Supermarkets, business etc etc

Went to see Mum yesterday in Chatteris, on the way I noticed that the new ALDI was not looking like its conversion from a COOP was underway, hmmnn I thought, was supposed to be open soon.

Why did the COOP close, well my suggestion runs as follows.

TESCO had a big new supermarket built off the bypass causing all sorts of local issues with traffic and diversion of a drain, it was due to open early this year, then when the wheels fell off TESCO financially they decided it wasn't going to open at all despite a rumoured 25 year lease on the building so there it still sits on a site that should also house a new Travis Perkins depot.

Meanwhile COOP see TESCO supermarket taking shape, they have been in Chatteris years running a store that was big, but did it do enough trade and take the decision to close, lets face it they have financial problems as well. I can guess it was not an easy decision to take or perhaps stop when TESCO announced its brand new swish supermarket was not opening.

ALDI now come into the frame. They were announced as taking on the COOP store and local rumour had it, it would open within a month of COOP closing. All COOP signage was down very quick after it closed.

Now ALDI are saying it could be 2016 before they open and Chatteris has just one small Budgens and a couple of even smaller convenience stores to supply its needs, as locals say you cannot do a big shop in the town now and have to travel miles.

So what am I bumbling on about, business large and small only exists with customers and staff prepared to buy from them or work for them. To my mind they forget this too many times and its customers and staff who lose out while they sit there wiping out a line of words on a list of stores.

It doesn't matter to them one bit that a town like Chatteris with its large surrounding area of farms is now without somewhere that people can do a weekly shop. Its all about finance and competition and long term strategy.

Still there has to be a winner in here somewhere and lord help Chatteris its UKIP who are according to a local newspaper running a minibus once a week for folk to get to another nearby town with two supermarkets.

Save the whatever, stop the thingy.........

Out last night a with a few folk, a conversation sort of starts up, someone works for an organisation trying to stop illegal wildlife trade. Very laudable and necessary to my mind.

Someone else there then comments, how can we try and stop this when we did this in the past, followed by another person commenting, yes its like industrialisation how can we try and stop other countries when we did it and got rich.

I was very tempted to bite hard but thought better of it. But you have to wonder how they would resolve those issues or would they?

Whats in a word or is it legal!

Noticed a couple of temporary notices pinned up yesterday on the fence next to a garden I work in. Was wondering what it was about so had a look as you do.

Tree work right, okay which trees, as I know they have been talking about some being needed and sure enough the furst notice talks a bout a Beech with the fungus Ganoderma. After reading the first notice I saw this bit of the second and started laughing.

Is this some treework term I dont know or a new word for an old fault.............

Have you seen the word, worked out what it should be, well to me anyway. Try putting fork in the place of folk, guess what it makes sense then.

Mind you with my mind in overdrive I have been imagining folk musicians playing and singing while being squeezed and having sex at the same time. Think I might need a lie down, hah...........

But then a thought pops into my head, is this a legal notice to comply with legislation in which case with the wording wrong is it legal, after all if the wording and description of fault is wrong how can you complain about that work, oh dear my head hurts. Think I definitely need a lie down.............

Partridge update

Wandering out of the mist this morning not one but two red legs,

Malcolms on the grumble

I posted the text below on a site for countryside managers and thought to my self, Blog it as well.

 

 

I was at a birthday do last night for the head ranger of a site the other side of Cambridge to where I used to work. Well it was supposed to be his birthday do but it partly turned into a goodbye and thank you do for him and the other two full time staff employed there for the support they have received during there recent struggle to remain employed.

Cambridge Past Present and Future who amongst other things manage Wandlebury Country Park and Coton Countryside Reserve have agreed a new management plan which sees the future site specific staffing more geared to visitors over all there properties rather than practical work on one or two. As a result of this three full time staff who carried out the bulk of the practical work as well as visitor liaison etc etc on those sites are to be made redundant on 30th March 2015. In their place there will be one new full time post and a number of part time posts all of which will be paid at a lower hourly rate plus increasing numbers of volunteers. The new arrangement will allow them to be more flexible and have staff present when visitor demand is highest. Practical work will be mainly carried out by contractors. The rest of the work of Cambridge PPF will go on as usual. Two additional outdoor based part time employees who primarily worked at busy times have also decided to leave.

Having been made aware of the ins and outs of this saga since it started a few months ago, and having seen how other visitor facilities close by are now managed I have to say I become more and more sceptical of the future of parks of all types and sizes and countryside areas as a whole. Increasingly I am hearing people state that the future of the environment whether physically or legally is in a more parlous state than it has been for decades. 

I suspect we are close to a tipping point. All employers of park and countryside staff whether local authority, NGO or charity are in search of the mighty pound having had to cut corners, staff and anything else that can go except the baby and the bath water. Volunteers, who I am not knocking, are becoming the bedrock of sites existence across the board. There use encouraged by managers who see them as a vital resource to maintain and increase visitor numbers and income generation.

Sites are suffering physically through lack of management or indeed increased management in some areas to get more people in, but to my eye the cracks are beginning to show. The more you do the more you need to maintain, the more you need volunteers because there are no more employed staff members on the horizon.

Apart from showing I am becoming a grumbly old man and some would say when have I not been, what does this illustrate. 

 

More and more those still employed in parks and countryside as well as visitors to those sites need to be banging the drum far and wide helped by the rest of us who remember better times. The environment is important in so many ways, each of us must do our best to tell and show people this.

After all its no good the baby sitting in his bath water if he hasn't got a duck to play with.