INFORMATION FOR CAPTION
THANKS to the Macclesfield Express for reprinting a photo reminding us how awful the failed Wilson Bowden Silk Street ‘regeneration’ scheme was.
Am I alone in greeting each failure of some expensive unsuitable scheme with a sigh of relief. Obviously not, if your correspondence and Facebook comments are anything to go by.
These hundreds of thousands of pounds would surely be better spent assisting potential new independent businesses in their first six months or so with rent subsidies and lower business rates and by making the built environment more attractive, starting perhaps with the Kings Head/Three Pigeons plot.
Things are happening: the Picturedrome development, new businesses in Churchwallgate, where the Castle is soon to reopen as is the restaurant opposite the new Wet Led Bar.
In the Market Place, Five Clouds, Flour Salt and Water and the cafes and eateries are all doing well.
There are also very successful independent shops in Mill Street. Piecemeal development can be successfully encouraged.
There must be someone in the planning department with enough initiative, enthusiasm and love of the town to do the research.
Read the MMU’s ‘Five Ways to Save Britain’s struggling High Streets’ and Kelvin Campbell’s ‘small-change’ initiative – rebuilding urban neighbourhoods from the bottom up and ‘Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism’ which should be every planner’s Bible, if we want to avoid another Stuart House or Craven House.
All modern thinking points away from ‘shopping centres’ even if they do have a cinema and a Burger King, which tend to be deserted in the evening.
Presumably the buck stops with Ainsley Arnold, who tells us the council has ‘a clear vision and strategy’.
Carol Sadelaar (letters last week) is correct in calling the Grosvenor Centre work a white elephant.
The TK Maxx facade is fine up to about one metre above ground. Indeed, the whole Castle Street frontage of the centre is ugly and dilapidated.
Just compare it with the old County Express frontage and Stanley Hall entrance it replaced.
We must make the most of what we have left if we are to attract new people to town at times other than Treacle Market. Geoff Molyneux Address supplied
SUPPORT OF ‘PEOPLE’S VOTE’
DEAR Mr Rutley MP, I am responding to your letter of November 12 regarding the People’s Vote.
You say: The Government will not be holding another vote on the UK’s membership of the EU. Parliament gave the British people the final say on the UK’s membership of the EU and the Government respects that result.
We have not had any final say, we had an initial vote on what has turned out to be lies. We do need a final say and that should be in the form of a ‘People’s Vote’.
I urge you to consider your position as the MP for Macclesfield
You say: Over 17.4m voters decided to leave the EU, which is the biggest mandate in any election since the Second World War.
May I remind you that 16.2m voters wanted to remain in the EU, and of the total people eligible to vote ‘leave’ represented 27%, hardly a massive mandate.
In addition your party excluded the then 16/17 year old’s from taking part, yet in the Scottish Referendum this was allowed by UK government.
Double standards I think.
You say: I welcome the approach to these negotiations set out by the Prime Minister, and agreed by the Cabinet at Chequers, on the future trade partnership that the UK is seeking with the EU, and will continue to stay close to this important issue in the weeks ahead.
It is a shambles, all fallen apart, incompetent Ministers who appear not to be able to organize anything. MPs undecided which way to turn, neither way is the right way and you all know it.
As MP for Macclesfield you owe it to your constituents to think extremely long and hard at the actions you take over the coming weeks.
We live in a representative democracy, and you are our representative. You must not let us down.
This Government continues to disagree with each other, in public, so the only option is to ask the country where we go from here.
Accept this poor agreement?
Reject the agreement [ the worst outcome]?
Remain in the EU? Gillian Moors Melrose Crescent Poynton
DON’T BETRAY OUR HEROES
EARLIER this month, on Remembrance Sunday, we paid homage to the many millions who died or were wounded in two world wars and in other conflicts since.
Millions stood in silence and mouthed the words ‘we will remember them’ to those who fought in defence of our sovereignty.
Are we now to believe that we are willing to betray these heroes and surrender our future sovereignty because, inter alia, our Prime Minister is concerned that otherwise some forward planning may be necessary to avoid possible disruption to imports even, as she has said, to her own supply of insulin?
When there is a vote are Conservatives going to have the courage to honour our promise to those who fought, or are we going to condemn our children and grandchildren to servitude ? John Bowden Whisterfield House, Siddington I WOULD like to correct the caption to the photograph of Buxton Road and Central Station that appeared in the Nostalgia section of your edition of November 21, which dated the photograph between 1910 and 1919.
The photograph clearly shows a brand new signal box, Macclesfield Central box, and this was built by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway in 1934.
This view dates back, in consequence, to around the mid or late-1930s. Basil Jeuda Sandringham Road Macclesfield