December 19th: Talk up the town and help us meet challenge
I am delighted to see the Chronicle & Echo launch its Make Us Proud campaign.
This reflects a key message of the Liberal Democrat's successful local election campaign to "Put the Pride back into Northampton" in the spring.
The Chronicle & Echo has clearly sensed the mood of the town . . . people want to feel better about living here.
As part of the Make Us Proud campaign, our local paper calls on the local councils to do the very best they can for the town. I believe that, at the borough council, we are striving hard to do so.
As a new administration, we have inherited a poorly-performing borough council. This has been the result of many long years of failure and neglect. Turning this around will take time, measured in months and years rather than days and weeks.
There is simply no quick fix if we are to do the job properly. But we have made a start and we are committed to seeing the project through to success.
After a couple of false dawns there are now definite signs of improvement.
However, it is not just the council that needs a boost. The real boost we need is in our collective confidence and ambition as a town. Northampton is a real town with great people.
We now need some fresh thinking. We need to celebrate its successes, quirks and charms.
We have the major challenge of becoming a much bigger town. While some will regret the changes this will bring, we must build on the very real assets that we have and seize the opportunity to improve our town and to put right some of the failures of the past.
Certainly, we need a high-performing borough council working closely with the county council, West Northamptonshire Development Corporation and the private and voluntary sectors to deliver real improvements in our town.
The media – and particularly the Chronicle & Echo as our daily paper – can and must play a key role in boosting confidence.
Talk up the town. Don't ignore bad news but don't sensationalise it. Look for the positives and not just the negatives.
Northampton will be a better place if we work constructively together to meet the challenges and opportunities we face.
Let's all focus on improving our wonderful town.
Councillor Tony Woods,
Leader, Northampton Borough Council.
It's time to clean up Northampton
Re your Make Us Proud campaign, we do have the best countryside, we do have a fantastic collection of stately homes etc.
What Northampton needs is clean streets, law and order, cheaper affordable family homes instead of flats everywhere.
We need schools to teach our town's history and make the new generation of Northamptonians proud of their town.
We need to have regular dustbin clearances once a week.
Eyesores such as Northampton House, the bus station and Mayorhold car park all need demolishing. This concrete reminder of the 1970s needs replacing urgently.
The town needs to reduce business rates for the town centre to encourage new companies to come and open.
The whole area around the town centre needs a massive facelift urgently.
I also would like to see the Cobblers full every week but the rural bus services are that poor if a Cobblers supporter from a village caught a bus to the ground he perhaps would not arrive home until Monday.
Why not work closely with a local bus company to pick up from villages on the way into town and bring the crowds in?
It could be up by 2,000 a week and maybe more.
If we can take 40,000 to Wembley we can have 18,000 for every home game.
Let's have our town cleaned up and modernised, let's have Christmas lights, let's remember the Northamptonshire best every year, let's have a town to be proud of.
P M Folwell,
Brown Close, Duston, Northampton.
The cruel face of nature
I must respond to Gill Evans's accusations of Bloodlust, not conservation (Your Say, December 3). Bloodlust is a popular lurid description of country sportsmen. Has Gill Evans ever been into a slaughterhouse?
Pheasants flying over guns do at least have a sporting chance, unlike the broiler and battery cage hens which, after an appalling existence, are slaughtered for our benefit of cheap meat and eggs.
I can assure Gill Evans I am a great conservationist. I am also very much aware that mother nature is very, very cruel and red in tooth and claw.
As a little boy, along with my two friends, we saved a stoated rabbit. On taking it home, my dear father gently told us that it was the stoat's tea and that by taking it away we had condemned another animal to death.
We can all dream of Shangri La, where birds of paradise abound, sheep may safely graze and no animal, bird or insect, need tear the life out of another in order to live. But since the dawn of creation there have always been carnivores preying on herbivores.
Charles Keith Barker,
High Street, Kingsthorpe, Northampton.
Email on jams produced results
The hold-ups at the badly-organised Gas Street roundabout roadworks were certainly not an April fool's joke for the many people unnecessarily held up by them.
The truth is that I talked to council officers and fellow councillors in addition to emailing them. That is how it works.
And it worked. The lanes of the roundabout were better organised and the work was stopped for the Christmas period.
Ashley Riley should take note. Serving the people is about getting improvements on their behalf, not making petty points for party political advantage.
Councillor Brian Binley MP,
Northamptonshire County Council.
Use cash on less fortunate
With regards to Richard Williams's letter re Christmas lights, the laughable comment that came out of the councillor's mouth was that the money was going on more important things.
How come then that the services for the disabled have been cut?
If you are disabled, like my son (his owing to a stroke that has left him paralysed), you have got to wait at least three years to have a shower, as there isn't any money left in the disabled facilities grant (DFG) apart from critical cases, even though the Ministry of Health informs me that the funding for England was 121 million in 2006-07.
As much as I love Christmas decorations, I would prefer the money going on the less fortunate. After all we have the choice to shop at Weston Favell, which is decorated, or Milton Keynes. I for one never shop in Northampton unless I have to.
Too much money is being spent on people who have never contributed to this country and so we all miss out.
(Mrs) S Jameson,
Brookside, Weedon.
Pcs not well paid
Chris Kingsthorpe (Chron Txt Us) thinks the police are lazy and well paid. Wake up! My partner is a police officer in Northampton. They have just completed a week of nights and now they are on late shifts for a week, all for just over 23k.
You don't see police because they are all doing paperwork thanks to the red tape this Government has forced them to do.
As for well-paid, maybe the inspectors and chiefs are but the local Pcs are most definitely not.
What a ridiculous comment to text.
Name and address supplied
but withheld by request.
Email to a friend
Print this page- BREAKING NEWS: Tributes paid to Niamh Curry as brave five-year-old loses battle against cancer
- BREAKING NEWS: Pensioner dies after collision at Northampton shopping centre
- Man tied to tree and beaten on Northampton Racecourse
- BREAKING NEWS: Woman’s body found after ‘suicide’ in Northampton hotel room
- BREAKING NEWS: Seven-year-old boy dies following house fire in Northamptonshire
- Staff strike at Northampton school over academy plans forces closure
- Northampton binmen at ‘breaking point’
- Saints’ stadium plans get support as long as traffic issues solved
- Eastern European pupils helping school standards across Northampton
- Exclusive: PM David Cameron says Northamptonshire Police Commissioner role is “a big job for a big local figure”
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Northampton
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: East
