FA Cup 3rd Round

On Saturday Torquay United made it through to the 3rd round of the cup by beating Div 1 team Walsall one nil. The draw was held this evening and Torquay didn't get the dream draw, Man U at home, instead they came out of the pot 2nd to last to get a home game against Carlisle United. It may not come up as the most interesting draw of the round but is probably the round where a team has to travel the furthest. I feel sorry for Carlisle supporters. OK a trip to beautiful Torquay is something to look forward to, but not in deep midwinter. An other interestin draw is FC United of Manchester will get to play Portsmouth if the beat Brighton in a replay on Tuesday. Getting this far in the Cup isn't bad for a team that was only formed 5 years ago.

 

We had some snow here this evening, that is if you call 28 snowflakes snow. Tuesday is going to be a bad one, -3 overnight followed by a 30mph wind with Made in Siberia stamped all over it. I have a feeling I might ignore my doctor and not bother going for my usual brisk 30 minute walk on Tuesday.

 

A new pub opened in Torquay yesterday to buck the national trend of pubs closing down all over the place. True it isn't a brand new pub built from scratch but a re-opened second hand pub. Chaplins in Union St had been closed for a couple of years but it's been given a paint job and it's selling beer, food, tea and coffee. I might pop in and have a look tomorrow.

 

Hollicombe Duck Pond

This is the duck pond in Hollicombe Park. That is it used to be a duck pond. It sprang a leak in the summer and most of the water went somewhere else. Bad news for the fish in the pond and bad news for the ducks who ended up living on the nearby beach before other accommodation could be found for them. Bad news for the small children who used to be brought here by their mothers' to feed the ducks.

The pond as you can see is circular. This is because when it was created the base of a gas holder was used back in 1970 when the gas holder became redundant. It had been hoped that the leak would be fixed, that would involve pumping out the remaining water, digging out a couple of thousand tonnes of soil and cleaning down to the brickwork. Once the brick work has been cleaned the leak has to be found and repaired. Then the soil put back and suitable vegetation planted and fish re-introduced. Not a massive job compared to building the International Space Station but never the less not one Torbay Council wish to undertake in these times of financial worry.

Next to this former gas holder is a smaller circle which is completely filled in and grassed over and

Ali-Way Community Recycling Enterprise which is based Hollicombe Community Resource Centre have a plan to use these two stone circles. The smaller one will become a Wild Life Garden and the larger one, the former duck pond, will be the site of a

Recycled Sculpture Trail. A what? I hear you mutter. No they are not going to tour the country looking for unused Henry Moore sculptures and plant the in the circle. The scrap sculptures will be made out of the materials we are presently and carefully putting in boxes every week to be collected by TOR2 and sent of the be recycled in a desperate but futile attempt to save the planet. Actually I don't have a problem with that idea. What I do have a problem with is where it's going. I.E. in the former duck pond. In order to create a Wild Life space in the smaller circle it will have to be dug up to some extent and to make the sculpture trail on the old duck pond it will have to be filled in. The old duck pond is half way towards being a wild life park as it is so why not make both it and the smaller circle an even larger wild life space and use the large space that is available future down the park where a 3rd gas holder once stood. (See 2nd photo).The area is doing nothing at the moment and is already covered with asphalt and perfect for the job. Then if money does become more freely available we can easily restore this much loved duck pond, even if it is only loved by the ducks, generations of whom have lived there.

To tell the truth the only way I can see the duck pond being restored is if a large enough group of volunteers come along with buckets, spades and bags of cement and do the job themselves. Back in the sixties all over the North of England canals had become clogged up and overgrown and no official body had the money or the will to fix them. That hundreds of canals are still in existence today is because they came under the care of such volunteer groups.

Poor Nick Bye

Poor Nick Bye. He's our elected Mayor by the way. His term of office is to end in May next year and he wishes to stand again. However he hasn't been the most popular elected mayor we have ever had. Come to think about it he has, but then he has also been our only elected mayor. A day or two ago he attended a selection meeting of local leading members of his party (con party) and they told him they didn't like him. They went even future and suggested that nobody liked him all that much and they were going to pick someone else to represent the con party next May. One slight puzzle about this meeting. Nick is mayor of Torbay yet senior members of the con party from Totnes, which is outside Torbay apparently attended. What's it got to do with them? We don't tell Totnes what to do so why should they have any say in the matter?

Nick is reported that he intends to challenge the decision and if the 2nd vote goes against him he might even consider standing for mayor anyway as an independent. Personally I wouldn't bother Nick. Now what I would do if I was a vindictive person would be look round and decide who amongst your party (con party) stabbed you in the back and spend the next 5 months you have left in office repeatedly stabbing them in the back. Metaphorically of course. I'm not suggesting actual bloodshed or real violence. But if you are not a vindictive person what I suggest you do is go into your office on Monday morning as if nothing had happened and continue trying your best for Torbay just as you always have. You never know, you might even pull something spectacular out of your hat and be carried shoulder high through the streets of Torquay by a grateful public. Remember what the late, great Harold Wilson said about a week in politics?

What ever you do, Nick, do it with either a very sharp, knife, a metaphorical knife that is, or with dignity.

PS Even though I voted in the referendum for an elected mayor I now believe the post should be scrapped. I would vote for any candidate who agrees with me to the point of saying, "If I am elected I will do absolutely nothing apart from telling the councillors the run the council like they are supposed to." The candidate would also have to take at least a 95% pay cut.

Am I alone in thinking this is Insane?

Hertfordshire County Council has been fined £100 000 for faxing details of a child sex abuse case to a member of the public. This penalty has been imposed under the Data Protection Act because the fax was sent by mistake to the wrong address. This mistake has cost Hertfordshire County Council dearly but should serve as a warning to other councils who are equally lax in their Data Protection.

Dead right except for one thing. If I do something wrong and end up in court and get fined the fine comes out of my income, so it is me, the wrong doer, who gets punished.

Now the person who sent the fax to the wrong address isn't paying this fine off at 10 quid a week for the next ten thousand weeks (192 years and 4 months). The county councillors who are in charge of running the council aren't either. So who is paying the fine? Yes that's right, 100 poor council tax payers who pay £1000 per year council tax for council services like roads kept clean, rubbish collected ever week, street lights, police driving around in cars  upholding the law and schools etc,etc. Not to pay fines.

So who gets the £100 000? What do they do with it? Why fine a county council in the first place when it's the innocent council tax payer who was nowhere near the fax machine when the send button was pressed who has to foot the bill? Or some drop in centre for old people or venerable children gets closed because the council have spent the money paying fines that end up in the treasury who wont even notice a sum like £100 000?

Madness.

Banksy is being watched

In case you are worried that some might walk off with our very own Banksy, remember the Boy drawing a Robot, worry no more. Someone has installed a Closed Circuit TV system to watch over the picture. Up there in the top left.