LAST week’s news about average speed cameras on the A435 to ‘reduce accidents’ blamed on ‘speeding drivers’ raises a number of issues.
The speed limits on this piece of road have all been significantly lowered in the last 20 years – if you move the goalposts far enough, you can demonise your granny in her Nissan Micra as a wicked ‘speeding driver’.
These new limits, in places too low, have been enforced with an array of fixed speed cameras, about which similar claims were made as to their efficacy at reducing accidents.
Clearly this strategy has utterly failed, as now new cameras are required – though I don’t see reports in the local press about accidents on this road.
I’m sure it will be a great comfort to the thousands of people caught by these cameras over the years that it was all for nothing.
However, Councillor Neil Edden does shed some light, when he hopes these cameras will ‘encourage drivers to find an alternative route’.
Whilst we are all frustrated by the failure of government to properly connect our road system by completing a Studley bypass, Mr Edden and his co-conspirators Messrs Rickhards and Gould must be very important people indeed if they feel justified in using the full power of the criminal justice system as a tool to suit their own convenience at the expense of the rest of us.
P Hemingway, Redditch
REGARDING average speed cameras on the A435 through Studley (Redditch Standard) granted, there is an issue with speed, but that is mainly in the evenings when traffic is less.
The real problem is the volume of traffic travelling through the village, as Councillor Edden alluded to, and the lack of real alternatives.
Anyone heading south would be mad to cut through Redditch and go up Rough Hill Drive only to get stuck at the Spernall junction back at the A435.
Similarly going north, the hold up would be at the island at the top of Rough Hill Drive.
Without a bypass Studley and Coughton will just have to put up with the traffic.
P Robinson, Oakenshaw
I READ with real interest from our MP Rachel Maclean complaining about lack of ‘fair and transparency consultation’ in respect of temporarily moving the Garden Suite away from the Alex and to Kidderminster. Who could disagree.
It’s amazing those words ‘fair and transparent consultation’ are coming from our MP who refused to listen to her constituents in 2017 when the future death sentence to centralisation was approved for our hospitals.
Eighty per cent of Redditch said the plan was wrong.
She disagreed with us and refused to call for a review to the flawed consultation and told us to ‘move on’.
Meanwhile she sits on the very Towns Fund Board that put forward the Bid for £4.2m Government funding to demolish our library without so much as proper consultation or a plan of where the library provision would go.
Decisions all made behind closed doors.
Then when making a perfectly respectful comment on my MP’s Facebook page…it was hidden within minutes.
I suggest she gets her own house and this town’s house in order first before criticising about lack of transparency and consultation.
A Berry, Redditch
I DO wish people would stop carping about Redditch Library. There is nothing attractive about the building and if it means people have to walk a little bit further to the town hall to get a book out, that in itself might be a good thing.
You only have to look at Alcester Street to see what a few more people going up and down it would do for the businesses there.
For instance I didn’t even realise there’s a pet food shop there off the street, and it’s well worth popping in to.
I’m sure too that JJ’s cafe could do with the extra trade.
So come on, see the benefits instead of all the negatives all the time.
C Mills, Brockhill
MASSIVE gap between NHS and private hospital treatment I fear?
Luckily my first hip replacement was in 2003, saying ‘luckily’ as the surgeon who performed operation worked for both, however in 2011 he took his own life.
It haunts me that the NHS is fighting a losing battle against money people – that is, those that invest in the ill.
May national health care come out of this present day dilemma smiling at the fact love and dedication far outweighs anybody’s bank balance.
J Hencher-Serafin, Studley
GOVERNMENT figures show that job vacancies have hit a record high of 1.2million, an increase of 20 per cent in the past three months.
It seems like a no-brainer that our young people should be able to train to fill these roles.
Many of the sectors continuing to battle with skills shortages, such as construction, manufacturing, and hospitality, are reliant on Level 2 vocational qualifications as a direct route into jobs in these industries.
Yet, the Government has failed to prioritise these lower level, work-ready qualifications, instead focusing their post-16 policy and funding at qualifications of A Level standard and above.
The Government has a chance to close the skills gap and the disadvantage gap that is so significant among 16-19-year-olds, boost the economy and give young people the future they deserve.
But to do this, they must ensure a wide range of high-quality, employer-endorsed options are available at all levels.
C Robb, Chief Executive
Nacro
