Monday 1 December 2008

Chasing the Kendal Highwaymen

The way that Ulverston is being treated smacks strongly of the days of the Highwaymen, when they held travellers at gunpoint, demanded their money and then disappeared.

Here, our rates disappear and highwaymen are glimpsed infrequently, only to disappear back to Kendal leaving 'chaos' behind.

All credit to her, Pauline Halfpenny, one of the two County Councillors for Ulverston, is pursuing this case vigorously.

She is very concerned that the work on Daltongate was not done for last Friday as promised, whilst I am shocked that what was done, was of such shoddy workmanship.



Two workmen in two vehicles - to give them their due - did come last Wednesday to move the "No Entry" sign from behind the scaffolding to a new spot where it could be seen.

What floored me was that they couldn't be bothered to clean the old paper posters off the bottom of the sign. The workmen clearly haven't got their hearts in the job.

This fits in the pattern of could-care-less maintenance for Ulverston where a crew of highwaymen spend a morning here doing some good work but missing other obvious work only a few yards away.

Thus on Brewery Street they repainted the much neglected Zebra Crossing but ignored the sign to the carpark not thirty yards away that is now practically invisible.

Having done the "No Entry" at the bottom of Soutergate in King Street they ignore the equally bad "Stop" road markings on Dalton Gate.

This inefficiency results in massive extra costs of totally unnecessary journeys, extra organisation, paperwork by the desk job planners as well as the time it costs the rest of us to chase them to do what ten/twenty years ago was done all the time without us noticing by the Bobby on the beat coordinating with the highways workers.

Why?

Because no one takes a pride in their work? In the hands of a remote penpushing organisation like Capita Symonds who can look great but produce rubbish work ?

Only asking!

Some one needs to?

Your thoughts?

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