A New Year!

The same Waterlooville.

One annoying thing about Christmas is that it is virtually impossible to buy paper gift wrap in the popular stores. Recycle For Hampshire and Project Integra won't take the current plastic wrap for recycling. This situation is exactly the opposite to what we know it should be. We know we need to recycle more, but shops and manufacturers do not help us achieve this.

The ridiculous thing is that for many, many decades, paper wrap was perfectly satisfactory, so there is absolutely no excuse.

If you have to buy gift wrap, try getting paper wrap and if you can't find any, complain in the shops that are selling the plastic stuff.

Natural Collection has a selection of eco friendly gift wraps. I think as long as people assess a product mainly based on price then we will always have a waste and consumption problem.

Costa Waterlooville invasion

Whilst doing my regular shopping trip in Waterlooville, i couldn't help notice that the Costa coffee shop chain has taken over the old Woolwich Bank site.

I am worried for the existing cafe's and coffee shops in Waterlooville. In particular Cafe Moka which has been built up by some local girls and does a roaring trade. They also have a cafe in Emsworth. I just hope they survive in face of the possibly aggressive competition from Costa.

I wish local government were more supportive of local businesses. Considering the Waterlooville area is primarily Tory ground, one would think they would be.

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.

Havant Tesco battle not over yet

It seems that despite our councillors voting to allow Tesco to redevelop the Havant store into a larger 'Extra' store, Friends of the Earth believe there is still a chance that the Tesco can be stopped via the Government Office for the South East.

Lets hope they succeed because unless these large scale developments are halted we will end up with commercial uncompetitive monopolies dominating our towns and encouraging people to travel long distances by car to get to them, killing off sustainable local developments.

Havant Tesco's

We got some bad news this week when it was announced that local authority planners had given the go ahead for Tescos to replace its existing Havant store with a much larger one. Many people have written to the council to complain about the move, far more than those in favour.

A consultancy was even employed by the council to investigate the plan and even they suggested it was a bad idea. Yet the planners gave it the all clear! One wonders whether any of them really care about the environment or long established businesses in the area.

Elected councillors will be voting this Thursday to make a final decision. I hope they make the correct decision and reject the plan, this would be a major change for development trends and would give a refreshing sign to the community.

Waterlooville Retail Park Hell

Some more fields near Waterlooville that were converted into an environmentally damaging car paradise. DFS and Focus can be seen in the background, the retail park is built on farm land, the cars to the right of the image are roughly where the original Hambledon Road entered Waterlooville.
To the rear of DFS and Focus is the dual carriageway.

The problem with this development is that it encourages car use. Many of the people driving to this place do not know that the land was once farm land. In many cases the things they purchase wouldn't even fit in a car and so they will have their sofas, washing machines and other goods delivered later by the store. Sure, they can buy small stuff as well, but then why use a car?

Every car parked in the photo, also has another car parking space allocated at the owners home. This results in gardens being destroyed along with a loss in insect and bird life.

What really makes this particular development bad is the fact that it was built across a long standing pedestrian route into Waterlooville, making it an unpleasant stressful walk through the car park. The blame is largely with the local authorities and developers for putting the car first and neglecting pedestrians, cyclists and disability electric buggy riders. The old Hambledon road route into Waterlooville was once publicly owned.

National Trust strikes back

Todays news about the National Trusts more aggressive stance on land use and housing developments is good for many trying to protect their local 'green' land from the governments house building plans for the South and South East.

The National Trust has a good record on environmental issues so this move shouldn't come as a surprise. Unfortunately it has probably come to late for Waterlooville. Lets hope it hasn't though!