Richard Baum

Just a brief post today, since I have been out all day and haven’t had the time to compose a longer one. I am also tired, having stayed up way past my bed time watching the football, and then been kept up even longer by the whooping neighbours and their fireworks / honking car horns. I’d like to think that my disdain is more to do with being above all that than it is to do with jealousy. But it really isn’t.

Anyway, so tonight it’s the inaugural meeting of the St Mary’s Conservation Area Action Working Group, which will get together periodically to discuss ongoing things to do with the local conservation area. We are lucky in this ward to have a lot of natural and man-made beauty. Unfortunately we also have a lot of entirely-man-made ugliness such as the dire Radius flats and various awful bits of Prestwich Village. So we’re trying to stem the tide of horrific-ness, and extend the good stuff where we can. Part of this is making it harder to knock down grand old buildings and replace them with carbuncles, and part of it is to do with not allowing parkland to be concreted over. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees about what’s any good and what’s not, and it is around these blurry edges that much of the discussion will take place, I’m sure. As well as making sure that everything else that’s supposed to happen happens.

Other than that, I have been chasing up missing street signs today - Carr Avenue and Butterstile Lane, to be precise. For some reason people nick them. If it was Penny Lane or Sir Matt Busby Way, I could understand, but the reasons for these thefts are mysterious… Anyway, I discovered today that it takes TEN WEEKS from reporting the sign missing to getting it replaced. Six weeks to get the sign made, and another four to install it. As far as I am aware the signs aren’t made of plutonium, nor are they made in New Zealand. So the reason for the delay is as odd as the theft in the first place… But they’ll get done eventually, and that’s the important thing.

Rick