Newton Flowers

Just to brighten things up a bit:

Visit Siobhan Burgess' site

Siobhan Burgess has an excellent little site about Parkside.You can read it here

Here's a bit below:

Thank you for taking the time to look at my site, as you may see, it is still under development,and will probably be subject to change over the coming weeks and months.

I decided to start this site as an alternative to using my space as a blog for the proposed Freight Distribution centre development at PARKSIDE, in Newton-le-Willows. This is the area which includes the former Parkside Colliery site, which closed over ten years ago, with the loss of many jobs, both in mining and also in local businesses, with the resultant loss of revenue in the town.

We just have to look around the town now to see that something is desperately needed to restore a healthy sense of pride in what we have. I believe that the development at Parkside will provide many local jobs, not just within the distribution centre but also in local industry and shops.

Parkside 2010 site

The site for Parkside 2010 is now up and running, hopefully as the scheme progresses news updates will be available to keep supporters of the plans up to speed.

Parkside 'war of words'

I'm sure everyone has now read at least one article relating to the recent war of words which suddenly erupted out of the blue regarding the plans to develop the former Parkside colliery site

Interestingly one of the comments was that Councillors shouldn't just tick government boxes.Well, we can all agree with that.But what if the boxes being ticked are government boxes and boxes as set out by your own party's policy? According to The Liberal Democrats policy document "Towards Carbon Free Transport" they would "build road-rail freight transfer depots". An utterly sensible approach in my opinion.

Referendum?

With the introduction of a political edge into the Parkside issue during the 2008 local election campaigns it's interesting to note the outcome for what I presume are the pro Parkside development candidates and anti Parkside development candidates- I take "Pro and Anti" to mean either for or against the current plans that are on the table:

Newton 2007
Lib Dem 2003
Labour 613

Newton 2008
Lib Dem 2028 + 25
Labour 605 -8

Earlestown 2007
Labour 1090
Lib Dem 1000

Earlestown 2008
Labour 1242 + 152
Lib Dem 951 - 49


Two councillors vocally opposed to the current Parkside plans in Lowton and Golborne lost their seats. I do not currently know the views of the new councillors on the issue.Looking at the results as a whole I don't particularly see it as a ringing endorsement for the objectors. Although the issue would be better off being non political people can make up their own minds as to the votes cast.