Tag Archives: Woodbridge

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Suffolk Staycation

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Apologies for my absence – I’ve been holidaying to the far north east east.  No no, not Siberia, camping by the sea in the far north east of Suffolk. And financial squeeze or not, I wonder why anyone ever goes anywhere else. Our county is an absolute delight:

Lets face it, who needs to go to the Med when the North Sea is so lovely and swimmable – and has such great waves to boot?

And who needs  the Sistine chapel ceiling when you have such things as the glories of the Wenhaston Doom close to hand? If you’ve not seen it, its a large wooden representation of the Saved and Damned – saved in its turn  from Henry VIII’s reformers by a coat of whitewash  (and then by a shower of rain from a bonfire 400 years later. Yes really. It was lying in the church grounds, slated for destruction, when a rainstorm finally washed that whitewash off and they saw the Doom for the first time in centuries)

And not even the Taj Mahal, or the Great Pyramid at Giza can give you such a flavour of the person it commemorates as does this wonderfully funny epitaph at Bramfield.  I want one too!

For those who like more active sports, in Suffolk there’s always that great (non-blood) sport of crabbing. Do you know it?  I swear there are crabs all over the county who have to book into fat farms when the holiday season is over, they get so bloated by meals of bacon, chicken and the like.

In the evening there are such delights as the Moving Pictures. This Picture Palace at Southwold seats 70 people now that they’ve built a Royal Box – and it has a uniformed commissionaire and an organ that rises from the floor too.

Though there are plenty of other amusements  for those who prefer to remain outdoors.

And at the end of a well-spent day, can the Manhattan skyline possibly beat this?

I’ve come home brown, relaxed and happy. I’ve walked or cycled most of the time. I’ve wasted no time in traffic jams. I’ve spent no time at airports.  But I have spent every penny of my holiday fund in Suffolk.

Win, win!

Buses, Cars and parking, cuts, Ipswich Hospital, Suffolk County Council, Transport

Woodbridge pays the price for no buses

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I see that Ipswich Hospital made £1.3million from parking charges last year. What a brilliant means of encouraging people to use sustainable transport instead!

O, hang on a moment…

…Woodbridge has no sustainable transport whatsoever that can get you to Ipswich hospital  and back for the evening visiting hour – or get you anywhere near the hospital on Sunday or bank holidays. In Woodbridge our hospital-visiting choices are stark:: cycle a twelve mile round trip, pay to park, or stay at home!

As well as being a large source of income to the hospital, this  should be a huge source of shame and embarrassment  to the Suffolk County Council administration as a whole, to the Portfolio holder in question,  and to the Council Officers  involved in this kind of bum decision-making  (one of whom had to listen to me rant and rave for a good twenty minutes the other day when he was hoping to eat lunch instead. I pointed out that there was hardly one of the decision-makers who even knew what the inside of a bus looked like and explained that I would like to be a good fairy so I could smite them with a few month’s chronic epilepsy or some other condition that leaves one unable to drive, together with an insufficient income to employ someone else.  THEN, said I, you would really have an understanding of what your decisions really feel like. I didn’t get much of a response).

It was less than a month ago that the last evening buses left Woodbridge – forever, as far as SCC were concerned. And they STILL have the nerve to send out “Greenest County” press releases.

SCC LOVES to send out its mixed messages in worn-out  management-speak cliches.  So here’s one back for them to ponder over:

“Why don’t you learn to walk the walk as well as talk the talk? ” This level of decision-making is as joined-up as a 4-year old’s first sentence!

62a and 62b, Buses, Cabinet, cuts, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Transport, Uncategorized, Woodbridge, Your councillor

Woodbridge’s 62a and 62b scrapped without warning!

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OK, I saw it coming – I knew the bus-unfriendly Guy McGregor, SCC portfolio-holder for Transport and Highways, was out to do it  – but it still makes me angry!

Woodbridge has now lost ALL its evening, Sunday and Bank Holiday bus services – victims to  the prejudices of a portfolio-holder who treats buses as  if they were Babes in the Wood – to be  led out into the woods and lost, their pathetic corpses buried under leaves.  He then has the brass neck to boast on his website that: ” I have driven the improvement in the provision of bus services in Suffolk.” To carry on the Panto metaphor “OH NO you haven’t!!!” You are presiding over its demise!

[Here I had to stop writing to take an urgent call from my constituent, the septuagenarian dancer John Raven who relies on the buses – particularly the 62a and b  – as he travels to and from Ipswich’s Regent theatre  daily, often in the evening. Mr Raven and I met years ago, as we travelled to Ipswich by bus. Neither he or his wife can drive, they both find it hard to walk far,   and they live a good  half an hour’s walk from the train station (which will bring him into the wrong side of Ipswich). This cut will devastate his life.  But is he devastated? NO! instead the feisty Mr Raven is LIVID  and he’s out to tell people so.  Mr Raven is not taken in by weasel words: he recognises that Cllr McGregor is figurehead for a regime that  simply diesn’t care]

It seems Mr McGregor’s desire is  to be shot of the subsidised public bus services to rural areas – a lifeline to many people in the countryside who cannot afford, or are unable (by reasons of health, age and poverty) to drive.  Not that Mr McGregor puts it so directly. Indeed he drips honeytonged appeasement. Its not that he’s cutting the services – oh no – far from it.  Mr Mcgregor merely  plans to ‘remodel’ much of   Suffolk’s  rural transport, by replacing services with a ‘demand-responsive’ alternative, one that (he fails to mention) has to be booked a day in advance and is not available outside working hours.

And he certainly doesn’t mention that the money to underpin this  Demand Responsive Solution to the death of the subsidised scheduled bus services was taken out of  his capital expenditure budget a full year before  the NSD was mentioned.

Bus users of Woodbridge,  your valued local service didn’t fall – it was pushed!

Let’s be clear here  – talking about demand responsive transport solutions  is  a load of  meretricious tosh if you referring to buses like the 62a and the 62b.  Why? Well,  if you press them, SCC  officers admit that:

“demand responsive transport operates between 0700 and 1900 Monday to Saturday and we are unable to offer any extension to these hours”.

So our 62a and 62b services will therefore not be replaced with demand responsive transport: they will be replaced with nothing at all, and residents in Woodbridge will have NO sustainable transport in the evenings, on Sundays and on Bank Holidays.

Those residents who do not have, cannot afford to, or are unable to drive a car, will be left sitting at home!

Last week I suggested to  Mr McGregor that he was targeting his transport cuts disproportionately at Suffolk’s sustainable transport as  I questioned his part in the SCC proposed budget for next year.  He agreed that this was the case, but added

“When they were consulted, residents in Suffolk said they were saddened that these cuts were happening, but they know the reasons why they have to occur.”

Oh yes, we DO know the reasons why our buses are being cut, Mr McGregor!  Its because you prefer to add a couple of millions to the already bloated roads budget than give a moment’s concern to those residents of Suffolk who do not drive cars. That’s what saddens us!  Decisions are being made on our behalf  by someone who doesn’t care a hoot for buses, nor for the people who use buses, and most of all, for the plight of the people who have no option but to use buses!

While I remember, it was at this very same Cabinet meeting that Jane Storey, deputy leader of the SCC administration, and arch apologist for the New Strategic Direction  really excelled herself. In bringing next year’s budget to Cabinet she had the unmitigated CRUST to say (with an ineffable blend of complacency and certainty), that this budget – yes the one that is cutting school traffic patrols, divesting libraries, abolishing the explore card and stopping the very buses that rural people most need  “will deliver first class services to the people of Suffolk. ”

Oh, and she also added that the administration have “tried to prioritise the vulnerable in our society.”

I kid you not!   I wrote her words down as she spoke them so I could make sure to pass them on in all their appalling glory!

Cllr Storey, like Cllr McGregor , you seem to have the same relationship to services for the vulnerable as the Wicked Uncle had to the Babes in the Wood. Oh yes you DO!

Oh NO you dont???

Well why not  put your money where your mouths are, and forgo your cuts to essential and irreplaceable services in favour of supporting the most vulnerable of Suffolk’s road users – those who are  dependent on your subsidised buses!

Residents of Woodbridge, and beyond – if you wish to persuade Cllrs McGregor, Storey et al of the error of their ways and hope for a regular panto Transformation Scene, please sign the online petition

http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/Save-Woodbridge-Buses

Or you can sign a paper copy in Woodbridge’s Shire Hall. We MUST keep reminding them that this is a bad thing to do – or they might carry on thinking that it’s prefectly ok.