As we finish the year, I thought I would share a success story.
The B1070, Benton Street, Hadleigh, Suffolk is infamous for its road problems. It was not designed for a lot of traffic. It is a classic horse and cart road from Manningtree to Stowmarket and Bury St. Edmunds. The volume of heavy traffic on the road has increased as a result of Felixstowe becoming a major port. We now have over 3,000 vehicle movements a day. Much of this is personal vehicles accessing and exiting the A12. But there is also a significant volume of Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV’s).
For over twenty years Benton Street has enjoyed a weight restriction due to the number of old buildings – some dating from Tudor times. HGV’s are banned because they damage the old brickwork, overhanging buildings and lime washed walls.
Traffic coming from the West is properly advised that there is a weight restriction on the road into Hadleigh. No such warning was on the road from the East (Ipswich and Felixstowe) only an advice to avoid East Bergholt.
Coming off the A12 on the Eastern side there are now four signs within a hundred yards, pointing out the weight restriction and HGV traffic is now directed back onto the A12 to find a more appropriate route.
Full marks to the County’s , Skills and Environment Department.
There are now no excuses for dragging an HGV through Benton Street.
Eternal vigilance is price of liberty and I fully expect the Benton Street Squeeze supporters to continue monitoring the situation and reporting (a much reduced volume of) incidents to the County’s Trading Standards.
Year: 2013
Cashmobs Suffolk 2
Nominations for businesses to be visited by Cashmobs has now closed.
The chosen business is The Idler which was established over 30 years ago. They sell new and secondhand books, Book Tokens, artists materials, greetings cards and Naxos CDs.
They also sell leading makes of art materials including canvases, mountboard, and a range of water colour papers and modestly priced paints and brushes for the craftworker. They operate a book search service for out of print books and can supply new books to order.
They have the best selection of greetings cards in Hadleigh. Their range of Art Angel greetings cards feature works of well-known printmakers, many of them local artists,and is perhaps the most popular selection of greetings cards they have ever stocked.
The new electronic Book Tokens are now available. These have the advantage of being obtainable in any value rather than the five pound increments of the old Voucher scheme. They are, of course, accepted in most bookshops through the UK. (The old paper vouchers are still valid)
I always find their stock most interesting. This includes:
“Suffolk Coast from the Air”. and its companion volume
“Suffolk Coast from the Air 2”,
the story of the Hadleigh Branch Line,
Suffolk Ghosts and Legends and
Ordnance Survey Maps of the local area,
George Ewart Evans’s Ask The Fellows Who Cut the Hay in an exciting new edition illustrated by David Gentleman,
David Kindred’s Hadleigh, a portrait of a Suffolk Town, which is a selection of photographs taken over the years by the late Peter Boulton .
Michael Portillo’s television series based on Bradshaw’s Railway Guide has prompted a reprint of the book first published in the 1860s. They stock this edition together with a range of other railway books both new and secondhand.
The success of the children’s book “War Horse” which is a best seller nationally has prompted Halsgrove, to publish “War Horses” which tells the true story of horses used in various conflicts around the world. It is lavishly illustrated and presented as are all the Halsgrove publications.
They also hold a large stock of publisher’s remainder books. These are books which are sold off by the publishers at roughly half-price in order to clear their warehouses.
They have a large stock of second-hand books on the Second World War and a recent purchase has widened their stock of Giles Annuals, several early volumes are now available. They have a poetry section which is very popular and as they sell Art Materials they have a great number of Art Books including art instruction books.
James Chambury was one of Hadleigh’s leading artists and a customer at The Idler. His daughters have recently edited a book containing a selection of his work, many of East Anglia and some of the work he did in The Oman.
I look forward to being in the shop on the 4th.
Cashmobs Suffolk
On Saturday, January 4th 2014 Cashmobs Suffolk – a new community initiative to stimulate our flagging High Streets – is coming to Hadleigh.
Struggling shops get our sympathy. Huge multinationals moving into our local area raises our ire and anger at the destruction of the local economy. We complain on social media and decry the decline to our friends. But what do we actually DO about it?
Cash mobs actually go beyond our online complaints. Cash mobs use actual hard cash, spent in a local shop.
So how does it work?
It is all done through the local community grouping together and using their combined networks to spread the word about the local shop that needs support. It generates real cash for bricks and mortar businesses in the local community. The community gets together and decides to spend £10 or thereabouts in a local shop on a designated day. The local shop gets business that would have otherwise gone to a multinational chain of shops and the local community is energised.
It is a simple concept. Shop locally. Buy from local shops to keep the local economy alive. Cashmobs aim is not just about bringing the community together but also about supporting Suffolk¹s independent shops and boosting the local economy.
It’s a concept that has been highly successful in America and has been set up in Suffolk by two local business women, Sue Hall and Eileen Brown, and they are running it on an entirely voluntary basis.
Their message, to spend at the nominated shop in Hadleigh, is being spread through social media particularly through the Facebook page at http://facebook.com/CashMobSuffolk
Other UK towns ¬ including Hadleigh have had Cash Mob events in the past, but Sue and Eileen are planning to take this right across Suffolk visiting different towns across the country on a monthly basis.
Hadleigh and Felixstowe have been selected for January 4th and February 1st respectively but there are plans to go to Lowestoft and west Suffolk later in the year. In time we would like to introduce this initiative across Norfolk and Essex too as well.
Retailers selected for the Cashmob, obviously get a one-off boost but in the US it’s been found to have a positive long term spin-off for other local businesses too as consumers visit other local shops in the town.
So nominate a local Hadleigh business on the Facebook page at http://facebook.com/CashMobSuffolk, look out for the nominated business and spend that tenner in the shop on Saturday January 4th 2014.
Happy Cash mobbing!
Blog courtesy of the Hadleigh Chamber of Commerce
Happy Marriage Study Abandoned
The Daily Telegraph reported this week that a study to assess whether marriage improves if a husband agrees to all his wife’s demands had to be abandoned after the man sank into a deep depression.
Researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand were hoping to test whether the key to a happy marriage lies in bowing to the whims of a partner and giving up the need to ‘always be in the right.’
In the experiment the husband was asked “agree with his wife’s every opinion and request without complaint. Even if he believed the female participant was wrong, the male was to bow and scrape,” said researchers. But after recruiting a couple for an initial pilot they were forced to scrap the project as the husband became deeply depressed.
There were a number of conclusions drawn from the pilot study.
These suggest that it seems that being right may be a cause of happiness, and agreeing with what one disagrees with is a cause of unhappiness.
The availability of unbridled power adversely affects the quality of life of those on the receiving end.
This last comment not only applies in a marriage. It also applies in Government where elected representatives think that they were elected to rule. Worse are the civil servants (at all levels) who think that they have the God given right to tell people what’s good for them. Often a case of don’t do as I do, do as I tell you.
More can be read on
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10524035/Happy-marriage-study-abandoned-as-husband-becomes-depressed.html
Chihuahua of Doom
On Thursday I attended a full Council meeting at Endeavour House, Ipswich. The day started at 10 a.m. when the political group meets and chews over the bones in the documentation and discusses best ways of answering the questions and motions put and proposed by the other parties. We look not only at the questions and the motions but also at the minefields which might come from the follow up discussions.
So it was seemingly innocuous in the afternoon to hear Motion No. 1 – proposed by Councillor Julian Flood and seconded by Councillor Tony Brown “That Suffolk County Council supports the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in his aim of freezing energy prices, and will work towards the same goal.”
Julian turned his opportunity to speak into an attack against green taxes. Claiming that they did little to counter adverse climate change but instead penalised the consumer and those businesses who had to compete in a world where effective green policies were not always in evidence. And then it went pear shaped. Julian was trying to highlight the effect of carbon in the U.K. It was the equivalent of six thousandths of a degree of temperature change. As you usually have to ascend or descend a thousand feet to see a change of one degree – this was the equivalent of six feet of vertical movement. Suffolk’s carbon emissions were the equivalent of less than one part per thousandth of a degree or about ten inches of vertical movement – the height of a Chihuahua.
And then it went surreal as we were cautioned against the Chihuahua of Doom which was threatening our economic survival and the richness of our countryside through unnecessary wind and solar panel farms.
There were enough votes in the Conservative Group and their friends to defeat the motion.
Best entertainment of the day was the way in which the Leader of the Labour Group tried to endorse the motion but distance himself from the idea that green policies were overdone.
More details can be viewed on http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/politics/suffolk_chihuahua_of_doom_stalks_the_council_chamber_1_3132304
Internships up for grabs
Over 20 internship placements are available in councils across Suffolk starting in the summer of 2014, but interested parties need to get their applications in by Tuesday 28 January 2014.
There is also an information session to which interested candidates are invited to learn more about the application process, meet members and heads of departments and hear what past interns got out of the experience. The session is being held at Endeavour House, Ipswich between 11am and 1pm tomorrow. Anyone interested in attending should email risinghigh@suffolk.gov.uk
The internship programme is designed to encourage young people to take up careers in the public sector and to provide paid opportunities for undergraduates (or graduates) to experience working for us during their summer break from university. It consists of a 12 week paid work placement supported by group development opportunities.
A paid 12 month Industrial Placement is also available at Suffolk County Council which will put the successful candidate at the forefront of innovative and exciting developments in economic development and skills policy. This placement must form part of the applicant’s university course.
Details of the internship opportunities can be found on the Rising High website via: www.risinghighsuffolk.org.uk
Onward and Yeoward
Wednesday brought us the news that our M.P. Tim Yeo will fight his deselection by the South Suffolk Conservative Association Executive. Tim has decided that the party members should decide if he is to be their candidate in the 2015 General Election.
Apart from the Executive, everyone I have met (both party members and other well wishers) only speak good things about Tim.
I think this might be a case of “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” (Mark Twain). Certainly we have a man who is not backward in coming forward and this is what we need in anyone who represents us. Certainly we do not need a milquetoast.
Voting papers will be sent out around the 20th January.
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/politics/south_suffolk_mp_tim_yeo_to_fight_for_his_seat_with_party_ballot_1_3101155)
No Woman’s Christmas Morning
…is enhanced by a man saying “Thus cream is brilliant for crow’s-feet”
– India Knight writing in The Sunday Times Style Supplement 8th December 2013
Happiness is
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family — in another city – George Burns
Tim Yeo MP
Yesterday evening the Executive Council of the South Suffolk Conservative Association (SSCA) met and voted not to re-adopt Tim Yeo as our candidate for the 2015 general election.
Tim has represented the seat, which covers much of the Babergh district, for 30 years and is an effective and hard-working MP. He is a very good constituency M.P. and has never shrunk from offering his assistance to the people of Hadleigh when he has been approached with their problems.
At the last general election in 2010 he received 24,500 votes – a 47.75% share.
I am not a member of the Executive Council. I was consulted on deselection in mid September and made my views known.
Last week I wrote to Tim as follows:
“It was with joy that I read that the Committee on Standards had cleared you on all counts of any breach of the MP’s Code of Conduct.
I’ve had no problems in reminding my constituents and colleagues that you have always been of assistance not only to myself but also to anyone who has contacted you with problems”
This letter was read out last night – alas to little effect.
Tim’s reply to my letter is attached Yeo T 131127 fm
It will be a sad day if we lose him as our M.P. We have eighteen months until the general election. That is far too short to select and embed a new candidate. Many of Tim’s 24,500 votes are personal and may not be easily transferred to the new person.
Meanwhile we have UKIP snapping at our heels and everyone else is make hay at our expense.
It’s time to support Tim. If you agree with the Executive Council then you need do nothing. If you think that Tim’s deselection is not a good idea, I suggest you email Toby Kramers, Chairman of the SSCA Executive Council. He can be emailed via Peter Burgoyne (the political agent) at peter@ss-ca.org.uk
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