Adrian Hollister's UK Blog

Swan Bridge (A338 in Great Shefford) is likely to remain closed until mid May 2008. It's been a little difficult for residents to get good information from West Berks Council about it, but it now appears that erosion has undermined the bridges foundations. The bridge is roughly half way through the idyllic West Berks village of Great Shefford shutting the road but not the foot bridge. There are long road detours in place for cars.

The whole area has been subject to significant flooding over the years and maintenance of local streams and water ways has always been very poor. The area is famed to outsiders for the constant flooding on the A338 through the whole village. For locals though the A338 is famed for fast drivers, big lorries and near misses.

This village suffers from the incompetence and bickering of the various Tory and Lib Dem councils running West Berkshire. Neither have actually invested in environmental and social issues, they just do as little as possible all of the time and Great Shefford has taken seen it's fair share of this. The bridge is just an indication of this - if the water management had been sorted out years ago we would not be in the position today.

As a start West Berkshire council need to step up to the mark and:

1. enforce speed limits and give the residence the option to introduce a 20 mph zone through the bulk of their community, especially near the school, shop and community halls.

2. drainage ways and water ways must be maintained to capture run off water and where possible to allow water to collect and soak away.

3. passage through the village on the main road must be with full respect to the residence of the village. People, bicycles and buses should have priority over cars.

4. localisation of power distribution using West Berks abundant wind power and our hydroelectric potential

5. promote our local businesses and farms. We are used to buying produce from Devon, why not promote the best of West Berks produce, products and services?

Staggering this county - West Berks Council continue to amaze me. I've worked hard here to get my main waste bin into a position of being about half full weekly with the rest doing to recycle or compost. My two small baskets for tins and bottles overflow. I have a nice can and tin crusher that puts everything to a much smaller size but with cat food, dog food, human food the odd drinks can and a few glass bottles I can easily exceed two of these small bins. West Berks won't take anything that's not in the bins, so the options are clear: compact it more or get more bins. Simple?

a. Compact the waste. Packing the bins tightly seems to push the weight too high and they don't collect them - really they just leave them at the side of the road! So this is not actually an option as it makes the problem worse.

b. Get more bins. West Berks told me that they were not going to let people have more than two bins for recycling. I was told to keep it for next week's collection or take it to my local recycling facility (which is not local it's 30 mins drive away!). The lady on the phone from West Berks Council was clearly unimpressed that my main household waste had gone down and my recycling had gone up. Clearly I don't quite fit the West Berks Council's stereotype of an average citizen.

So are they suggesting I stockpile recycling until it's viable to fill a car to the brim to take it to the recycling center or are they suggesting that I just put recyclable materials in my general purpose bin and let it head to landfill?

Clearly here West Berkshire Council are just green washing... i.e. they are doing as little as they can get away with whilst still appearing to have a green tinge.

Woke up to quite a bit of snow today up here in the downloads of West Berkshire. It's a bit odd to see so much snow so late in the year but all the kids around here are making the most of it.