Boris' speech

Guess where I listened to R4 reporting Boris' speech this afternoon. Somewhere on the A75 near Dumfries. It was at the level of a second rate Oxford Union address. It did not deal with the questions of the moment. For months now everyone from business to the EU have pressed us (or the Tory government) "tell us what you want and how it will work?". Square the circle open freely moving borders including Ireland and whether leaving the EU means leaving the Custom's Union and the Common Market. Boris had no answers just Boris woffle. More speeches promised this week but do we really think any of them will have answers? I am not a remainer or a leaver. I am not Matthew Paris lying awake at night smarting from defeat. If you can, make Brexit work to our financial advantage; and if you can't, fess up to the nation over how ill led we have been. I say this with feeling because I spent the day in one of Europe's greatest strategic corridors. The Tyne Solway Gap aka as Hadrian's Wall aka the A69/75 Euroroute from the North Sea Ports to Ireland. And what is it like? You grind along surrounded by lorries from Italy, MacBurney's from Ballymena, who ever knows who from Donegal. You all get fouled up in the new roundabout at Dumfries Hospital. And so on and so forth. It is a dreadful route. Relatively speaking the Stanegate was more remarkable as was General Wade's Military Road from Newcastle to Portpatrick (a lot of which is the Euroroute but not all). What is the best reason for leaving the EU? Because we are not up to it. We have never been good at taking strategic benefit from it. Unlike the Irish, we don't how to get the EU to electrify derelict canal locks in the middle of nowhere. We muddle along because we love British amateurism. 18 months of planning for Brexit have demonstrated that. We genuinely have no idea from the Cabinet downwards how to deliver Brexit. And Boris did not enlighten. The next step..................................

Abandoning the Hard Shoulder

Abandoning the Hard Shoulder: nowadays we certainly do not travel Britain as we used to. It either tends to be very expensive or else by car moderately to rather terrifying. Throughout my life there has been a Hampshire connection. As it turns out both myself and Fiona come with this. Her mother's only brother married and spent much of his life until death in Gosport. My father's sister married a notable submarine commander (that's Gosport too, although they lived in Bishops Waltham, Petersfield and East Meon). So from our young years Fiona and I travelled across Britain. It looks like we had both been on HMS Victory by the time we were seven.

And then a niece married and moved into West Hampshire. Somewhat bizarrely the Aunt died on 21st March (too many of my relatives have died in March), the day Lisa gave birth to Tallula Kitty. In the recent past the Hampshire connection has brought visits in 1997, 2001 (the weekend foot and mouth hit, we were in Portchester Crematorium), 2011 for a wedding and aunt visit and now last week 2017 for another visit to the Crem. (which is very well maintained and a fine piece of municipal architecture). We were driving three of us and we had to go from Prudhoe to Keswick to find our daughter at a church weekend before returning to the M6.

Four nights therefore in the Holiday Inn Express at Farlington, the end of the M27. I can recommend that. Reasonable, does the job, good breakfast, quiet rooms, LARGE family rooms. Clean but not over fussy. Three very full and very pleasant days, museumed out in Portsmouth, seeing many things I had not seen before like Mary Rose, Jutland Exhibition (a bit depressing), the superb wooden boat section of the Dockyard, Explosion and Fort Nelson (Iraqui super gun and the railway gun). All full on octane experiences with the obligatory harbour tour producing the head photo of HMS Duncan. Evenings got us to the new baby and beautiful pub dinner in Rockbourne and what was more or less a private charter in April sunlight of the Hayling Island railway.

A great time had by all and I think since we left home, only today is it really raining. But back to my heading? You may recollect that Duncan in Thomas the Tank was a troublesome engine, too short a wheelbase. The photo is HMS Duncan under a lot of covers. This class of new destroyers is the Type 45. They have a problem, they don't like hot water, I rather imagine Duncan complained about this too. From Wikipedia "First Sea Lord Admiral Philip Jones clarified that the "WR-21 gas turbines were designed in extreme hot weather conditions to what we call “gracefully degrade” in their performance, until you get to the point where it goes beyond the temperature at which they would operate... we found that the resilience of the diesel generators and the WR-21 in the ship at the moment was not degrading gracefully; it was degrading catastrophically, so that is what we have had to address." So Duncan and sisters are having a lot of modifications.

The Dockyard is also gearing up to receive imminently the new aircraft carriers. These are so large that an enormous dredging operation is going on (finding World War Two ordnance). All fascinating for the ship spotter. Portsmouth Harbour thereby remains very busy. According to the museum for the carriers 40 computer systems are being spiralled into 4. I hope it all works and they have plenty of built in redundancy. Unlike our motorways where for the first time we encountered Smart Motorways. They did not seem any less crowded than the others, but they were much more mentally demanding and worrisome.

In all we drove 978 miles and not much in the three full days in Hampshire. And the queues, the accidents, the terrible driving, the cars weaving back and forth lanes. Each way the Oxford bypass had shunts. We saw very few police but rather more ambulances. Sometimes it was so bad I resorted to my renowned improvisation, so we saw the A50 and the Stoke D road. Coming back we had close acquaintance with Hathern and Long Eaton.

You may tell I don't like Smart motorways. I think they are anything but. But they fit the long term Westminster mentality: don't spend money, fend off the problem. They are in a line with Type 45, and aircraft carriers too big for their harbours and without planes to fly. We have at times been renowned for redundancy. The wooden walls, the Dreadnoughts were designed with it in view. Excess strength, in numbers and design.

But after the war in 1945 we felt we could not keep up. Schemes which we led with like Blue Streak, TSR2, APT were all marked by a failure to persevere. Meantime other areas of public life faced the same mentality. Beeching hatcheted railways we are now having to rebuild. In fact the network carries more passengers than in 1947 but there is no redundancy. There are no spare trains. It cannot be afforded they say. The Health System is the same and people suffer and die because of our unwillingness to embrace redundancy.

Recently the biggest single example of the lack of caution that denying redundancy breeds, has been the referendum. All the checks and balances you would normally expect forgotten about. No safe margin in the vote for the answer, no requirement for a majority across each of the four nations.

Britain is a great country and I am a patriot, brought up by patriots. But it is unwise and my parents would have agreed to run a country without plenty of redundancy and they would never have understood a smart motorway!

Prudhoe's Parking Woes do have a Solution.

The Hexham Courant on Friday 12th June 2015 ran two stories on opposite pages. Allendale adopts its Neighbourhood Development Plan. Prudhoe has no current project to create one. The second story quoting several Prudhoe Councillors developed the parking challenges which are clearly the subject of some energised discussion in the town. Attention was given to the challenges at Highfield School. This has prompted me to write an open letter to the Mayor which I will clip in below. It must be obvious to everyone that with the depth of feeling being reported that doing NOTHING about Prudhoe's parking issues is not sustainable. But so much of this comes back to the need for Prudhoe to develop its own plan and for subjects like Transport which used to be a topic for a Prudhoe Community Partnership working group to be given more attention. The letter follows:

Dear Eileen
I am writing to you in your role as the Mayor of Prudhoe to offer some thoughts on your comments published in the Hexham Courant on Friday June 12th about parking in Prudhoe. I will publish this letter on Facebook as Taking Pride in Prudhoe and I will do the same with any reply.

You and other councillors are quite right to be concerned about car parking throughout Prudhoe and especially with schools. The subject could be one that a properly convened Transport Sub Committee of the Town Council could address. It is also one that should be the subject of a Neighbourhood Development Plan. Incidentally on the opposite page in the same Courant a story hails the adoption of Allendale’s one. Will Prudhoe Town Council (bearing in mind the advice of ALL candidates at the General Election Hustings) be moving to create one soon?

With regard to the specific school parking issues, I can think of some solutions.

At Highfield. Two existing public car parks are quite close. The one adjacent to Fair View and the one at Highfields Play Park. It would be possible to yellow line the roads outside the schools and insist no-one drops children or waits to pick them up adjacent to the school.

That is a solution although it will not be completely welcomed. There is another solution. The entire road layout at Highfields is poor. It is my understanding that the County owns the land on the inside of the bend opposite the school entrance? Without changing any existing demarcated boundaries, I would think a relatively minor road improvement scheme could re-arrange the road layout and create a new pick up and drop off point or lane, on the school side of the road. The road would be improved and the school gain some room for parents.

The same problem exists at Castle School. Here in my opinion, the solution which will also address the Eltingham Court access issue is to make parts of Castle Road (perhaps west of the postbox, to be considered in detail) a one way road with access onto the bypass. This would give the room to mark up outside Castle School a proper set down/pick up area. Safety might require a roundabout at Hammerite. Then get on and do that.

Prudhoe is in the midst of expansion which will see the population grow in thousands. These problems are not going to go away, they are only going to increase. Unless schemes of investment are campaigned for and monies found, the situations that have led to the outbursts recorded in the Courant will keep continuing. A similar situation affects the need for a new Tyne Bridge and a road north to Horsley Interchange and another improved route on existing public roads south to the Derwent Valley at Ebchester (out via Moor Road). Unless Prudhoe addresses its own strategic needs and insists they go on the agenda of the County Council, you can anticipate the community tied in knots as illustrated in the Courant and with 400+ more houses at the Hospital site, the need to tackle these planning issues is absolutely pressing.

Yours sincerely

Robert Forsythe

Sainbury's have walked from Prudhoe

On the 1st of August 2012 I blogged about the degree of silence that followed the 20th June 2012 granting of planning permission by Northumberland County Council to Northumberland Estates for a new town centre in Prudhoe. News has come through this week that Sainsbury has walked from the Prudhoe project. Doubtless more will need to be said once it becomes clear how terminal this blow is.

Western Rail Corridor Ireland in the abyss?

"Iarnród Éireann will need to give serious consideration to closing uneconomic routes, such as the link between Ennis, Co Clare, and Athenry, Co Galway, which carries an average of just eight passengers per train. This grim statistic suggests restoration of the Western Rail Corridor from Limerick all the way to Sligo was a political fantasy."

Oh dear, truth or fiction? Is it the failure to complete the project (eg to Sligo, re-open Crusheen, integrate with the closed Waterford Rosslare) or was it always a way to spend EU money recklessly, which is to blame? I am glad I was at re-opening day when it all seemed so good.  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0730/1224321093743.html . Picture is at Gort 30th March 2010.

The Hanging Gardens of Prudhoe AKA Prudhoe Town centre Redevelopment

"Write me two paragraphs outlining the 21st century nature of the Duke of Northumberland's intended revelopment of Prudhoe town centre"

"We'll demolish one small monstrosity and replace it with a huge one"

"That looks like something out of the 1970s"

"Landlordism at its worst"

"Where's the hanging gardens of Prudhoe?"

"Is that a car park I see from 10 miles away?"

"That's a nice traffic jam on Station Bank and its not even snowing"

"Where's the butchers?"

"Is this a hard or soft development?"

"Do you travel from Prudhoe to shop in Blaydon shopping precinct?"

"A smaller town centre which thrives is better than a larger one that does not"

"At long last Prudhoe is going to get something Hexham has'nt: a multi storey car park"

For perhaps half of our 20 years in Prudhoe, the issue of Prudhoe town centre has bubbled on. Maybe it is longer. Because at heart I am not a controversalist, I have kept my head down on this issue. On Friday 22nd October 2010, something happened which broke that.

Myself, my wife and a good friend attended a presentation about the Duke's plans. This was in the light of a Judicial Review having quashed the County Council's granting of planning permission previously. What I saw at this presentation left me dumbstruck. I could not conceive that after so much process, a landowner could ignore so much complaint and offer a project that was so unimaginative and behind the times.

So now we try to explain. The one liners above are good debating points and we would defend each. It is sad if some sound negative and personal but my understanding is that the Duke, the landowner, has never personally put himself before the people of Prudhoe in an attempt to create a project that delivered across the spread of agendas. His solution has been consistently impositional rather than inspirational and consensual. And therein lies the Problem.

Some folk have thought our comparison with Blaydon a bit mean. Actually we do go to Blaydon, they sell some nice cheap vegetables there but we don't go for the destination experience. It is very clear that the shopping precinct there has drained life from the old Front Street whilst at the same time, the rate of unit turnover within shows it struggles with its own economies.

It ought to have been straightforward for a family with the wealth of the Duke of Northumberland and with the track record of Alnwick Garden to come up with the creativity, that when offered a prime hillside location in a beautiful valley, the resulting proposal wowed the mind and delighted the senses. A car park could have become a leading piece of vertical gardening or farming which brought people hundreds of miles to Prudhoe to see the result. A landmark which made every traveller on the A69 turn for the colour of the planting rising into the sky.

But throughout the whole torrid process that is the Prudhoe redevelopment, this connectivity between the talents that the Percy family evidently have and those charged with exciting the citizens of Prudhoe has been signally absent. Instead it looks as if the assumption is: that so long as there is a Sainsbury (which I would welcome), then that will please those who live in Prudhoe. We who live here are not people with aspirations, we will take what we are given and be grateful. Yet the reaction of the folk of Prudhoe has shown how wrong that assumption is.

Aside from the failure of the grand vision, it seems listening to the people at the presentation that there are plenty of serious everyday concerns. They have been heard before: how will Station Bank function. The paperwork handed out offered a bland assurance that there is no problem. There's the drains and the inhabitants of Castlefield. There are plenty of other issues but what personally gets me is the subtlety of the language of the information sheet I was handed. It offered a mix of non-food and food units. It did not make clear that THE food unit is Sainsbury and as I understand what I have read, if I asked to open a butcher in one of the other units, I would be shown the door.

The lack of a butcher in Prudhoe shows the tragedy of all this. We live in one of the most meaty counties in England. There are wonderful butchers in Hexham, Corbridge, Brampton and in farms not so far away from Prudhoe - if you have a car. Yet for about 18 years I think, the only butcher meat vended in a town of 12,000 has come from the Co-Op. We regularly buy our meat in Galloway, or from Wishart of Greenside, whose van we have persuaded to reach Lime Grove.

The Duke of Northumberland wields perhaps the balance of power in Prudhoe and above all else it is sad that there is such a disjunction between what the town really needs and what its owner thinks is good for it. What is the way forward?

A range of routes are possible. The Duke could recognise that his impositional solution to the Town Centre is extremely unpopular in this community. At the far extreme,the entire project could be withdrawn voluntarily and the land offered at market value to Prudhoe Community Partnership. The PCP would then fundraise to buy the land and then as a proper community venture the redevelopment should be planned to properly reflect the aspirations of those who live in the community.

Another solution would be for the Duke to withdraw wholly the present scheme and restart with something like these thoughts in mind. These start with Page 7 of Friday 22nd October 2010's Hexham Courant which should be looked at. Bardon Mill's planned village hall. How exciting, contemporary and how green can you go? And designed by a North East Architect. Why has not this been the style for a new development proposed for this hillside here? Why are we building up brick and concrete structures high on a hillside looking down on new estates and visible for miles? We have a sloping hillside so why are we not building into it. Why does'nt the facade of all the development look out to the north in a series of terraces? Why is'nt the car parking underground at the south side of the development?

Town centre developments have been done like this. Edinburgh Tourist Office is in one. Here's another
http://www.themall.co.uk/my-mall/norwich/index.aspx
http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Website/castlemalldevelopment.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/funstuff/360/castle_mall_360.shtml

Norwich Castle Mall put underground right beside Norwich Castle. It could hardly have been a more sensitive sight.

So let's entirely rethink the whole Town Centre proposal. Let's only have one storey max above ground, let's get the vehicles underground from an access/exit on Front Street (down one access, up the next), and let's have nothing on Station Bank. Let's excavate large holes (Thompson's would be good for that) and then backfill them to create the spaces. Let's have a small one storey building area where the car park, legion and old dairy buidings are. Let them be traditional in feel. There's a town square. Let there be escalator entrances leading underground from here, and perhaps a T shape on two levels is envisaged. The walkway is in the middle of the vertical element of the T and on the south inside face of the cross of the T. This T shaped development spreads down and across the hill. All you see from outside is glittering glass and vegetation. Each unit domestic, residential or offices faces east, west or north from the T. The whole is covered in grass or vegetation on top. It use solar panels and strives to be energy neutral. The storm drainage could be used to generate power. I wonder what the energy designs of the current project are?

There's the grand design for Prudhoe. And you call it the Hanging Gardens of Prudhoe and it puts Prudhoe on the map of Britain. The name is so important and another evidence regarding the failure of the current proposal. These have no grand vision despite the site and are entirely mediocre (cf Cramlington Towncentre from the same stable, but at least that is not visible for miles away presenting a car park jutting out of a hillside with side aspect brick facades reminscent of a jail). A key name for the project should have been there from the outset, controlling what was going to come, and exciting the community.
___________________________________________

The reality of course is that landowners wield a huge amount of power. I am not anti-landowner but would wish anyone in that position to reckon with being a steward for what they have under the judgement of God. Pragmaticism realises that the community of Prudhoe has fought this very hard and unless prepared for more bitter struggle may have to compromise. There follow a series of bullet points inspired from the Environmental Statement. They include specific references to how the present development could be greened with what is already proposed:

Bullet points to show this:

1 That car park North Facade should be intensively presented with a soft face. This could be something like the B&Q gardens at Scotswood. It could be a community orchard terraced up the side of the car park. There is plenty of expertise available locally to advise on community orchards. Their proponents were at Hexham Farmer's Market on Satuday. (As currently planned, there must be every likelihood that this car park will become notorious as one the coldest and windiest multi stories in the UK).

2 It seemed to me most if not all of the structural facings are in brick? Have I got that right? Where is the variety? Throughout the development a range of facings could be employed. Faience, terracotta, tilling (where is the tiled Tyneside pub in this?), local stone, art deco, 1930's streamlining like the Belvedere Whitley Bay or a Burtons. A whole range of motifs are out there which if you promised them to the citizens of Prudhoe would show that something original was happening. Prudhoe is in fact a mix at present and my hunch is that people like that variety and mix.

3 It is not just requiring a variety of facings, but the softening agenda could also be futuristic. There is case for looking closely at how much hydroponical gardening or farming could be worked into all this, both the buildings and the retaining walls and sound barriers. Soft vegetation absorbs sound.

I know that new thinking comes with risk but if the objective is that Prudhoe becomes a destination, you link Alnwick Garden, hydroponics and this hillside here and you offer something really different. Something potential office renters will say ,we want to be in Prudhoe to be part of this. Otherwise Viscount Allendale's farm conversions for offices in neighbouring parishes are far more attractive and contemporary.

If Hydroponics is fresh to the reader here are some more urls:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/vertical-farms-urban-food
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming
http://www.valcent.eu/
http://www.simply-hydroponics.com/103/vertical-farming/
and more at Gardening and the visual
http://www.green-walls.co.uk/?gclid=CL7Eh_a57aQCFdv92Aod8H2c1g
http://www.1-hydroponics.co.uk/miscellaneous/hydroponic-vertical-garden.html
(these ones really show what I could enjoy)

There is a heading in the ES about Ecology and that should be utterly full of the above. It is empty in the statement. It should be boasting about how the new development contributes.

4 Transport is green. I am not satisfied with the comments in the summary under Traffic and Transportation. It fascinates me to know when the studies were done on Prudhoe Station Bank. Yes at time it is quite quiet, at other times it is a disgrace to what motor vehicles do to a community. I cannot begin to see how at school times and peak hours and in poor weather Station Bank will not be a nightmare with this proposal. There is absolutely no mention of the bus services. Are the existing stops to be used? Will bus users walk to the development? Are there route diversions and new stops planned? Have Go Ahead North East and the public transport team at County Hall been consulted?

5 Finally to engage the community and to be 21st century, there should be a website on which all the plans are visible. The idea that a few hard copies of intimidating documentation are deposited in a library and that this is consultation is not acceptable nowadays. A website showing exactly how the proposal will sit in the landscape and allowing the viewer to virtually walk through the development should have been practical at any point since 2000.

Ephemera - an interview

I have had the privilege of an interview on Ephemera. Check it out at

http://ephemera.typepad.com/ephemera/2008/09/the-forsythe-co.html

Hello and welcome to the start of this blog. It may acquire an independent life of its own but at the outset it is a placeholder to cement my place in the system and to link to the other incentive to be here which was a response to an invitation to blog on What's New at Specialist Auctions (so look that one up). What I have done though is to drop in posts made at that blog and consolidate them here. Our big interest (of several) is transport and travel ephemera so do check out our own website www.forsythe.demon.co.uk or www.fionnconsultancy.co.uk .

Friday, August 22, 2008

High Speed Train Intercity 125 HST

First of all a welcome as this is my first contribution to the Specialist Auction blog. For a topic I've chosen one of the most popular of the subjects that I sell. Anything related to the Intercity 125 or HST trains that have run around on Britain's railways since 1976. To get an idea of what I sell covering the subject a search on Specialist for High Speed Train or Intercity 125 should always get some results. We will usually be able to offer some timetables or leaflets from the first few years with a good assortment later on. These trains have since privatisation operated in many different liveries and trying to find official literature for all these options can be quite challenging. Cross Country, Midland Main Line, GNER or First Great Western are all searches which should produce more results relevant to the HST train and with any luck an HST model might be available from another vendor on Specialist.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

There's no doubt that one of the big areas of my interest, both for my own collecting and for what I sell is the Irish Sea. Believe it or not, only a fraction of the material available for other collectors is yet listed but already there is plenty of choice on Specialist Auctions. The story of how this area of the collection grew is interesting. A book was part of the process. I am an author as my own website http://www.forsythe.demon.co.uk/ explains. One of the books which I have written is Irish Sea Shipping Publicised and yes, you can get signed copies via Specialist at http://www.specialistauctions.com/auctiondetails.php?id=1055557 . Another day I will post about the limited but select books that we vend via Specialist. For now, back to the Irish Sea. The book was written, and as a result, another author made contact and the upshot was that I was offered the Raymond Brandreth collection. Raymond had unfortunately passed away but he had a very good innings from his base at Meols on the Wirral during which he cruised happily with a Contactors ticket on the Isle of Man Steam Packet, Liverpool and North Wales' St Tudno, P & A Campbell etc. And on his trips he packed up handfulls of paperwork. We have been selling from his collection since 2003 and much has moved on. If this interests you, recommended searches which bring up results quickly on Specialist would be Irish Sea, Steam Packet, Norwest, Heysham, Holyhead, Liverpool & North Wales, Belfast, Llandudno, White Funnel, Wirral, Mersey. By the time you have done that I am sure you will have the picture.