Contrary to popular belief, I do occasionally venture outside the Greater Reading area. Last week I was fortunate enough to go to Lisbon for Web Summit, a world-renowned technology conference. From virtual reality to flying cars, in this post I’ll cover some of the innovations coming down the road (or hovering above it), as well as considering some of the implications for us locally. Continue reading “Supporting a technology tradition”
You can’t write a blog about Reading without tackling the longest standing local talking point. Awful traffic jams on all approaches to the existing Caversham and Reading Bridges are the bane of lives both sides of the river – it’s not hard to see why more capacity is needed. When it comes to Reading’s Third Bridge saga, the only difficult question to answer is for exactly how many decades this idea has been discussed and procrastinated: I’m afraid I can’t do any better than ‘many’.
What can a council do to make itself as unpopular as practically possible? The bright sparks down the road at West Berks have hit on the perfect formula. It turns out that there are four key factors to ensure universal discontent:
Having identified the right recipe, the Newbury authority has validated its accuracy with devastating effect, combining lashings of each ingredient to produce what can only be described as “the mother of all unpopular policies”.
A couple of weeks ago I attended an exhibition in town called Reading 2050. The initiative seeks to create a vision for the development of the town. Their representative was an enthusiastic Scottish lady who talked visitors through some glossy but fairly non-specific visuals. Their document talks of three alternative visions:
This blog is not generally intended to be political. However, there are a few subjects where it just can’t be helped. In 1998 Berkshire County Council was abolished and replaced with six unitary authorities. With those councils currently agonising over setting their 2016 tax rates, this seems like an opportune moment to stand back and take a look at the system implemented nearly two decades ago.
