Is it me or has the Pixie House grown taller ??

Polzeath is Plagued by Public School Pests

Police and traders have confiscated more than 400 fake ID cards from under-age drinkers in a holiday resort in less than a month. The seizures came as hundreds of public schools students descended on Polzeath for an early summer holiday before the state school term ended. Locals have complained of rowdy beach parties, noise, drunkenness, and vandalism involving up to 500 people. But police said some of the complaints were being "blown out of proportion". But Polzeath resident Tess Smith said that the problem was worse than last year. "There were a thousand kids on the beach on one night, screaming, chanting and urinating. "There was an horrendous amount of noise until three in the morning. "It was total anarchy. They could do exactly what they wanted because there were only four policemen there." Problem 'subsided' One under-age youngster, among a group drinking and smoking cannabis on the beach, said alcohol was easy to get. "Some serve you under age. If you have fake ID they will serve you anything." Police rejected the accusation, saying shops were seizing about 40 fake IDs a day. Four hundred fake cards have been recovered from youngsters since the beginning of July. But Sgt Robin Moorcroft, who is in charge of the police operations in Polzeath, said the problem had now subsided. He said: "There have been incidents of public disorder assaults and drunkenness, but some of it is being blown out of proportion." Four police officers are on duty this year in the resort in July and August following disturbances last year.

Bowithick could become another costly mistake.

Please read the letters below that were published in "Your Parish" and "The Delabole Slate" magazines.

If you think Bowithick Amenity Tip should remain open and have not written yet, please do so and address your letters to either Mr. David Owens. Waste Manager, or to Mr. Adam Paynter (Enviroment and Heritage Portfolio Holder) New County Hall, Truro, TR1 SAY.

Time for some joined up thinking

Courtesy of "Your Parish" magazine.

["Is it me? In one breath we are being told to take our rubbish to the tip rather than dumping it in the hedges and lay-bys. The next thing we hear, is that our nearest tip, at Trebarwith is to close. We will now have to take everything to Lanivet or to Bude, or pay to have it taken away, using more fuel and polluting the environment even more. We are told it is too ex-pensive to run the tip at Trebarwith. Is it cheaper to have to pick up the rubbish that will no doubt be dumped all over the place when it closes? When I mentioned how upset I was about the closure to a lady at one of those stalls they put up at shows, for the Council to encourage you to recycle and and manage your waste responsibly, she replied that it was very difficult because some services were run by the county and some by the local council. Are they not all supposed to have the same environmental agenda? Could they not consider working together? She also said that people will often fly tip only a few hundred yards from a tip. That doesn't seem to me to be a valid reason for not having one available. However much we all try to recycle, re-use, and compost our garden waste, there are times when it is just not possible."

Corlink Service Change Imminent
"The same kind of lack of thought would seem to be behind the rumoured decision to cease the Corlink service
on this side of the A39 instead of extending it and making it more useful to people trying to minimise car use.
This, just at the time when we are all being encouraged to leave our cars at home. What are we supposed to do?
Nobody seems to want to make it easy for us to be environmentally friendly and I suspect unless the powers that be make up their minds to do so, many will just give up."]

SAVE OUR TIP - THE BOWITHICK AMENITY SITE

Courtesy of "The Delabole Slate" magazine

[ "I would like to begin by thanking you all who have written to County Hall stating your reasons why the Bowithick
Amenity Tip should remain open and to those of you who have not written yet, please do so and address your letters to either Mr. David Owens. Waste Manager, or to Mr. Adam Paynter (Enviroment and Heritage Portfolio Holder) New County Hall, Truro, TR1 SAY. This will be a great help to me as I go through various meetings with Mr. Owens, Mr. Paynter and the French Company SITA, who have won the contract for handling the waste for Cornwall. I believe the next six to eight weeks are crucial to get our case across, I can but repeat again that the alternative sites are a forty mile round trip with at least one and a half hours of an individuals time taken up; cost of petrol £5.00 and the cost to the environment with all this extra travelling, just think of the tons of extra CO gas that would be admitted. Also the closure of this tip would be giving no consideration whatever to people who live in this more thinly populated area of Cornwall, who never the less, pay their Council Tax and expect a service for it. We need to remind County Hall that we are a prime tourist area and to see the return of fly tipping would be detrimental not only to the tourist industry, but a burden to our farmers as well. This site is ideally situated and secluded and in the right geographical position. I firmly believe the people of this area are not asking for six hundred thousand pounds to be spent on this site, as it is answering well at this present time. The reason of course for the County wanting to close this site is that they have taken an overall review of the County's waste needs and on paper Bowithick and another site near St. Ives are putting through such low tonnages per annum, and I believe this is not a competitive issue, there is no way we can compete with the through put of Bude or Launceston. Many of the suggestions for the County are really good and extending this service and the introduction of an incinerator will greatly reduce our landfill problem and save us many, many thousands of pounds in tax over the years. Very briefly, just touching on one or two other issues, the library service is going through a difficult time under cuts that have had to be introduced and Cornwall sees a reduction of three hundred and fifty thousand in its library budget. However, not one library will be closed down, where as in Devon there will be twelve closures and in Dorset thirteen closures! We will lose one mobile library van and there will be some cut backs in staff.
Health and Adult Care and Social Services are other areas where there has been considerable cuts made and
according to figures projected for the coming years, there will be an increasing demand on these services. County Hall
will have to keep hammering Westminster for increased funding, for instance those 65 years and over living in Cornwall are to increase from one hundred and seven thousand seven hundred to one hundred and seventy eight thousand eight hundred by the year 2026; a fifty eight point 6 per cent increase, and the number of people aged 85 years or over is due to increase from fifteen thousand to twenty six thousand five hundred by 2026, a seventy six point seven per cent increase and this highlights the need for greater funding to serve these people in the way that would be expected.
Finishing on a slightly lighter note, that "New Carpet" at County Hall at seventy thousand pounds plus will not
be hitting those figures after all! The price of wool for instance has slipped back over the years and the new carpet is not likely to cost that much more than the original one over forty five years ago that was in the region of twenty to twenty five thousand pounds."]

Bring back F.Y.M.

I mean "What on Earth are the farmers putting on the fields these days?????

A colleague of mine tells me that modern methods of farming involve the practice of adding chemicals to manure to aid the break down of the matter. It turns the manure into a runny almost liquid like fertilizer that is easier to spray on to the fields. The offensive odour that this delivers to the neighbourhood is so strong that people are woken from their slumber by the smell, they are forced to stay in their homes with windows shut tight whilst the noxious niff prevails. The laundry cannot be hung to dry in the fresh air because the sickly stench clings to very fabric of the wash, dogs remain un-walked by owners who cannot tolerate the foul tasting air in their lungs. If you are sick of the smell then let us know.

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