Community Police take action

I have blogged a few times about youths causing some issues in Waterlooville town centre.

http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/more-youth-trouble-in-waterlooville.html
http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/the-youth-problems-of-waterlooville.html
http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/pidgeon-and-youth-problems-in.html

Yesterday I saw that some Community Police were talking to youths in the centre, later the youths appeared to move but I didn't see where.

A commentor suggested I wasn't tolerant!

More youth trouble in Waterlooville

Waterlooville for lease or demolition

Was in Waterlooville today, popped into WH Smiths and noticed 3 youths walking from the general direction of Poundland towards the clock and Subway. One was carrying a wire shopping basket with a number of packets of crisps and sweets etc. I assumed they were pranking about, had paid for the goods and walked out with the basket.

Anyway a little later I walked out of WH Smiths and in the same direction as the youths who by now had just passed Nationwide Building Society.

That's when a man shouted out and said something like 'stop'. One elderly bloke ran after the youth with the basket and caught him, then two other men tried grappling with a youth and got one on the ground. Lots of shouting etc.

Anyway it seems that the goods had been stolen and were eventually returned to the shop but I think the youths 'got away'.

A real path at Wellington Retail Park??

After years of battling with cars trying to find a parking space at Wellington Retail Park, it looks like
pedestrians and cyclists trying to cross the numerous car park entrances and exists are going to get a proper path, with curbs??

At least I think this is going to be a path??
Feel free to post a comment if you know better.

Related blog posts:
http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/chaos-at-retail-park.html
http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/waterloovile-pedestrian-access.html
http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/salvador-caetano.html
http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/paints-and-belligerent-car-drivers.html

The Boulevard - Waterlooville

Are we at a tacky holiday camp?	No more Baytree Bookshop
No more Self Fit	No more ??
Pop up shop fills space for a a while	Superficial improvements crumble
Detail of original brick wall	British weather is no friend of dumb paint schemes

Waterlooville: spot the differences

Created another panorama of Waterlooville town centre, then thought, why not compare it with the previous panorama!

So here are the two images next to each other. The top is 2013, the bottom is 2010. How many differences can you spot? Click on the image to view a larger scale version and expand your browser window to the full width of your screen.

Horsemeat and things

Cosham Iceland

'Food you can trust' says Iceland, who took a hit when Irish food inspectors found traces of horse DNA in their beefburgers. But at least it was only a tiny trace, Tescos were far more embarassed when it was announced that almost 30% of the DNA content of it's 'value' range of beefburgers consisted of horse meat.

Strangely in 'i' newspaper a Tesco spokesperson suggested it was illegal to have the meat in their products. I'm not sure that is true, what is illegal is to say a food product contains beef only, when in fact it contains other meats as well.

Cosham high street

Meanwhile the big corporates continue to fall on the high street. Following the news of HMV and Jessops in trouble, Blockbuster have joined the growing count of failing retailers.

I am just thankful that when I graduated as an engineer all those decades ago that I went more or less into a good engineering job and spent a year as a paid trainee. I designed things that were manufactured in this country, even often went on the 'shop floor' to see the products being assembled and chatting to production line colleagues.

Jessops, Portsmouth

Today young graduates often end up in service industries like supermarkets, despite having degrees in IT, mechanical engineering etc

Yet successive governments, including the Conservatives and Liberals just cut, poke, criticise, blame and find scape goats (such as jobseekers and others) for the situations they are responsible for creating. They kill the desire to make things and the desire to innovate. It is no wonder we are in a spiral and that many are disenfranchised.

Low carbon technology and engineering is a challenge and as such must be viewed as an OPPORTUNITY to exploit, hence fostering new industry and jobs. Wasting time and effort on old industries will result in other nations overtaking us, yet again. Commiting our graduates to stacking shelves whilst other nations take the prize projects and jobs.

HBC 'Serving You' says support local independent shops

The latest Havant Borough Council Serving You magazine has a small article about supporting our local independent shops.

My views about this have been clearly voiced previously. But why is the council only now realising that these shops need support when things are going badly in town centres?

For years councillors have approved and even actively encouraged the building of out of town retail parks, supermarkets and other huge retail units, knowing that these units undermine small retailers.
So what is going on here?

Either there is a conflict between Havant Borough Councillors in that some champion small retailers whilst others don't care, or all councillors have no long term idea of what is needed.

Can it all be blamed on central government??
Hardly, when some councillors are keen to get supermarkets set up and to 'create' jobs. Many councillors are keen to see Sainsburys build a store in Waterlooville, which conflicts with the idea of supporting small independent shops.

HBC say that Quicks in Stakes Hill Road is a good example of a small independent local shop.
Well for a start, it is hardly small and it is only local in that the headquarters are in Waterlooville!
There are 3 other Quicks shops nationally. The needs of the archery community nationally is served by a small number of such businesses. The majority of people in Waterlooville will never use Quicks and most people that do visit the shop will be travelling by car from many miles away.

What help is HBC giving small local independent retailers??
Massively reduced council tax rates maybe??

Well if that were the case, why didn't they reduce the rates for some small Waterlooville retail start ups a few years ago, when things were booming? They might be still here now.

Waterlooville Poundland

I think it is obvious to everyone now that the old Woolworths premises will be used by Poundland.
The comments at The News sums up many peoples thoughts... 'Oh no, not another shop full of...'

But it made me think. How do they maintain prices at or below £1?

Here's my thoughts about how a 'pound' shop might keep £1 prices in 50 to 100 years from now:

1. Inflation goes up, prices go up, they sell progressively different products, always keeping them within £1. Eventually in 50 years or so, the only thing they can sell is single rubber bands, a single chewy sweet, a thimble full of shampoo etc for a £1 each.

2. They sell the same or similar products as today over the same timescale as scenario 1 and inflation in the UK goes up. They need to find progressively cheaper labour in foreign countries, exploit the cheapest resources etc. so eventually their suppliers set up factories in the middle of the Amazon Rain forest and employ the children from local tribes.

3. They manage to turn the UK into a communist dictatorship which sets £1 prices on all the products forever.

4. They manipulate the markets so that inflation remains stationary or we have deflation. Not much different to 3 really, since they would need enormous influence.

Subway

Looks like Waterlooville will have yet another 'cafe', this time in the shape of Subway. The corner shop property under the clock tower building has morphed from shoe shop to motorbike shop, to gift shop and now Subway. Meanwhile the Stationary Store near the library has closed down.

The big retailers dotted around the borders of Waterlooville town centre have drawn people away from the centres shops. This results in limited options for occupancy in the centres small retail units. Large retail units such as Brantanos, have resulted in the closure of the smaller shoe shops. One wonders what logic the 'officers' and councillors of Havant Borough Council apply when they approve the big retail developments.

So there is a culture at Havant Borough Council that is resistant to new thinking in the built environment.The result is a gradual transformation of the centre into a charity shop and cafe haven.

Recently the towns small retailers were calling for council help in the down turn. To make up for the council approving big retail park developments, HBC and other councils are now being asked for compensation/subsidies from small retail businesses! Whose fault is that?

Good and bad Waterlooville shopping news

The last few weeks and months have seen some changes to the mixture of shops in Waterlooville. Last Saturday a new shop called Planet Trash opened up selling products made from recycled materials. The products include, Christmas decorations made from CDs, mouse mats made from recycle rubber, toothbrushes made from recycled plastic and bags made from various recycled materials.

That is just a small selection of what they sell. They also have a web site called Planet trash.

That is some good news. The bad news is that they replace a local small sports shop that occupied the premises for decades, but it looks like the sports shop were forced out of business after years trying to compete with the big corporate sports chain that opened in the planet damaging Hambledon Road Retail Park.

Thats not the only bad news, because the local small cycle shop also closed having lost the battle locally trying to compete with the large Halfords store, also located at the Hambledon Road Retail Park.

The Parks retail stores have successfully wiped out the towns shoe shops, sports shop, cycle shop and many other shops. At the same time the Retail Parks car park is a menace to pedestrians trying to get into Waterlooville.