the Straw Man, the Tin Man and the Lion. Clearly - before King Bobby jumps in - the casting of Dorothy has already gone to Cllr Morgan!

THOUGH still not a certainty, the accursed Link Road to Nowhere last week took a step nearer to being more than the collective wet dream of Messrs Jarvis, Johnson and Phillips, and the other limousine-owning members of the Cabinet who believe that roads are our salvation. So how much will it really cost, this 800m-long strip of dual carriage tarmac, stretching from Edgar Street to Aylestone Hill? 'How long is a piece of string?' as my old gran used to answer when asked the unanswerable. The only 'known' at the moment - and this from no less an authority than former Leader John Jarvis - is that £27M has already been borrowed and banked to fund this pointless vanity project. The 'unknowns' include: what the Wolverson family was paid to close down its Rockfield DIY store; what the costs of the two 'settlements' with Royal Mail (RM) and Jewson - announced at the end of last week's public inquiry were; who pays for the construction of RM's re-located vehicles park on Jewson's land; and how much Hereford Futures (HF) paid to various highway design consultants over the last five years. Who will ever forget that Kafkaesque moment when, attempting to unravel HF's £3M running costs, the Scrutiny Committee was advised that the defunct company's recoords and files were in the process of being shredded! Ok, for argument's sake, let's say the Rockfield pay-off was £6M. Which would have to mean that the combined RM / Jewson figure would be at least three times greater (negotiating lawyers are no fools when they have precedents to quote). So that's £24M. Add in the Jarvis borrowing figure of £27M and you've already hit £51M. Are your eyes watering? Then factor in another £1M to cover the road consultants' fees, plus six sets of legal costs. At £52M - or a staggering £65,000 per metre - this would make the Hereford Link Road (if it ever got built) easily Britain's most expensive urban motorway. More expensive even (per metre) than the notorious M25 London orbital motorway.

What a simply amazing piece of good fortune for Geof Hughes and his cohorts! After more than five years of wrangling, the Royal Mail caves in and neighbouring Jewson agrees to sacrifice part of its yard so the posties' vans vehicles park can be re-located. All on the eve of the closure of an 8-day Public Inquiry. What a surprise! No mention of money in the HT report, however. Knowing how profligate these buggers are with our money, I wouldn't be surprised if HC's lawyers said to Royal Mail's lawyers: "Here's a blank cheque: just fill in the amount."

I agree with Bobby and Two Wheels and I'm afraid poor old Aylestone Voice is being incredibly naive. As Two Wheels says, it's just a box-ticking exercise. A few weeks ago, Bovis held a 'public consultation exercise' at the Blind College to unveil their plans for some exec residences on Aylestone Hill. Lots of people attended, lots of comments were logged and the place was simply crawling with Bovis staff. The designs were dire: son-of-Basildon-New-Town-60s stuff. Now the scheme's gone in for planning. And do you suppose one tiny detail of the scheme exhibited has been changed? I won't even bother to tell you the answer, because you know what it is!

Interesting little titbit which has only just come to light. Remember that hapless crew Hereford Futures? And who can forget that nauseating valedictory message written by J.Bretherton and published in the Civic Society's quarterly which I seem to recall began: "It is so hard, in the space of just 600 words, to list all Hereford Futures' wonderful achievements..." And of course one of those wonderful achievements was the flood alieviation programme which was necessary to guarantee the Old Market site and its immediate environs from the risk of flooding in the future. This area included the route of the notorious Link Road to Nowhere. Well, it seems that the specification for this superhuman engineering task, overseen by Mr Bretherton, only delivered what is termed a 100-year risk: that the chances of the land being flooded should only occur once in every century. But H&WFA don't build on land that only has a 100-year flood risk assessment, and therefore ruled out as unsuitable all the potential sites along the path of the Link Road which the council's property services department offered them!

For my money, 'iconic' - along with that nauseating phrase 'national treasure' - has to be the most over-worked word in the English language. And now we have a Herefordshire councillor hoping that some architectural genius is going to give her an iconic fire station. In your dreams Marcelle!

Poor old Liz. Last time she was moaning about the sheep in the next field keeping her awake at night. Now she has to go on Twitter and twitter about a poor little mouse. Next it'll be "Why does our local church have to ring ALL its bells at 9.30am every Sunday morning, just when Shane's showing me what a reverse googlie is?"

CCTV - that's what you need mate. Mounted on the chimley stack. And have monitors in every room, going 24/7. And a Rotweiller in a kennel by the front gate. And a notice on the gate saying: 'No Hawkers, No Circulars and CERTAINLY no violin case salesmen!' That should about do it. Because, King Bobby, if you cast your Prozak-addled brain back a few months, wasn't it that Greta Garbo who called round one night, seeking your manly consolation? Hanging by her crimson-painted fingernails from your bedroom window cill wearing a diaphonous negligee, I seem to recall. And you never let her in! Well this way you'll know when the Rotweiller starts barking and that 12' hole covered with a piece of green Astroturf half-way down the front path suddenly goes 'woosh'. whether it's Harry or Greta.

Official Church of England announcement (you read it first on The Voice):- Hear ye, hear ye. The Sacred (and severly salt-stained) Sepulcre of St Rose of the Long Wait will be officially consecrated by the Chief Priest, His Holiness The Jarvis of All Jarvises on Thursday 1 May @ 10.00am. Divine communion service, comprising Guatamalan mango slices (instead of Holy wafers), available from Aisle 97 @ £14.99 per pack; and JL Nut Brown Cream Sherry (instead of Holy wine), available from the Wine Counter @ £14.99 a bottle, to be dispensed by The Blessed Roger of Pembridge.

Morning all! It's a glorious day - and don't we need some sunshine to uplift our spirits after last week's farces and fiascos. Still nil desperandum. Here's a little story to make you chuckle over your Cocopops. Farmer worker goes to see his local gp. "'oive bin 'avin' terrible trouble with the old posterior, doc." "Oh really? What seems to be the trouble, Jethrow?" "Missus reckons its oither exzema or piles." "Oh dear. I'd better take a look. Drop your trousers, please." After some minutes examination and with Jethrow re-trousered, the doctor balances his half-moon specs on the tip of his nose, to give the diagnosis. "Nothing to worry about there, Jethrow. You've just got a dose of the Jesse Normans." "What's that, doc?" "Been sitting on too many fences!"

The evidence trail may have closed down, Mark, but the questions will soon be piling up on Leader Johnson's doorstep. And the one I'm going to wing in is this: notwithstanding the fact that this fatuously-incompetent company (ESG Ltd aka Hereford Futures Ltd), failed miserably to deliver its promised Shoppers Nirvana on time (and had to blag £500K to keep the developers from walking off in a huff); nor that it hadn't a clue about designing or constructing a flood alleviation scheme; nor that the pompous pot-bellied Charles Pickles confidently predicted at a public meeting that the £27M Link Road to Nowhere would be opened in 2012; but that the long-promised Urban Village of 6000 dwellings, which the corpulent Bretherton has been banging on about for almost a decade, is due to matrerialisae for the first time next year, with the completion of....errr... a block of 10 flats in Conningsby Street.

@ Dippy (re your 374 post). I too was utterly baffled that the protest about the boys home slid into obscurity after only being on the HT's (alleged) 'Most Read Stories' for barely 48hrs. Let's hope Scoop Tanner is in the Brockington Chamber this afternoon. Thanks too to TwoWheels for his excellent 371 post. If push comes to shove, and a formal objection to an application to build a fire station has to be lodged, would the objectors not hold an extremely strong card if they quoted Mr Featherstone's ludicrous assertion (see Cambo's 355 post above) that the buildings are "...beyond economic repair / refurbishment."? And I LOVE the new portrait of Councillor Johnson (post 369)! Are there any plans to have it hung on the back wall of the Brockington debating chamber?

Like Cambo, I too have had a response from Mr Featherstone. In reply to an earlier enquiry, he had given me the locations of the three (unacceptable) sites which HC had offered H&WFA. So I wrote back why he had offered them the land behind the Odeon. This is part of his reply:- "Because it houses the Country Bus Station which we are some years away from declaring surplus to need." (my italics) I find this an absolutely fascinating example of the moronic thinking which permeates every level of HC's bureaucracy. "some years away" could be translated as, "yes, we know it's woefully under-used (in fact between you and me, Mr Grid Knocker, it isn't even a proper bus station; more a series of halts where folk get on and off), and yes, in the fullness of time, when we've got nothing more pressing to do (like polish Geof Hughes black shoes for a Cabinet meeting), we'll probably declare it 'surplus to need'. Hereford Country Bus Station, Mr Featherstone, is a misnomer, a sham, a confidence trick. Go to Worcester or Walsall if you want to experience a fully-operational bus station: they have heated waiting rooms; and information screens of all arrival and departure times; and real blokes in uniforms - helpful blokes - who'll tell you anything you need to know about buses; and a nice cafeteria; and shops. Mr Johnson could do a lot worse tomorrow (Thursday) if he opened the discussion on the land swap by announcing that he had instructed his officials to look into the minimum timeframe required to re-locate the County Bus Station's (sic) stands to Hereford Station's forecourt. Given the active co-operation of Network Rail and Arriva, I reckon it could be done in 12 weeks.

Well done Bobby. I think you did all the leg work, ably supported by Cllr Chappell. An excellent result.

Its the 'Big Push' tomorrow, using Dippy's e-mail crib sheet above. Two additional facts which emerged only today, which I'll throw into the pot for your consumption:- The council's Chief Architect & Planner Andrew Ashcroft has confirmed that his department was first approached by the fire service last September to discuss the feability of building a new fire station on the site of the former Working Boys Home. Clearly they didn't just pluck this site at random out of a hat, so they must have been pointed in the direction of Bath Street. It was around this time that Cllrs Prodger and Johnson met - and Ward Councillor Hubbard was accidently omitted from the talks. Asked specifically how long it would take them to have a new fire station operational at Bath Street, H&WFA said that the submission of a fully-developed planning application could take place this summer, followed by a 12-month construction programme (if planning permission is granted), with the new station operational some time in 2016.

@ Councillor Chappell: In your post yesterday, you expressed the hope that (should Cabinet ratify the 'land swap' on Thursday) the Scrutiny Committee should call the decision in. Do members of the public have any say in what gets 'called in'? Or is that prerogative reserved for the Scrutiny Committee Chairman? And if he fails to act (presumably there's some sort of deadline, such as 'within 14 days of a significant Cabinet decision being made...'), can members of the public request that his committee scrutinises said decision, if enough of them feel it needs scrutinising? For as well as a) being concerned about the needless loss of a piece of the city's heritage and b) being kept well and truly in the dark while horse trading went on behind closed doors, there are some of us out here who feel that a council asset is being traded away at well below its market value.

@ Denise: in small doses, sustainable timber structures can be attractive. But this monstrosity is in another league altogether! I feel very sorry for the poor Edgar Street residents, who will be greeted by this wooden eyesore every time they look out of their bedroom windows, especially after the ignominy of having to watch those 40--year-old Limes be butchered. My solution would be an intensive programme of nightime guerilla planting of fast-growing ivy!

...and there needs to be a full stop between Anthony and Powers if you don't want it bouncing back!

This thread just received it's 6000th visit - surely a Voice milestone. It behoves us all to follow Dippy's example by e-mailing the Cabinet members who are due to discuss the fate of the former Working Boys Home on Thursday afternoon. I have no doubt the Hereford Times' website will bring us a result of the discussion on Thursday evening. Get tapping!