[OT] Supermarket shitlists

[The Natural Philosopher]

Didn't know you were in Newmarket Tim!

I totally agree, that low or zero parking fees make it the destination of choice for us.

Long term there are streets available as well.. for free.

I never pay for parking there.

Sadly they have at least one dick brain on the council, who keeps adding traffic lights and snarling up the traffic.

It is not possible to go into Cambridge at all without paying. Every single possible public parking space has some kind of restriction on it. They even patrol at 9pm and issue parking tickets.

Only the park and rides are free, BUT the bus fare in is not.

The net effect on any visitor is 'You are here on sufferance, we will only let you into to our marvellous city at all if you pay' to which my final response has been an overall 'well f*ck YOU then' since as Andrew pointed out in the Dunstable case, the policy eventually forces closures of any town centre shops of interest anyway.

[Andy Cap]

One of the craziest schemes I've seen and it only lasted a week, was in Haywards Heath, when you suddenly had to enter your car registration number, each character being selected by moving a cursor along to the appropriate letter or number. It was absolute chaos. Funny though.

Andy Cap

[Bob Eager]

Our local hospitals used to operate machines a bit like that - only they just used the numeric keypad, with letters entered a la mobile phone. The keypad mode had to be changed (with an obscure operation) to swap between letters and numbers.

After a while they gave up, had the machines modified and now you only have to enter the numbers.

This 'enter the number' thing was a good way of preventing ticket trnsferral, until the 'new' car registration number scheme came in a few years ago....now it's pretty useless, so I don't know why they bother...

[Duncan Wood]

AS evidenced by all the empty parking spaces & shops in the town centre.

[Tim Streater]

Moved to Kent now.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh yes, to prevent what I always used to do, walk up to the parking meter thingamabob. And give my unexpired ticket to anyone standing there. At one time people used to paste their unexpired tickets on the machine for use by someone else.

IN Cambridge, the councillors proudly state that their parking policy is a 'complete success' because it 'pays for the park and ride' and has made 'park and ride pay for itself'

If success equates to restricting the town to its cycling residents, and ripped off tourists, that's true.

If it equates to it being a vibrant market town and a destination of choice to its natural catchment area, its totally false.

[Clive George]

Bike in the back of the car. Though when I travel to Cambridge I do park on the street without restriction, so your statement about parking spaces is clearly somewhat overblown. Of course I may have more effective legs than you.

Cambridge has had years to have that problem, and it seems to be doing pretty well without your custom. Parking there was a nightmare 20 years ago, and that's got to be long enough to see your predictions of doom come true.

Ditto London.

If your city is big or special enough in its own right to attract people, which both Cambridge and central London are, the parking is irrelevant. If your town is just another repeated provincial high street, it may well be more important.

It's interesting to look at Hebden Bridge. Congested roads, no free parking, doing really well due to genuinely interesting shops rather than the normal chains.

[Corporal Jones]

On 07/08/2010 09:08, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

I moved to Dunstable in '85 when the town was still thriving and parking was free, two lanes into Dunstable under the railway bridge and traffic moved reasonably well and free parking which I never had any problems finding a space then they built the new Sainsburys and changed to 2 way traffic leaving Dunstable, been a bottleneck ever since. As you say when they started charging for parking things went downhill, I generally use the Quadrant as I live on the east side, started with a man in a hut charging 20p a go which was OK, now it's 40p for an hour pay and display which I only now use for going in for a haircut or paying a cheque into the bank (some of my customers still insist on paying by cheque rather than bacs so I loose 40p on every cheque) but I don't hang around browsing shops for fear of overrunning my allotted time and the £40 fine.. A few weeks ago I parked up, joined the queue at the pay & display machine and returned to my car to see a couple of wardens about to issue a ticket, talk about predators! Then came the green wave traffic light system, cost a few million quid to install, for the first 2 weeks complete gridlock in the town and they had to turn it off, took a couple of years before they admitted that it was a failure but I can guess that the instigator of this still kept his job on the council, I do miss the twin roundabouts now even for all their failings. Nowadays we do our shopping for staples at either Tesco, Sainsburys or the local co-op, we live equi distant between them all, use local farm shops(all the local butchers seem to have shut down and as I work in the food industry I understand the quality of supermarket meat) for good quality meat and tend to travel towards MK for other things although I now do the majority of non food shopping on the internet and as far as I am concerned Luton is not the ideal place I want to shop. The local council as along with a lot of other medium sized towns has a lot to answer for in their drive to screw the residents and the local businesses, high street south is a prime example for empty shops and high street north tends to full of takeaways, hairdressers and charity shops. When will local government realise that it is the commercial sector that pays their wages and if we feel the squeeze they must also make cuts, cloud cuckoo land,... huh.

[stephen.hull]

The council car park in West Kirby is 60 pence for an hours parking but loads of people use the adjacent Morrisons car park instead.

This is a wealthy town but some people still use Morrisons car park to go to the beach because it is free for two hours, until they overstay, maybe the poor souls can't afford the 60p charge. Meanwhile shoppers who can't get to park in Morrisons car park have to pay in the Council car park.

Stephen.

[Adrian Simpson]

In article , Corporal Jones writes

When the councils return to being run by the councillors rather than the officers (assuming that the councillors understand basic economics).

Adrian

[Jim K]

splutter! y'mean those self same selfless councillors who (majority) all took the X% pay rises earlier this year "without a thought for themselves"?

being a councillor currently has "no ethical status" hence their collective need to define one - in todays currency that equals monetary greed

I know local councillors who were objects of ridicule at my school (thru background or "hand of god"), sad, but all kids aren't born equal, it's like watching them play out their equality fantasies taking everything as their compensation -

open question Who TF wants to be a councillor?? and why not??

Jim K

[The Natural Philosopher]

When the councillors have the authority and take responsibility for local wishes.

Maggie ripped teh councils apart to stop loonie lefties wasting mioney. She centralised te funds. Labour LOVED that, they could dictate social policy centrally, get the decisions rubber stamped by the councils who took the flak, and turn every where into a clone of a sink estate, full of natural labour voters.

Its all very well to give power back to the local authorities IF they are then able to be held to account by the citizens.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Both my parents were councillors back when I was at school (different councils). In those days, it wasn't political, indeed neither of my parents were members of any political party, nor would they have made their political views known publicly. It wasn't paid either. They both bailed out as it became increasingly political and independent thought vanished. My mum was also chairman of governors at a local school (not the one I went to). She hung on to that a bit longer, but bailed on that too as the local authority applied increasing pressure to turn it into a political post.

If you could somehow get the politics out of the local councils, get some representation from local storekeepers and other businesses, make the roles unpaid (as they used to be) so you don't end up with professional politicians, it might be that they would start working properly again. Perhaps we need a mass movement to vote in independents?

[Tim Streater]

Well, you can blame the Lib-Dems for this. It's how they've got to the position they now have. East Cambs is a case in point. Before 1999, it was largely independents. Then in 1999, the Libs swept in by targeting, and because the Tories only put up 6 (out of a possible 39) candidates. Local Tories told me it was because they didn't want to oppose effective independents. After that the Tories woke up, pushed it to NOC in 2003 (with many more candidates but not a full slate) and took control in

2007 (with a full slate of candidates).

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember [e-mail] (Andrew Gabriel) saying something like:

Yep, I knew it well, and used to shop there regularly. The free car park in front of the library/central arena was excellent.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Clive George saying something like:

Is that where that mad parking attendant is?

[Tony Bryer]

Yes, AIUI local authorities keep parking penalties whilst business rates just go into a central pot. Sound economics dictate having an unforgiving parking policy even if all your shops shut down as a result

[Andy Burns]

Are you aware that some parts of your web site (using sda.co.uk) are being redirected to sedoparking.com?

[Tony Bryer]

Thanks - there shouldn't now be any links on the site that go to sda.co.uk - superbeam.co.uk is now the primary software site - but, yes, I missed a couple. I can't do anything about links on external sites.

The sda.co.uk domain is up for sale with Sedo since Survey Design Associates ceased trading nearly two years ago. I'm a little surprised that no one is rushing to make an offer - I emailed all the obvious candidates to tell them it was available.

[Eleanor Blair]

Interestingly we went into Cambridge by car yesterday afternoon. Couple of hours in the botanic gardens (parking on Trumpington Road for free), and then into the middle of town for dinner at Anatolia (1.20 for parking at Parkside). Made a bit of a change from the nearly 20 quid we paid to park in the Grand Arcade for a few hours one Saturday earlier in the year.