Matt
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It’s a step in the right direction, but now there’s a value assigned to it when the general public are going to be asking why they have to pay £600 a year to park in Waterworld, but others get to pay just £100 to park in all of the town’s council ran car parks.
So a £600 perk has basically been trimmed to a £500 perk. Some very much still riding the gravy train.
Of course then councillors can claim it back, which therefore some won’t be affected in the slightest. What an absolute farce.
With Clr Bithell already expressing opposition locally, meaning the council are probably going to reject it out of hand, it’s going to be interesting as to whether or not our esteemed legislators from afar are going to enforce it on us just to appear compliant to court rulings.
[quote quote=148387]Whilst the potential development is great news, are the two necessarily mutually exclusive? If you’re going to spend that much money, it wouldn’t hurt to put a multi storey on there. A lot of people who go to the hospital are ill, disabled or old.[/quote]
No they are definitely not mutually exclusive, I think they will have to think carefully about parking, especially enhanced disabled parking and pick up/drop off, but when big expansion plan news like this is met with scorn & derision & the overriding whinge seems to be about parking without a single iota of positive thought directed towards the potential for a revamped A&E, greater cancer treatment facilities, a badly needed update to the children’s wards, potential expansion of dialysis capacity, maternity provision then you wander what bloody planet these people are residing on.
Surely the part of the hospital experience where you park your vehicle on a piece of tarmac & walk distance x to where you are going to get treated or visit someone is exactly the same experience as when you park up for anything else in town. Nobody complains when they have to park up & walk a bit for something they like doing and pay to do, like going shopping or to the football or cinema etc… Woe betide the NHS for failing to provide a world class expansive car park completely free of charge and rather focus their efforts on primary healthcare and the job of saving lives – completely 100% free, gratis in Wales – no matter how self inflicted things are or no matter how many times you get ill.
A good litmus test would be if you are well enough to bitch & moan about the car park & then go slagging off the hospital & say it’s rubbish on that basis then you were well enough to stay at home rather than clog up the car park & the health service. Anyone who is genuinelly ill & in need is bloody grateful for what we have here at the Maelor & will wait their turn patiently to park up or make sensible alternative plans to make sure they get there on time. Also after having received whatever treatment they’ve had & got medication they are so grateful to be on the road to recovery that they are not ranting & raving about the queues to get out onto the real roads.
I’m sorry but if you’re not well or if you’re accompanying or visiting someone who isn’t well the last thing on your mind is car parking. I’ve absolutely zero time for these people who take everything for granted in this country and nag/whinge that they have to wait in line for hours in A&E on the weekend for a minor gripe when the doctors, nurses and paramedics etc… have been busting their chops to save several lives in that time.
The other thing people have been saying is that the Maelor needs more staff, but I know there’s a chronic skills shortage at the moment, especially everything going on with Brexit and international doctors and nurses being turned off coming and working here due to uncertainty about future migrant worker rules – obviously as we now know overall working towards the feeling of ‘a hostile environment’.
I’m not sure why people have the delusion that there’s a magical tap that produces an endless stream of fully trained health professionals and specialists to fill every single role. Plus with increased competition between hospitals to attract top talent in this shortage environment – the hospitals who get more investment and have more modern facilities are cherry picking the top staff. So it is beyond me how some apparent proposals to just hire more staff at the Maelor and keep the infrastructure and facilities the same makes any sense over having a massively improved facility that draws in specialists and much needed grass roots nurses from across the country and world over. How are people not understanding this?
If you are a hotelier of a modest 3* hotel, to expand you don’t blitz the place with more staff hoping to improve, you build the swimming pool, the luxury suites, the health centre first & hope you become a 5* rated venue then hire the better/increased staff at that point.
I guarantee the exact same cohort moaning about such trivialities and acting like they don’t want a better hospital are the exact same people who comment on building more houses stories and say we need to build more public amenities, such as healthcare to accommodate all these new people who live in the houses first. But that’s exactly what is being planned (or at least in parallel) and I believe that the Maelor is the centrepiece of our public service infrastructure and the next logical thing to update now we have improved ambulance/fire response infrastructure as well as a brand spanking new cop shop about to open.
Seems really that all people want is tonnes and tonnes of car parks everywhere – forget everything else, let’s just become the North East Wales parking lot. Then the idiots will get angry because they forgot where they parked their car.
Very much doubt it will have much affect in Wrexham. Both located on opposite ends of town centre, serving very different demographics of customers.
The more telling factor is how much Aldi/Lidl have impacted on the traditional supermarket model, effectively forcing a strategic merger that would have been unthinkable over the past few decades.
If these financial issues and shortcomings have been made well aware in the public domain, does that mean the council plan to launch a Plan B budget that will address these shortfalls and come up with strategies to meet funding gaps? Or are we all to just sit here and watch things fail like a train crash in slow motion? With councillors in the driving seat unable to avert disaster and businesses helpless passengers resigned to their fate. Almost open 1 month now. Happy days.
[quote quote=148194]
I think in some cases it would be far safer,you only have to walk down to the Gresford roundabout and the number of vehicles going though on red beggars belief,if the traffic lights were off,most sensible people would be taking a more cautious approach .[/quote]The crux of the issue lies exactly on what you say “most sensible people would be taking a cautious approach” – most sensible people don’t jump red lights, so they are not the problem. These are the idiot drivers who jump the red lights and the same idiot drivers would pull out onto the Gresford roundabout on the narrowest of gaps, switch lanes & generally cause chaos, road rage and accidents.
If someone sensible makes a judgement call to pull out onto the roundabout when they perceive it to be their turn & idiot driver expects to be able to bulldoze in from another direction then there’s going to be an accident. At the very least a red light is going to curb some of the idiot drivers rather than giving them carte blanche to go Le Mans 24 onto the roundabout.
Likewise cautious driver doesn’t have to worry about making the wrong judgement call as they know they can pull out and get to the next section of the roundabout with very little interference or worry from idiot drivers (except the odd few you mentioned – who are breaking the law and deserve to be caught out and penalised accordingly for being a dangerous driver).
Also would be really interested to see what happens during rush hour, as I don’t think human judgement, timing, appropriate giving way etiquette etc… would be as efficient as automated timing for filtering through traffic. You have some situations that are practically cross roads where traffic wanting to go up Chester Road meets traffic wanting to come from the Holt dual carriageway direction. Who decides on how 2 near constant streams of traffic take turns to go through. Which direction has to give way?
Also what happens when too many people want to join the already busy roundabout from both off-ramps from the A483? If the traffic doesn’t yield people will soon be queuing back onto the A483, reducing it to single carriageway of moving traffic. Classic chaos in action. Just 1 false move and an accident shuts the whole system down. This is my rather pessimistic prediction anyway based on current driver behaviour around Wrexham.
[quote quote=148178]And
I’ve heard an unfortunate story about a Wrexham based Cabbie and his campaigning against a certain contracted firm.
And, please finish the message.[/quote]
Alleged issue is this – directly taken from Peter Rourke Admin of North Wales Against Kingdom Security Facebook Group:
“The Wrexham CC post as promised.
So … feeling annoyed about the suspended cab driver in Liverpool?
Well, I found out today that Wrexham CC have warned a taxi driver in Wrexham that he will have his license taken away because he has posted on THIS group, taken videos of rubbish and posted them on THIS group.
They have printed out every single post he has every made on THIS group and used it against him.
I believe he is a war veteran, having fought in many countries for his own country.
And he now cannot have his freedom of speech in his own country.
Unfortunately he seems to have left the group. Understandable I suppose because he is scared of losing his income.
The way that councils want to make North Wales and Liverpool tidy and clean and free of dog muck and illegal and fraudulent private FPN issuing companies is to threaten taxi drivers.
Way to go Councils. Oh we are so proud to have you as our leaders. So proud that you have chosen this righteous path.
My god people. We not only need rid of Kingdom. We need rid of County Councils! A damned disgrace but shows you for the COWARDS you are.”
[quote quote=148172]
Restrict the use of traffic lights on junctions to busy times would help traffic flow and help reduce air pollutants from standing vehicles.
[/quote]I very much think that the use of traffic lights around Wrexham is actually an important safety consideration judging on the Mad Max style approaches people have to various junctions/roundabouts in town when the lights are down.
This is exactly the problem I was talking about in another thread, people from the council and other stakeholders constantly attempting to cajole people into some kind of Elysian Fields vision of Ty Pawb that quite simply no-one else is buying into at this point.
1) It is impossible to declare something an overwhelming success after having been open for just 3 weeks and no indicators of footfall, business performance, reception of additional entertainment events or any kind of awards or other acclaim. There is nothing measurable to suggest this, unless the council sets itself such a low bar that it’s in awe of itself that it was even able to launch the place at all without it turning into a catastrophic failure. In terms of user feedback, there has been relatively tepid positive reviews with a far greater number of ambivalent reviews where some things are okay but other issues hinder the overall experience or people feel somewhat underwhelmed and then there are the negative reviews – granted some aren’t that objective – e.g. “I don’t like the industrial design look” – that’s down to personal preference, but other gripes that have been discussed here such as “cards not accepted at businesses” or “I can’t find the art gallery” or “there are disability access problems” are real issues that have a real negative impact on the over all user experience and economic and attraction model of the place as a going concern.
For people not to be able to find the art in the arts hub and for businesses to be losing hundreds of pounds of potential trade in the opening weeks with still no resolution does not indicate an overwhelming success to me.
2) In terms of saying no negativity – the ongoing trend of people being discouraged from discussing their own personal opinions and experiences of Ty Pawb, the council would actually be shooting itself in the foot, as the constructive criticism that comes out online will actually give an indicator into how the space can be used better and the general receptiveness of the stakeholders to continuously adapt and improve the space will be a difference of between whether it lives or dies long term.
You can’t just sweep criticism under the carpet and not listen to local user feedback, after all it is “Everyone’s House” and some people in the house complain more than others, but the spirit of the place should be open and all views welcome. Just because a boatload of cash has been spent on it and the entire face of the local council rides on it, doesn’t mean to say we have a single guaranteed success outcome.
As I’ve said over and over again in various places, the only way to shut us critics up is to do such a good job by addressing all issues and drumming up trade through the door and making it an overwhelming success rather than just saying it’s the case and expecting everyone to toe the line. Because right now it’s really beginning to look like the Emperor’s new clothes, a renovated People’s Market with the illusion of some kind of artistic bent. The new clothes cost £4.5m and people are really struggling to see them.
