BIG PICTURE
NOT SEEING EYE TO EYE
AFTER reading a article by a elderly patient explaining how some patients having problems with the (Parking Eye) at the practices in medical centre, I wanted to add some input to this story.
I am a patient at one of the practices, I managed to find and enter reg as advised on entering, I have been informed that if appointment runs over a hour, tell reception so they aware of this.
As my appointment was 51 minutes to be precise I left the car park to get home as was not feeling at my best, hence doctor appointment, so did not have to inform reception as less then the hour as stated.
So the shock and annoyance of today receiving a letter for Parking Eye for £70 parking fine.
Is just proof that there is a system in place, that maybe deterring people to be parking in patients spaces which is understandable,
But this system will be causing stress and annoyance to not only myself but many more genuine patients, then the added convenience of having to ring doctors to arrange a pink form to send off with this letter to cancel the parking fine.
A parking fine that should clearly have not been issued in first place. How many more times is this going to happen and why is it up to me the patient innocent party have to send this letter back with a pink form?
Whoever was responsible for sending this letter to me which actually in black and white says 51 minutes. I would have got some satisfaction on handing letter with pink form personally to whoever responsible.
Thanks for letting me vent D Spencer via email
CONCERNED BY PLANS
I WAS concerned to read this article about the Senior Citizens Hall (‘Activity group hits out at council plans to lease Senior Citizens Hall’ website September 17).
Many years ago my mother and step-father were members of the then Senior Citizens Club for quite a few years. They were all asked to pay £1 for a brick to build this hall, which they all did.
They had lots of members and a very busy social life at the club.
I attended with my mother for quite a few social events such as craft sales, afternoon teas, etc. I am horrified to think that they now want to take it away from all the members of AIR who do such a great service for their members present and future. My mother had many a happy times in the hall. Surely there must be a record somewhere of the buy a brick scheme. S Slater Buckfast Close Macclesfield
WE DESERVER BETTER
AMID the shambles that is Cheshire East Council it is worth remembering that its establishment in 2008 was hardly at popular request.
There were certainly a few zealots for the new council, but for years the Macclesfield district had been effectively and responsibly run by the former Macclesfield Borough and Cheshire County Council (for whom I used to work) with never a whiff of scandal.
If asked, Macclesfielders would have probably chosen to stay as they were. But they weren’t asked and in her infinite wisdom Hazel Blears, the then Communities Minister, decided to impose this new artificial council on ‘East Cheshire’, a concept that up till then had never been recognised. The outcome has been a disaster for local people, who deserve better than this. Robin Wendt Chester “CLAMBERING men in big bad boots
Dug up my den, dug up my roots.
Treated us like plasticine town
They build us up and knocked us down...
“It’s build a house where we can stay, Add a new bit everyday. It’s build a road for us to cross,
Build us lots and lots and lots and lots…”
Those of us of a certain age will well remember how, with these words, the incomparable Housemartins sang in 1987 about communities uprooted and torn apart by postwar urban regeneration (“Build” - younger readers can look it up on YouTube).
Heaton & Cullimore’s lyrics seem even more relevant today.
Ancient woodlands bulldozed and wetland meadows drained for the sake of building roads in Poynton and Adlington (mainly to encourage more road traffic to and from the airport and into and out of Macclesfield), dens and roots are to be dug up in order to build “a new bit everyday” in Henbury, on the meadows and woods of Danes Moss (so-called “South Macclesfield Development Area”), in the fields of Gaw End and the green spaces once gifted to King’s School.
And the legions of new residents occupying all these new houses - what will they actually do with their time? No new jobs will be created (other than temporary work for “clambering men - and women - in big bad boots”), there will be no schools for the children to attend, already overstretched medical and social services will be unable to cope.
Conservative politicians wring their hands over policies decided by other Conservative politicians (at the behest of the building industry that bankrolls their party).
Greens say “no more!” - real housing needs in Macclesfield and elsewhere could be met by refurbishing derelict houses, converting disused mills, warehouses and the upper floors of shops.