Biomech

Thanks for that Roger. But the question remains, if hot food outlets are allowed to stay open until 5am.... then our council MUST have made some kind of distinction between the hot food and the cold food outlets to stop only hotfoods from being served. In it's simplest form I guess; "What was the councils argument to allow cold food places to stay open and not hot food places when they both sell food and create the same impact and social activity"

Glenda, may I ask then, what was the crunch point for the committee for allowing cold food but not hot food? Because, everything thing else about this topic becomes irrelevant as soon as you allow one type but not the other of the same thing. What I mean is that whether the food is hot or cold is inconsequential - so the decision to place a curfew on hot food suppliers must have a specific argument that favours cold food. What was it?

Sorry to keep posting, just reading more. "Shared space schemes for integrated street design – where segregation between cars, pedestrians and other road users are reduced or removed – have little benefit for street users, finds research led by Professor Rob Imrie from King’s College London" http://www.kcl.ac.uk/newsevents/news/newsrecords/2011/03March/Sharedspacestudy.aspx Everyone pushes the blind/deaf argument, but I believe selfishness and "racing the traffic" will be a big problem - it already is without telling everyone they can use the same space. Not to mention the lack of clarity as to where cyclists stand. In Finland, planners are known to visit their parks immediately after the first snowfall, when the existing paths are not visible.[1] People naturally choose desire lines, which are then clearly indicated by their footprints and can be used to guide the routing of new purpose built paths. ....social trails still penetrate these barriers. Because of this, state of the art trail design attempts to avoid the need for barriers and restrictions and instead seeks to bring trail layout and user desires in line with each other - both through physical design and through persuasive outreach to users

Finally to add, I've often considered the town centre to be "shared space", because you do get through traffic,whilst not"open to the public" you do get DPS, post man, deliverys, securicor, market stall holders etc. We all get out of the way, of course. But these vehicles are going at what, 3mph? That's worse than the current 4mph traffic we have to put up with already. Out of interest, there was a time, many years ago, when there were alot more cars coming through the center of town, 3-5 an hour or so. Now not so much and more commercial vehicles. Were we not encouraged to use the middle of town as a "shared space" and that idea since been given the boot with the added bollards? In fact, if shared space is so great and the goal of the developers - why is Widemarsh Street closed throughout the day?

I had to read up on it more but it turns out it's exactly what I understood it to be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space I can see how it COULD work and I can see the reasons of increase risk perception being valid. However, I must say, looking at the examples and driving around various cities for work, it's in those "shared spaces" where I've noticed traffic delays due to people not being clear on where they are going and pedestrians walking out into the street. The major problem you have here is selfishness. You tell the people of Hereford that they can walk where they want and cross the road whenever they like and they will purposely walk out infront of cars because they believe they have the right of way. Likewise, cars will push forward as they feel that they have the right of way. You CAN'T tell everyone, cars and people, that they can do what they want. 2 Particular places spring to mind; Bristol, where the roads are teeming with people standing in them and blocking traffic - this I see A LOT. And also there's a street in Birmingham where double decker buses come steaming through without slowing down. There is no distinctive "road" mark. All of a sudden, half the people stop dead, like Moses parting the sea. Now this is fine if you live in Birmingham, I don't, consequently I got clipped by the bus. I mean hell, I was walking down the High Street with everyone else. And that's another problem. Herefordians will get used to it, but the OLM is apparently trying to bring in to the city from elsewhere, they won't know about this. In fact, when you imagine it, it could be argued that it creates a further segregation. Right now, to a tourist, there is a road with a crossing, there is more on the other side. Take away all of the crossings, road markings etc and you could very well mistake it for an unpassable road. If I wanted to contain the OLM, that is one of the ways that I would look at to do it. Aesthetically, shared spaces are fantastic. Practically, I can only see them being problematic Sometimes you NEED to have defined separation. Imagine if they did this at an Airport, you'd have tourists driving all over the runway. "Moody and Melia (2011).[3] found that some of the claims made for shared space schemes were not justified by the evidence—particularly the claims that pedestrians are able to follow desire lines, and that shared space reduces traffic speeds. Their primary research in Ashford, Kent, suggested that in streets with high volumes of traffic, pedestrians are more likely to give way to vehicles than vice versa. Most people, but particularly women and older people, found the shared space intimidating and preferred the previous layout with conventional crossings." You try following "desire lines" while shopping in Asda on Saturday...

Thanks :) The problem is that they aren't designing to improve what we have, they are essentially retrofitting new metal and plastic to old timber. The conception of a Blade Runner city - and we all know how bleat that becomes.

I can't for a second see Vodaphone and Clarks staying open where they are now if they are duplicating at the OLM. And Boots as well you say?

By "short term", they mean until October 2014 But like I said, £500 a day is shocking if it's 5 days a week. If it's 1 or 2 days a month, then it's a non-issue

The new schematic shows that H&M, Fat Face, River Island, Vodaphone and Clarks are moving out of the city centre into the OLM to join Next, TKMaxx and the Odeon. I've said it time and time again, the councils big picture has clearly always been to move the center of Hereford and start again from scratch.

I was thinking the same, but I guess if they are only working 1 day a month, then £500 a day isn't too expensive :P

And just to bring things back on topic. Do the housing organisations not have a duty of care under some kind of environmental business regulation? A shop, for example, has a keen set of rules and regulations regarding environmental waste and refuse disposal.

Thanks for that Glenda. So a HH tenant pays the standard rate of rent to HH but the tenant themselves receives benefits from the council? The same way that someone might pay private rent yet receive single persons living allowance into their bank account. This would explain why "council housing" tenants say that the rate of rent is the same as private. Last one - so how does this differ to renting "privately"? I mean, why do all of the HH style houses/flats have this connotation of supporting the poor, unemployed or single mothers? Is it simply that "private" landlords refuse to take on tenants in receipt of benefits? I read that HH received charity status a few years ago.

Agreed. I imagine Ledbury has significantly lower business rates also. It was possible to build and expand on what Hereford already had successfully, but yes, they've opted for the bulldozer technique instead. It wouldn't be half as bad if the OLM had new shops going into as they promised. But, apart from 3, all of the retail shops already exist in Hereford, they are just moving and leaving more spaces behind. The food court/street will probably be quite nice, but not really a sole reason to come to Hereford.

I drove through Ledbury today. The first thing I noticed while bouncing down the road that has clearly been carpet bombed - was that the high street was clean, really clean. Then I noticed that all of the shops were open. So, on the way back through, I made a conscious effort to count the empty shops. I literally counted 1 - maybe 2 (it was near a pothole). So I wonder what it is that makes a tiny countryside town prosperous, yet a city centre not?

So how does this work then? The council sold off the council housing to these private firms? Are these premises not subsidised by the council? How come people apply to the council(?) to get one of these free/cheap houses? Is it a case of these are cheap flats and the council pays the rent or part there of, to these private organisations? Forgive all the questions, I just don't know how it works. What I'm thinking is that if the council have a large amount of involvement in these places surely they have the power to do something?

Excuse my ignorance, but are you saying that all of these properties are nothing to do with the council and, in fact, a private organisation? Or are you saying that HH is a division of the council and it's their responsibility?

The problematic areas are the public areas. We're doing our bit, why isn't the council doing their bit?

I have three problems with litter picking volunteers. 1) I'm not adverse to picking up things caught in my bushes, but I'm sure as hell not going to be cleaning up sick and **** from empty shop doorways 2) Litter picking volunteers give people an excuse to litter - it's ok to throw it on the floor because someone else will pick it up* 3) I'm paying for refuse collection, if this isn't happening, I want my money back for the lack of services. * I realise that council workers would be doing this, however, I think it's unfair to put the onus on public volunteers when the people being paid to do the job should be doing it.

You mean fix it at the lowest possible cost and repeat every few weeks instead of fixing it properly the first time. The way this council wastes money is synonymous with taking private taxi's to work every day of the year instead of buying a car.

My £39 includes my line rental. I do **** A LOT of data for work though, which is why I need the speed and uncapped package. I remember downloading ONE mp3, about 3.5mb, used to take 15 minutes :O Satellite connections can be good for rural areas, not ideal for gaming though as there is a delay (unless its changed now)

Standard HT procedure - delete and ban anything that questions their content or motives. The editor is the biggest moron around, acts completely unprofessionally and really shouldn't be running the paper.

Welcome to Exile

I wouldn't be able to function on that, literally. I have 50meg Fiber, £39/month as it's uncapped, unlimited, unthrottled, unshaped and I've had some extra tweaks put on :)

I don't see the problem, it's a junction, use it like any other junction. If anything, they just need to stop people parking on left of Bridge Street so that you can see more from the Kings Street junction. I'm constantly baffled as to how people struggle so much with the basic concepts of driving.

Was this previously planned or a knee jerk reaction to that car being crushed by the bus the other day?