twowheelsgood

How come a Ward Cllr lives 115 miles and a 2.5 hour drive from his Ward? How did he end up as Cabinet Governance Support at Plough Lane? How much ongoing due diligence was being done by staff? Will it all be swept under the expensive carpet at Plough Lane (a rhetorical question)? Will he have the good grace to resign as a councillor immediately, thus triggering a by-election?

It seems that at every level in public service there is no accountability. We get the glib 'make your view known at the ballot box', but that solves nothing. At a local level, I know council staff will manipulate or obfuscate as they see fit to suit their own agendas, political or otherwise, and councillors are often ignored or lied to by the staff who are supposed to be serving them (and us). The same in the civil service. Very rarely are staff brought to book over misdemeanours, there may be some window dressing if it's really bad, but it's usually hushed up and the old 'promote them upwards to get them out of the way' kicks in. Failing that, they are paid a very significant amount to move sideways to another authority. I see absolutely nothing that warrants a 15% increase over 3 years, all I see is the City and County becoming more and more run down, broken and dirty, and a private business delivering public works work to a terrible standard that just would not be accepted in the private sector. Social Services consumes a huge part of the budget, yet still continues to fail. I see profligate waste of council tax money at every turn, no common sense as megilleland says, yet no one listens. Why are those in charge content to accept such decline and do nothing? I guess we're back to not rocking the boat and protecting the handsome pension pot. I'm concerned, but honestly don't see a way to get things changed. Which is exactly where 'they' want us.

The pictures say all that is needed to be said surely? No expensive consultants needed. This is AFTER the multi-million £ Yazor Brook flood prevention scheme, which has clearly proved to be inadequate in the face of changing weather patterns.

The 'something' that he struck was the collapsed flood wall which was visible as the waters subsided. The driver is a total idiot. I hope the poor shopkeepers bring a joint civil action against him - the evidence is incontrovertible.

I think it's a bit of a lottery as to who handles the initial enquiry and whether they send it in the right direction. I had a fault on my phone line a few months ago and used BT's online fault test and report - worked well and I was told it would be fixed within 5 days. In fact they did it in 2. I didn't speak to a human through the whole process, which may be why it went well. I had to contact BT yesterday about a mistake on my bill - I used the chat facility, got through within a few minutes and we worked through and resolved the issue quite quickly. They even offered to record it as a formal complaint when we were done, which I did and it's in the system at the moment.

I find emails are ignored, phone calls are generally either in a huge queue or never answered. That said, Direct Line are good at telephone calls - you can ask them to call you back, rather than wait in a queue, and they do. My general preferred route is 'live chat' - I have had success every time with this. Write your question beforehand to ensure you have the facts, and copy and paste it. You increasingly have to get past the bot questions first, but there is a route to a human. You can also get a transcript of the conversation when it finishes, which is a useful record.

Really? Terrible acoustics.

'Early Summer 2025' it would now seem, according to the recent press release from Friends of Castle Green, under new contractors Aspire Building Contractors. Always very difficult and costly for a contractor to pick up a half built scheme. Let's hope things run smoothly from now on.

Work appears to have ground to a halt, nothing has happened for quite a few weeks. It was supposed to be open by now, but it's only at first fix stage. As a member of Friends of Castle Green, and given the large amount of public funding involved, I would have expected an update from them, but the silence is telling.

Active Travel & Transport proposals for Aylestone Hill will see FOUR more sets of traffic lights added to the madness - these will be Toucan crossings (removing one zebra crossing), inevitably creating even more issues on one of the most congested roads in the City. https://uk.planengage.com/herefordshireatt/page/Aylestone_Hill-Plans

Over 10 years since this petition was launched - not a single light turned off despite so many promises by parties of all colours, worst of all being the last administration who actually had it as part of their campaign that they would run trials etc - nothing done. In fact, many more lights have been added in the last 10 years, not the least the horrible ones on the A49 approaching from the north - as you crest the hill as Lyde, the historic view of the spired City is now marred by a bank of the damned things, when a roundabout here would have been much better - there was plenty of space for one. At a laughable/completley useless level are the cycle traffic lights in the £1.3m St Owens St scheme which are very confusing for motorists approaching from the south - they see red and green. I've long thought that there must be a financial incentive somewhere along the line - the everlasting maintenance contract must be a very nice earner.

Ask the Council and let us know the answer? 40 tonnes doesn't seem right.

We certainly need a change to the status quo, but the options on offer hold out little hope of better times.

All public transport is subsidised - trains for instance by many £billions - as such £50k is an absolute bargain for that many journeys. The wider picture for Beryl is the contribution to health, traffic reduction and so on.

Eight year term? Have the Council learnt nothing form being locked into these long term contracts (BBLP for instance)? It would seem not. Let's hope there's some sort of performance review after a year and penalty clauses for failure to deliver (or, rather, take away).