A friend of mine who is a gardener and knows about these things tells me it has been a good year for Alcea Rosa – Hollyhocks to you and me.
Judging by the spectacular display fronting the old Rectory Road police station, they are clearly right.
However, particularly in and around Wokingham, their numbers pale into insignificance compared to Trafficius Conius.
Venture if you will about the highways and byways of the borough and you will be unable to avoid the numerous displays of these brightly coloured orange cones ringed with reflective bands, which apparently spread easily almost anywhere, need little or no attention often for weeks on end and, if cleared, rapidly reappear elsewhere.
Although colourful, Trafficius Conius will, if contact is made with them, be likely to cause severe headaches and irritation.
Those wishing to discover more about the best locations to view displays of Trafficius Conius should contact Wokingham Borough Council’s department for strategic planning and highways, whose response, no doubt, if you’ll excuse the expression, be the usual – Alcea Rosas!
J W Blaney, Wokingham
An open letter to Wokingham MP John Redwood
Dear Mr Redwood,
There was a vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday 28th June on an opposition amendment to remove the wage cap on our firefighters, police and nurses.
You voted against the amendment which, in effect, keeps the wage cap in place.
Some of these people have not had a rise in seven years or more.
During the recent election campaign a phrase was born, used by Theresa May, when confronted by a tearful nurse during one of the rare Prime Ministerial Q&A sessions. That phrase was “there is no magic money tree”.
During the period of this wage cap MPs have elected themselves two pay increases totalling in the region of 12%. After the election your government has found the ability to pay Northern Ireland £2.5 billion in order to remain in power.
After the EU Referendum you voted to leave the EU despite the majority of your constituents being in favour of Remain.
When challenged you said that you are the constituents’ delegate, not Representative.
In other words your view is that your are elected to use your judgement and experience to make decisions on behalf of your constituents. I have found a quote from you from Twitter.
I’m sorry it’s undated but it’s interesting: “When teachers try to teach, nurses try to nurse, small businesses try to serve their clients and the police try to arrest criminals, there is always a regulator or three breathing down their necks. Conservatives want to make people’s lives easier.”
So, if you are elected to use your judgment on our behalf you then must by default support the use of this wage cap. And your vote against the amendment was not to remain loyal to your party, but because you believe this cap to be right and proper?
Returning to your quote how are these policies and your support of them “making people’s lives easier”? In all humanity, with recent events in Manchester, London Bridge and Grenfell Tower, quite apart from their long service on our behalf can you justify your actions?
Neil Hodgson, via email
MP shows his true colours
I see our local MP, John Redwood, is showing his true colours again by voting to keep the 1% pay increase for public service workers and for the uninitiated that includes firefighters, police, military, ambulance service, doctors and nurses.
I can almost guarantee that this will not be the case when MP pay comes up for review.
Murray Heslin, via Facebook
Housing numbers for Wokingham
At Wokingham Borough Council’s Executive last week I asked a question which was: did the new Leadership continue to support the existing various housing policies adopted by this Administration.
I referred in particular to the following:
The increase of the Core Strategy-approved housing numbers from 661 to 856 without any public consultation to which Officers now say this is a minimum; the secret plan to build up to 15,000 houses at Grazeley; and continued support of the plan to support Bracknell, Reading and West Berks should they have any housing shortfalls up to 2036.
In his reply, Cllr David Lee stated that G L Hearn (a private consultant and one of many and not the government either) carried out a revised housing needs assessment and we are forced to accept these figures.
Rubbish.
The legal housing number until 2026 is the consulted and government Inspectors approved local plan number of 661. The secret upping of that to 856 was a lazy convenience that suited the Council and nothing more. Even if they felt they had to increase the yearly housing numbers by 30% why did they keep it secret from residents?
The Council has the right to challenge every application to build more houses at appeal but they do not seem to have the will or the bottle to fight the residents’ corner and residents deserve nothing less as I see it. Fighting our corner whatever the cost would send out a clear message that we will protect Wokingham’s environment.
On Grazeley he added that it was a joint venture but he did not answer the secrecy question so my only conclusion is the council supports 15,000 houses at Grazeley.
Most bizarrely was the reply I got to my third question which was “Will the council continue to support the plan announced recently in Wokingham Town Hall by his fellow Councillors Keith Baker and Mark Ashwell to support Bracknell, Reading and West Berks should they have any housing shortfalls up to 2036?”
This story was the headline in The Wokingham Paper on December 15, 2016: 66,000 New Homes. Borough Bears Brunt. The reply I got was “you talked about something announced and I am totally ignorant of this.” I find it astonishing that he knows nothing of this event chaired by his then Council Leader Keith Baker aided and abetted by two of his fellow executive members Mark Ashwell and Chris Bowring who were also present at the event.
One wonders why the council has adopted this build more houses stance but tries to keep it secret. Is it a false economy based on the government bribe of over £3,000 for each house built which was also kept a closely guarded secret?
When a council keeps secrets from its residents and kowtows to government at residents expense then it becomes a dead council limping to extinction sadly.
Cllr Gary Cowan, Independent Borough councillor for Arborfield
This lady is not for downsizing
I am in entire sympathy with the letter – ‘Why should us oldies be forced to downsize?’ G.E. Griffiths – The Wokingham Paper, June 29.
As an ‘over-privileged’ Baby Boomer child, I lived in a house which had no electricity, no bathroom, no hot water system, and no central heating. One washed – standing at a sink – with red carbolic soap, and hot water boiled up in a kettle!
One’s parents had no sympathy. Their childhood conditions had been even worse! As a child, my late father-in-law lived in a tenement with no running water. He collected water from a pump in the yard, and carried it in a jug up three flights of stairs to their rooms – which had no cooking facilities!
My late mother lived in a house shared by two families – one of twelve upstairs, and my mother’s, of ten, downstairs.
They considered themselves, privileged, because each family had its own toilet!
When I was a child, the country was bankrupt from the war, and food was still rationed. Despite being taught in classes of fifty, one became highly literate – because – having no television – one spent one’s leisure time reading. Some social conditions were better than today’s. There were no unemployed.
Even the war-wounded sold matches on street corners. There were no street-homeless. The mentally ill lived in mental asylums, the socially inadequate lived in common lodging houses, and hostels accommodated the young and the single.
In those days, The Wokingham Paper would not have had to advertise for volunteers for a Link Visiting Scheme – to support the lonely elderly – excellent though the Scheme is. Then, widowed old people lived with their married offspring!
Like G.E. Griffiths, I have had some truck with estate agents. My funniest encounter occurred when I went to buy a house, and the agent insisted that I had to have a passport, and a driving licence, to buy a house in that price category.
I assured him that the only thing you need – to buy a house in any category – is the money to pay for it! Of course I prefer my modern house with its three bathrooms – no more freezing to death and carbolic soap, and, like G.E. Griffiths, I intend staying here! I have no desire to make the house over to Syrian refugees, nor, as an officer of Wokingham Borough Council suggested, to take in the adult mentally ill!
He was pooh-poohing my suggestion for a Wokingham Adult Fostering Scheme, but his view lacks validity.
Adult fostering does work. They have been making a success of it, in Gheel, in Belgium, for the past seven hundred years! But, like all voluntary work, Adult Fostering only works if people want to do it. I don’t, because all my energy for the mentally ill is used up in running the crisis house.
Frequently, older people who wish to stay, alone, in four, five, and six bedroom, houses do so – because they like having the grandchildren come to stay, and like having a playroom for them – as well as bedrooms. Why shouldn’t they?
But even if a single person – who has worked very hard, made a lot of money, and bought an enormous house, chooses, when elderly, to stay there, that is entirely his right. People may think that he rattles around in his twelve bedrooms, but it is HIS money, and HIS property, so I say – let him enjoy rattling!
We have a sad case at the crisis house where a member lost all his money, and his beautiful, big, house in the centre of Wokingham – due to manic-depressive illness. He is now Sectioned in mental health accommodation – which he hates – though the staff are nice enough. Older people, who need care, often prefer to stay in their large house – where there is room for a resident carer – when this becomes necessary – rather than having to move into an institution.
So Erica Townsend is going to be disappointed. An Englishman’s home is his castle! Like G.E. Griffiths, we are hanging on to ours, and there are plenty of us – the grey voters! If the politicians try to force us out of our homes, we will force the politicians out of office!
Pam Jenkinson, The Wokingham Crisis House
What wonderful service
I have recently mourned the passing of our lovely old Wokingham town to the new development. How very Agatha Christie’ish that sounds (a famous crime writer for those of you who have never heard of her)!! and perhaps what is happening to Wokingham is a crime!
However, today I find that there is room for a new optimism in the old town.
Today, from Argos, The Gig House, to Robert Dyas, HSBC, and to the wonderful Wokingham Decor, the customer service was of such a quality I felt I was treated like royalty.
While our politicians are haggling and vying with each other as to who is the best and the worst, our shops continue to serve us as well as they can, and to the best of their ability.
It must be so difficult for all the traders to carry on with such enthusiasm when surrounded by demolition, and traffic upheavals from all corners of the town.
I salute all the traders of Wokingham, for persevering in their trades , surrounded by such a terrible mess, to put it mildly! We should all try and support them as much as possible.
Let’s hope that the future brings new life to our town, and that in the near future we will be proud of the new Wokingham.
Francine Twitchett, Wokingham
Council officers who don’t do their job properly should …
This week I direct my ire against more of the civil servants/quango types whose views we have to pay for! Along with Council employees who do not perform – perhaps I should mention (speaking from experience) those who are looking forward to retiring on their ludicrous taxpayer funded pensions – and civil servants who spout on about very narrow subject matter, e.g., NICE are today’s target.
The latest is the NICE 62 page set of recommendations for Councils etc., on the serious issue of harmful air pollution.
Let me start by saying that Councils already have a duty of care, and thus should be doing their job properly! There are those who do little or nothing, and I name Wokingham, Chichester, Bournemouth and Christchurch as examples where Traffic control would help no end to reduce pollution. (I have experience in all those areas.)
Giving credit where due, NICE do suggest doing away with road humps – another idiotic impedance to economical motoring – and avoiding stop-start etc. That’s a subject I’ve mentioned before, especially in our area, and as with vital safety improvements to the Station Approach entry Traffic Lights, the Council and Councillors appear to ignore.
As for not using your car – a very good idea, and I number myself among practitioners – we do have excellent Reading Bus services.
Roads are nowadays frequently choked with other vehicles or road-works, and let me add, one of the biggest curses so far as road management is concerned – cyclists! As if to totally contradict NICE, we are now providing Cycle Lanes that mean reducing the available width for Buses and ‘freight’.
Cyclists on pavements maybe tolerable, but the Law as far as I know, states they must have warning Bells, plus pavements are not racetracks which some of the ‘goons’ seem to think.
NICE recommend new tree-lined cycle routes and walkways to protect the public from fumes. You will appreciate my view of these expensive employees, when I say “what a lovely idea”, but do any of them live in this country? Especially in our area, and do any of them have cars, or are they all unlicensed cyclists!
Please add to that diatribe, the fact that we have another collection of overpaid and unnecessary taxpayer funded clerks spreading our hard-earned tax revenues, on Foreign Aid. I trust readers have studied the figures of DfID staffing?
Now we have a female, Priti Patel, who should be fired forthwith, increasing staff over the past year, to 2,208 at April this year – average salaries of £53,000pa, to which no doubt we should add a high pension liability and unlimited expenses.
What a total rip-off.
This country can easily afford to pay NHS staff, police, firemen etc., viz. the valuable and dedicated people in society, good salaries, if someone (probably the PM) ended the ‘government sponsored parties’ that eat our taxes. I go as far to say, I would fire the senior members of the Cabinet Office – but that’s another subject.
Let’s have a debate – saves doing anything!
Reg Clifton, Wokingham
Let’s stop the cat killers
This is a letter to all members and supporters: everyone should try and support the petition to ban people shooting hurting and killing cats.
I have written over 100 times to Theresa May when she was Home Secretary to licence air guns and make laws tougher in courts not six months for shooting animals and being brutal to creatures the people should be sentenced to years not months.
I urge people out there to protest to your MP his e mail or address will be in the town or borough council. or join up with myself.
Victor Rones,
Advocate for Animals
On the petition against new homes in Finchampstead
Why shouldn’t Finchampstead take their share? Take a look at what they’ve done near Coppid Beech. 600+ on one side and loads more being built on the other. Nimby.
Philip Blanchard, via Facebook
This is all down to greed!
Shove a few more hundred houses in the area and collect more in rates and other utilities, jobs for the boys !!
I feel very sorry for people living in these ‘regeneration’ areas !! Soon we will be like Reading!
Ruth Auguste, via Facebook
I would be interested to know how many distinguished councillors live in Wokingham that have a vested interest in running down this once beautiful place.
Arthur Donkin, via Facebook
What can we do about cyber attacks?
A little over a month ago, the news was filled by a cyber attack had crippled large sections of the NHS.
The Attack that jammed up NHS computers however seems to be the starting point of the latest spate of cyber attacks.
Since that attack, Parliamentarians have been locked out of their emails, cargo ships not been able to dock and ATM’s compromised.
All caused by a cyber attack of some form or another.
The reasons for these attacks are as varied from financial gain, black mail and just pure vandalism.
Why are cyber attacks on the increase?
In the digital world, the emphasis is for more and more of our daily lives to go online, from energy meters, banking and shopping.
The challenge is protecting all of the information, which is growing faster than many companies and individuals can keep pace with.
Security is only as strong as the weakest link.
Criminal organisations have recognised that digital crime is the newest weak link and have moved operations online in order to get the greatest returns. It is more profitable to rob a bank digitally than physically.
Can I protect myself?
There is no golden bullet in Cyber Security apart from your own vigilance.
Keep your computer and anti-virus software up to date; make use of additional security features such as Two Factor Authentication offered by companies; use Strong passwords.
And always be suspicious of companies and individuals asking for your personal details.
Guy Grandison
