Another scorching hot weekend - what's happened to the great British summer? The BBQ's been used more so far this year than in the whole of last year.
An encouraging moment at the market yesterday when one stall holder whom we've been trying to encourage to stock Fairtrade bananas complained that now we've really started something and as soon as he gets a box they sell! I'm instructed to get there first thing on a morning if I want to confirm that he's selling them because he can only get one or two boxes at a time. I regard that as something of a success story. I suggested that he keeps his eyes open for other fruits and expands his choice over the year. We shall see. He's a great character and very much part of Stockton Market. Long may he thrive.
The English strawberries he had on sale were small, juicy and bursting with flavour. Absolutely superb and a lot cheaper than the water-fattened ones in a supermarket not too far away. I love the soft fruit season. I'm watching the raspberries and cherries swelling nicely in the garden - not too long now before we can eat them.
Meanwhile residents continue to contact us about the issues that concern them - the uncertainties over the bus services, the perceived unfairness of having a service every 10 minutes during the working day on one part of the ward but only every hour on the other part, and so on. The next meeting of the Public Transport Users’ Forum for this Borough meets on 11^th July from 10 a.m. to 12 noon in ARC, Dovecot Street, Stockton, with John in the chair. This is the opportunity to get the latest information and make your voice heard.

Gordon doesn't get it

Listening to the on-going debate on whether fuel tax should be increased this year as planned, now that fuel is expensive, and whether the VED on older cars should be increased as planned, now that Labour isn't popular, I do wonder whether Gordon and his troops will ever get it where Green Taxes are concerned. (Mixing green and red produces the colour of mud - is that relevant?)
The whole point of raising fuel tax was to make people think about whether to use the car for every journey. It's meant to put the price of motoring up - get it? OK, there's been a shift of balance in the price of petrol and diesel and perhaps the Treasury needs to do some adjustment in the balance of the taxes so that buses and lorries aren't unduly disadvantaged, but that's not the same as changing direction totally. Flexibility is good, backtracking is not!
As for VED on older cars - since when was taxation in this country introduced retrospectively? Most people don't own older cars because they dislike new ones. They own them because that's what they can afford. People on lower incomes who can't get to work on public transport often want/need to be able to get to work in wet weather clean and dry enough to start work. Maybe they need to drop the kids at school on the way! If they could afford a shiny new, less polluting vehicle they'd probably jump at the chance. So what does the "labour" party do - penalise them. What happened to Gordon's favourite "hard working families"? How can it be fair to introduce this tax increase without providing the infrastructure to allow choice?
When it comes to public transport and sustainable development language takes on a whole new meaning. A bus service every half hour to one of the two centres near a proposed new development becomes "good public transport links". A walk of 1km along a busy road which only has a footway along part of it becomes "easily accessible". When will central government put its money where its mouth is, stop wasting money on ridiculous projects like ID cards and going to war in countries we've no right to be in, and start funding high quality rail and bus links as well as research and development funding for newer forms of transport. Sadly, not in my lifetime if the present regime continues, and as for the chances of my grand-children enjoying a decent quality of life .....
Come the revolution!