Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

What a load of rubbish!

Temple Memorial Park in South Shields was bequeathed to us with a covenant that it be used in perpetuity for leisure purposes, the Church Commissioners saw no huge building developments upon it after the last war and had no wishes that the position should change, unless it was to add pleasure and leisure to our lives. Over the years we have seen one or two smaller developments come and go there, it once housed a small golf course, a church which was burned down, and we now have a leisure centre which is ailing and expensive to maintain, and a Fire Station, as well as an old civil defence facility buried below one corner of the land.

I received an email from a customer here last week looking for online confirmation that Temple Park had once been used as a landfill site for South Shields’ rubbish, I must admit that finding some sort of online confirmation was near impossible although I was able to find one reference to it in an old Shields Gazette article. My own memories as a child, which are not too clear, was that part of Temple Memorial Park was used to receive our bin wagons, the corner adjacent to The White Ensign and the old King George School on Nevison Avenue comes to mind, that part which is now football pitches.

I know too, that monitors for methane gas are installed in Temple Park Centre and at locations around the immediate area, the presumption is that the amount of methane reaching the surface is negligible and no threat to anyone at all.

However, if readers have any particular memories about the rubbish tip that was on Temple Park then please leave a comment, my correspondent would be delighted to learn more about this period of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

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Thoughts of closing up the shop

I must admit that over the past few months I have had serious thoughts about closing this Corner Shop but leaving the shutters up so you can see what is in here, I’ve also had thoughts of closing the shop down and having it completely demolished, removed, and airbrushed from history. I think that many of these thoughts were linked to occasional depression, the full time search for work, the fumblings of a coalition government struggling to come to terms with itself and the awful state of the economy, and South Tyneside Labour Party’s mind numbing policy of doing nothing at all to upset anyone and towing the line with spending restrictions – after all they knew in advance what was coming and they also knew that the consequences of a Labour victory at the last general election would have been exactly as they are now, severe spending restrictions.

They wore the Tory cloak provided by the Blair/Brown administrations and dared not take any major directional changes, they are total conformists to the point of being pragmatists, but at least the result will  be a small relief this year for council tax payers, something which perhaps may not have happened if Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were still sitting in Downing Street. However a couple of things sparked my amusement following the reception of some emails this week, both revolving around the inability of the opposition groups on South Tyneside Council to consider their own policies in advance of the May local elections and their unwillingness to forego personal attacks in exchange for discussing policy positions which might benefit us all. During Thursday’s council meeting which set the budget for the coming municipal year I hear that one councillor was far more concerned about what had gone on in this blog three years ago and proceeded to mistakenly harangue a fellow member with references to the opinions of a certain teal lady within South Shields town hall, and another was more concerned at the attempts to find and legally punish the writer of another political blog in the area. All this on an afternoon when they ought to have been proposing measures to raise revenue, reduce spending whilst protecting front line services, and pre planning the local council’s proposals for the next two or three years.

I have said and repeated often enough, that South Tyneside has the council it deserves, not by virtue of the Labour Party but because of the quality, or lack of, the opposition members! Yet once again there are very few reports of a well put together alternative strategy from any of the opposition parties to help us get through very tough economic times. It is all well and good attacking Labour’s record in government, which lamentable though it was, at least provided opportunities for any sixth form student to analyse in five minutes and tear it apart in even less, but politicians even at a local level have a responsibility to provide a little bit more than negative attacks, they need to offer us some firm alternative positions and positively promote the benefits that they would offer if they have any hope of picking up additional seats.

As electors we also have a responsibility to participate in this process by gathering as much information as possible, digesting it, and making an informed decision based upon past history, current policy initiatives, and future prospects, we need to know firmly in our own minds how we would like South Shields, Jarrow, Hebburn Cleadon and the Boldons to develop over the next ten years and be able to see a clear path towards those aspirations. Only then should we confidently make a decision about supporting candidate A or candidate B, or C. Our decisions should not be based upon personal unfounded allegations or attacks, but upon the policies announced by the candidate’s backers or party.

Unfortunately, some of the opposition in South Tyneside will be stirring up very murky waters as they return to type and rally round the type of blog referred to by Mr. Hughes in his report, it is active again and churning out rehashes of old material, expect to see the same or very similar attacks and language used in election material between now and May! Another opposition party is now inaudible, it has gone quiet, and relies on hand outs from it’s London central HQ to get its message across, this is simply not good enough, local councillors ought to be capable of espousing their policies in local forums without recourse to press releases, it will be interesting to see how the Conservatives approach the local elections in May. Will they field a full team, will some wards not have the choice of voting Conservative?

Much the same could be said of the Liberal Democrats, whose leader in South Tyneside Cllr. Joe Abbot is seriously out of kilter with Deputy PM Nick Clegg, will they have the heart to field more than a handful of candidates outside of their Hebburn stronghold?

We have been here before though, the same arguments get used year after year, as each successive May approaches I wonder if anything really changes at all, and this inevitably leads to my boredom about local political matters, however, I still retain a great love for South Shields and the surrounding area, I still want to promote it and the benefits of living on Tyneside, I still find daily ways of showing us off to the world, and still have aspirations that we can build a better local economy based on tourism, hospitality, service, and the growth of small and medium enterprises. I still believe that there are sufficient local people with fresh ideas, strategies, and plans to move us forward and at least catch up with our counterpart authorities in Tyne and Wear. It is to those people that I appeal to get involved either in business or in local political activity, without your important input our local party political scene will continue to bore people to tears and the resurrection and regeneration of the region will go ahead without South Tyneside.

Do we really want to be left behind by an authority which is not challenged by capable and creative opposition?

So, for now, the Shop remains open and looking forward to your ideas, information, and positive thoughts.

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South Tyneside Council announces “major new planning policy”

I don’t really wish to labour the point, but it is one of the things which mark out South Tyneside’s Labour controlled council as being unwittingly slow in its efforts towards regeneration at times. This major new planning policy document offers the building of 71 new homes on the old School Street site in Hebburn, the creation of a waterfront park on South Shields riverside and the building of 1,300 new homes in a mixed retail and leisure development at the former Circatex site at Laygate, South Shields.

Nothing really new here of course, these plans have been talked about for at least a year, and indeed the 71 homes at School Street in Hebburn were due to be started last summer! As for the former Circatex site, our Labour councillors have been talking about redeveloping it for FOUR years now, after I gave them some ideas back in April 2006!

I keep labouring the point that we always seem to be playing “catch up” with our neighbours, one only has to take a fleeting glance at the opposite side of the River Tyne to see the pace of change in North Tyneside, Newcastle and Gateshead continue to forge ahead with their partnership in rejuvenating their river frontage and town centres, and Sunderland has undergone some phenomenal changes over the past five years.

But don’t worry, all the plans will be going into the Local Development Framework (again), so that we can have another year of “consultations” and another “new” announcement, meanwhile the decay in Frederick Street in South Shields will continue.

I think I know what Labour in South Tyneside understands  “regeneration” to be, it is the rehashing of age old policies!

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Ed Malcolm suggests it’s a Labour proposal

After years and years of doing nothing else but raising the level of Council Tax in South Tyneside (a real burden for the few who have to pay it), Ed Malcolm suggests in the Shields Gazette that the local Labour Party now want to freeze it!!

The council is aware that residents are suffering in this difficult financial climate, so we are proposing to freeze council tax in South Tyneside, so that our residents have one less pressure on already overstretched household budgets

Absolute poppycock Ed and you know it!

It is bad enough listening to our local Labour council vilifying the Conservative Party and the Lib-Dems for “cutting” expenditure (at a time when public expenditure and borrowing is still on the way up), but to then claim some sort of credit for a tax freeze, stretches the bounds of credibility. Until the chips were down Ed and his brother Iain didn’t have a clue how to reduce spending locally, every year when they asked the electorate about council tax in some sort of spin consultation, the choice was between rise a, b, c, or d! Never any offer of a freeze or reduction, that is, until the Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition forced it upon them.

The freeze has been imposed across the UK by central Government, which is offering councils a “reward” payment in compensation. South Tyneside will get £1.45m.

No apologies either for the economic mess that their party left behind nationally, neither does he mention that things would have been equally tough if Labour had returned to power in Westminster last year, no reminders about the huge spending cuts that Alistair Darling had lined up. Ed Malcolm made no conciliatory warnings before the last election that South Tyneside Council would have to cut it’s cloth with very large scissors – why?

More than likely because he regards the majority of us as pure mugs; the vast majority of council tax payers and South Tyneside Homes tenants do not pay full rent or council tax, rises hardly affect them at all, those on benefits hardly feel this particular cold blast of economic reality. No -  it is the small minority who do not receive benefits who feel the weight upon their shoulders, but the Malcolms know that come election time that small number is still likely to be in the minority when the ballot boxes are emptied.

We mugs all have terrible memories, we cannot remember more than a few weeks back, so it’s safe for Ed to start bashing the evil wicked Tories, it’s all their fault for messing things up, and the Labour Party kindly offered you a tax freeze to soften the blow.

Pass the sick bag.

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For labour MP’s to show their face and say they are working for the common people, the working class, then behind our backs shafting us, pushing us deeper in to real poverty, makes me so damn angry and then to hide behind a tissue of lies, their standard ‘It’s the Tories fault’ what a load of crap! (sic)

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On the Buses!

There is an interesting little story here if some journalist would like to get his/her teeth into it, (something to do with fuel costs and how it might affect the price of your ticket).

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