HAVE the powers that be totally lost the plot or what? I thought everybody was working together towards helping Morecambe and Lancaster regain a little stability, economically speaking - and what do they do? They make it practically impossible to get into the town that's what. At the moment anybody foolish enough to attempt to get into Lancaster from the south has to run the gauntlet of a series of roadworks, chicanes and tank traps created by the various utilities carrying out work along various sections of the A6.

If they persist and are lucky enough to get here within a day the poor souls then could try and park on Penny Street - if the whole length of it wasn't being dug up by the Gas Board (was it just last year the blasted road was being dug up because there were enormous holes underneath it?).

To make things worse you could have the inconvenience of most of Marton Street being blocked off by the police like it was just a few weeks ago. Cones out all along the road: no explanation and more infuriatingly no obvious reason for it. Now it's all right saying people could use the car parks etc - that's okay, if there's a space and if you are not disabled.

The upshot is of course that people don't bother trying, they, quite rightly just drive straight through - not that they could get to Morecambe because of the ridiculous roadway system through the city. Consequently the town centre shops miss out on much-needed custom at a crucial time of the year.

Why would you use the car parks anyway? Just the other day a colleague of mine had the radio grabbed from her brand new car after thieves had smashed their way in - they did four cars in total. Mine had the aerial bent and is also covered in starling droppings!

Let's have a little common sense and maybe we could start to turn Lancaster and Morecambe into thriving retail centre again! So the council has upped its offer to Chris Tague (the man in the iron flat) to £25,000 in a bid to get him out of his property in Parliament Street. So we can assume that the council is a reasonable negotiating body which acts in a sensitive way when dealing with its tenants or we can see that it way undervalued Mr Tague's property and is now running scared because of the ensuing blaze of publicity. Staying in his custom-built cage has secured Mr Tague extra cash. I say stay in there until Christmas Mr Tague and you could end up with the cash you want!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.