INEQUALITY IS HERE AT HOME

GAS LEAK ISSUE IS FAMILIAR

I AM not surprised about the on-going challenges that everyone has faced at Park Green following the discovery of a gas leak. The same thing happened to me in 1991, when there was a very bad smell of gas in the house.

No-one could find the cause: indeed at one point the dining room floor was taken up in an attempt to locate it.

Over the seven weeks from November to December, this went on to such an extent that I seemed to get to know everyone in the locality who was with British Gas at the time!

The gas seemed to ebb and flow, but on Christmas Eve, I was given the all clear, which was a great relief as I had my newly widowed mother coming for Christmas plus a house full of visitors. An hour or two later the house was full of gas again: I think I interrupted the British Gas Christmas party!

At last a hole was dug into the lane and the gas released there, and it was found the whole main in the adjacent lane had fractured, and was coming on land drains into my house, and nothing to do with my property at all.

My point in writing is to ask, when will organisations such as Cadent learn from these different incidents, so that the mains are checked first, as so much in the area is of a great vintage and they are perishing? Hilda Gaddum Sutton

SHOULD TAKE NOTE OF SIGNS

IN response to Nicola Tidman letter on 17 January, ‘Tickets are a Disgrace’. Oh dear, you have received a parking ticket after choosing ignore the parking restrictions that are clearly signposted around the forest and ignored all the previous Macc Express warnings?

I am very sorry but the signs are 3 foot high as you enter the parking restricted areas and a lot of signposts along all the roads, so why join everyone else in parking where you want with the ‘I don’t care attitude’?

At least now your money can be put to good use, so the traffic wardens who have a very very difficult job, can continue to travel up at the weekend to keep the forest safe and congestion free for other visitors due to inconsiderate parking by the few.

Also you will be glad to know the Air Ambulance will now be able to attend to a proper emergency rather than fly up here, as ambulances can’t attend to people due to inconsiderate parking in the past.

Maybe next time park in the correct place, or as you are there to go for a walk, pay in the £2 pay and display car park and pop in and see ranger who works at the weekends helping visitors.

I understand the police were called on that Sunday due an accident, so I really don’t think that was the council’s fault, was it? I would, however, like to thank all the visitors who do park in the bays provided and the council, parking wardens and the ranger for all the hard work they have done over the last 18 months making the forest a far batter place to visit and live in. Name and address supplied

SITUATION IS RIDICULOUS

IN response to Nicola Tidman’s letter of 17th January, I am certain that if she was a regular reader of this paper, she would be aware that over the past 12 months the situation at Macclesfield Forest has become ridiculous for both locals and emergency services alike.

The air ambulance had to be summoned three times, when regular ambulances could not get through due to inconsiderate parking. People living in the area, going about their business, were facing blocked roads and cars parked in gateways. Great for a tractor and trailer.

The parking restrictions were put in place with large signs at the start of them stating that parking was allowed in designated bays only FOR THE NEXT 3 MILES. How short a memory due you have? Of course, we could consider double yellow lines and big signs throughout the forest, but the idea is not to impact on people’s Instagram photos.

The system was initially completely ignored by visitors, so the carnage continued (see Macclesfield Expresses passim), and eventually, out of frustration, over a dozen locals, rangers and emergency services operators harangued the council (with the help of this paper) into sending wardens up at WEEKENDS, when the problem is at its worst.

And now you are complaining that your walk is spoilt by having to walk a little further. If people hadn’t parked so inconsiderately in the first place, this problem would never have existed.

Last Sunday (when you were one of the dozens of cars parked illegally) the police had over 20 complaint calls, as well as having to send two cars to deal with an accident in the forest.

And don’t try to tell me that we should encourage tourism as it’s good for business. What business? The only local business that makes a penny from that forest is the already popular pub, which has enough problems with inconsiderate walkers abusing their car park by parking all day with no intention of visiting. The other locals have to put up with [this} with zero benefit to them. Luckily, we get it to ourselves on Tuesdays.

Tell you what: when you next go into the forest for a walk, why don’t you pay £2 to put it on the car park and save us from having to scramble a helicopter? Most of the walkers aren’t paying a penny for anything else while they’re there, so it’s a cheap date, really.

Yes I am a local. Yes I see this every weekend. Park considerately and remember that people have to live there. Marcus Lonyon Clarke Lane

FOREST NEEDS MORE PARKING

I READ with interest the letter from Nicola Tidman: ‘Tickets are a Disgrace’ (January 17) about her and her family being targeted by traffic wardens and/or the police for parking illegally up at Trentabank.

It will be of no consolation to her to read this, but she is far from being alone in having been caught up in this council venture; it has been going on for some considerable time now - but only on sunny weekends apparently.

A case of CEC ‘making hay while the sun shines’ comes cynically to mind, perhaps?

On a wet Sunday I bet the traffic wardens will not even bother to venture anywhere near there.

I know of family and friends who have been similarly ‘stung’, even as far up as Standing Stone near Forest Chapel.

These, like Nicola Tidman (based on the evidence of her letter), are also intelligent and articulate people, and therefore common sense surely tells CEC that if the signs they have put up were adequate then more people would be able to see them, and that if the parking provision was also adequate, people would not park on the road when something simple occurs like the sun coming out.

While it is acknowledged that there is an incompatibility between narrow roads, emergency access, local traffic and the needs of working people who just want a nice day out at the weekend with their children to enjoy exercise and fresh air (as we are currently told is mentally and physically good for us all to do), the solutions are not rocket science.

Derbyshire and Staffordshire councils, along with Severn-Trent Water, together seem to see tourism as a blessing rather than a curse, and provide more-than adequate car-parking at their sites near here, and I for one have been advising friends to visit those counties instead, where they might feel more of a welcome and not come away with a whacking fine.

This lazy and punitive ‘tax’ on visitors does make the few ‘Welcome to Macclesfield’ signs that there are seem rather threadbare and hypocritical.

As I have voiced before in this newspaper, and to the council, one immediate solution is to open the large Forest Office/United Utilities car park at Trentabank to the public, and to even make a small charge to cover the costs of opening and closing the gates if necessary.

An enterprising person might even see a business opportunity by selling refreshments.........!

Someone certainly manages it when there is money to be made out of selling Christmas trees up there on this same car park.

This however, does seem to be beyond us here in Macclesfield, despite a similar scheme having been in operation for years in the equally lovely hills and forest park above Wrexham, with its excellent family-friendly and more high-level technical bike trails, miles of footpaths, a cafe, an outdoors shop and a bike wash, and with car-parking fees being visibly reinvested in the facilities; i.e. entrepreneurialism at its best.

Come on Macclesfield; surely we can do better than this for our residents, our guests and our visitors! Jeff Teasdale Prestbury Road Macclesfield THIS week is #FightInequality week. The rich and powerful of the world are meeting in Davos, and global inequality is one the subjects they may be talking about.

But this country, the UK, is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. It is the fifth or sixth richest country in the world, but while the directors of collapsed companies walk away with millions, thousands of people in work in Macclesfield are not being paid a living wage, and many are having to use food banks.

Supposedly the economy is growing, but the most poorly paid workers have seen nothing of it: their wages are no better than before the 2008 crash and numbers of homeless are rising.

Inequality is bad for all of us, not just the poor, as global studies have shown. We can build a society where everyone is valued and plays a part to their full potential. But it will mean our elected representatives giving priority to policies to reduce inequality, and I call on our MP David Rutley, as well as our Cheshire East councillors to play their part. Together we can fix it. Walter Houston Brock Street