twowheelsgood

At least we get a warning this time - given that it's not only the public that need access to these documents, it's Councillors, Utilities, Council staff, Parish Councils, City Council, BBLP etc, a generic apology doesn't really cut it. Get it sorted. 

Due to essential maintenance planning documents may not be available on Tuesday, 6th June. We apologise for any inconvenience.

What will that be spent on, bearing in mind the 'No lectures, no exams, no text books' motto? Is this the projected start up cost? Niggling in the back of my mind is the Robert Owen Academy - similar brave new world, gung-ho attitude on launch,money seemingly no object, and look how that has turned out.

Yes I had mine yesterday - nothing in paper form from Jess mind he is very busy chasing things up for the new Uni

Under what guise? He is no longer an MP as Parliament was dissolved some weeks ago. Begs the question as to who is running the country.

The motto of the university will be, 'No lectures, no exams, no text books.' Ergo, no buildings required! Just a Presidential Suite presumably. So the launch gets put back another 3 years and where will those 5000 students be accommodated? Rotherwas is mooted. An 8% ish increase in Hereford's population - dare I ask if anyone has considered the impact on essential services? Another few thousand cars on the road?!

Anyone know why the new cycle link to the Great Western Way is still fenced off and unfinished? 

£29418 according to the papers presented to Council - heaven forbid they should liaise with the news desk.

My understanding is that expenses are a separate issue, reclaimed as they are expended, plus of course all those nice laptops and iPads and printers and so on.

TJ's bunce is increased by £4500 (15.9%) from £29418 to £33918 - the second highest remuneration in all of the English Authorities. Ker-ching indeed.

Again, according to IOC, in the supposedly un-whipped vote, every single Tory councillor present (26) voted in favour.

Courtesy of IOC blogging live from the meeting;

The outcome is that all cabinet members get additional £3,000. Tony Johnson as leader of the council gets an extra £4,500, while everyday councillors get an increase of less than £2 a month - which equates the basic allowance to well below the minimum wage, let alone the living wage that the council signed up to for all its staff and contractors.

Ha, I bet those Tory foot soldiers who voted as they were told to feel pretty cheated at this pittance increase. Remind me again, what is the point of ward councillors these days, save for voting on how they are told? Other than that, they seem increasingly sidelined and largely impotent.

After the meeting, Tory Chairman Brian Wilcox took himself and his guests for a nice lunch laid on in the Bishop's Palace. Chin-chin!

All of the candidates have laid out their stalls in this weeks HT - I'm trying to find the energy/interest to read them. When JK says 'I will fight …' I start to worry!

I am reliably informed that this has not gone away - closed door discussions between a Council Director, Planning, the MOD and the Cathedral School have taken place. Given the MOD's involvement, it would seem that the TA is now included in the scope. There is a long standing hope/understanding that the TA site would be made available by the Council (they own it and lease it to the TA) for a new school to replace the present St James' School - in fact the school have been working hard on a feasibility study to this effect and it would be a terrible betrayal by the Council to pull the rug from under them.

"The technology is designed to prevent bottlenecks by giving priority to ambulances, buses and even cyclists". Cyclists don't create bottlenecks and buses are largely a thing of the past in Hereford and we don't have any bus lanes anyway. Yes, we have ambulances, but they are rarely held up. Seems like a lot of money to not address the problem - which must make it irresistible to Plough Lane.

Traffic westbound today has been a total nightmare - Ledbury Road into town - I gave up this morning after moving 200 yards in 20 minutes and tried again this afternoon. For some reason the right turn into Widemarsh Street has been shut and this seemed to be the cause of it. Incredible that traffic continues to be balanced on such a knife edge. Obviously the traffic lights weren't re-sequenced to take into account the closure. The cost to business and the environmental pollution is mind boggling, but, as ever, the Plough Lane pen pushers were safely ensconced in meetings, happy that they will be paid handsomely no matter how badly they do their jobs.

Perhaps it runs on old software.

There was some discussion about this last week on Jeremy Vine, who seemed remarkably ignorant about diesel engines, and one of the guests made that the point that on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst diesel polluter, diesel cars are a 1, whilst buses are a 9. Rather sweeping and generic I know, but he had a point. Whilst modern diesel cars have particulate filters fitted (which most owners either don't know about or understand how to use) I'm not sure that cruder bus and lorry engines do, or even white vans come to that. There is so much that could be done - hitting the car owner before the worse offenders seems unfair, or at least it does until some car belches a huge black cloud into my face, which happens on a daily basis. 

I wonder if Jess and Bill will do one now 

Or Lucy Hurds.

Partly correct - yes, you can only turn left onto Edgar Street, but no, there will be traffic lights there as well! Six sets of lights in less than 800m! That was on the 2010 Masterplan - they've probably added some more since then.

This Council's blind reliance on traffic lights contributes hugely to the poor air quality within the City - everywhere, stationery vehicles, engines running waiting for the green light that never seems to come. Hugely frustrating and unhealthy for all and entirely unnecessary. We've said it a million times, but the powers that be aren't interested (and we have to wonder why) - the essential lights need intelligent management (which we're paying Worcester for anyway, it just doesn't work), and many just need ripping out. Instead we're having to pay for the installation of dozens more on the inner link road. 

I bought my last tv in there - the guy I dealt with was helpful, very knowledgable and not pushy at all. I was able to double park for 5 minutes to pick it up later in the day. Went in recently, thinking about a replacement, saw the same guy and had the same service. i didn't buy at the time but would have gone back at some point. I buy most things online, but I think tv's are one of those where you need to see the screen in action (and not the 'display' screens they have in the darkened retail sheds either). I'll probably use John Lewis now.

So has 

Jim Kenyon is going to speak at the next Independent group meeting next week, so we should find out what his policies are and what's in his manifesto. I am hoping to attend if I do will report what he said here!.

Has JK left IOC then?

The Council's single biggest asset, according to the best selling work of fiction, Transport Asset Management Plan (TAMP), are its highways, in 2015 these were valued as having a gross replacement cost of £5.495 billion. Coming soon - toll roads?

They're all stuck on the link road, waiting for the unmanaged lights to turn green!

Unless Jim believe he can take a big chuck of the conservative votes from Jessie? Obviously it would have to be a JAWS sized bite of a chuck!…but he must have done his sums & mapped out what he has to do to win?

Or perhaps he just wants to extend his weekly photo call in the HT as his Mayoral year comes to an end very shortly.

It's ironic that our Tory Council's policy is to borrow and spend it's way out of the mess (except that they can't even do that with any degree of success), when that is a time honoured Labour policy (and look at the mess they left us with in 2010).

They will borrow the money to make it happen. They will develop the site, sell the flats, let the shops and sell the freeholds to British Land or similar. The finished project will make the normal 20% developer profit, which will be put back into the general funds. It will be a wonderful success and a beacon for the refurbished High Town. At least … that's how it should pan out, and other Council's have achieved it. But this is Herefordshire Council, with a proven record of incompetence, so that 20% profit will become a loss. It will be hushed up and accounts will be redacted as they are today with projects under way at the moment. They will borrow the money to make it happen.