Arrive Alive in Penyffordd

at teatime. Saw a stupid female who actually lives on the Vounog flashing drivers to slow down. What an idiot.

North Wales Police Activity in Penyffordd

We have a new inspector and a new community sargeant. Also there are a list of asbo and crimes in Penyffordd District

Link North Wales Police in Penyffordd

keywords:
District Inspector - Insp. 1160 Martin Best
Community Sergeant - Sgt. 1861 Katie Newby

Penyffordd pubs merry go round

At a time when public houses are going out of business by the score, strange things happening in Penyffordd. The other month I said the owners/tenants ? of The Red Lion were leaving to take over The Swan in Higher Kinnerton.

Now it appears the tenants of The Millstone are moving to The Swan in Higher Kinnerton and the Red Lion People are staying put. Also the people who previously ran The Millstone and left are coming back!

Postscript. Whilst driving passed tonight we notice Red Lion closed, The Millstone carpark full.

Further Postscript: Or current licencee's of The Millstone are staying put and their daughter is going to run The Swan and the former manager of The Red Lion is going to run the red. Take your pick!

Our National Debt Gains Momentum

National debt: Taken from public sector net debt figures (PSND) in Table C4 of Budget 2009. PSND rising from £609.1 billion on 5 April 2009 to £792 billion a year later. This is the most conservative of the available debt indices as it excludes liabilities for PFI deals, public sector pensions and bank bailouts.

Family share: Calculated by dividing the national debt figure by the number of households in the UK. Number of households taken as 25.7 million, as per the written answer to a Parliamentary question in March 2009.

Colin Bithell in The Daily Post

Link The Daily Post

Speeding

With over a 1000 vehicles speeding through Chester Rd each day here is an article by Peter Preston in The Guardian.
The comments are worth a read.
Link The Guardian

Men walking in suits

Apparently today's home Wrexham FC match is attended by Wrexham fans wearing suits. At lunch time various Penyffordd men folk were seen making their way to Penyffordd train station for the match. Sad to see that they have not managed to return to league football this season.

An accident waiting to happen

Not many people know this but apart from being a race track for cars Chester Rd is also a training ground for about 6 lorry training companies. Training lorries stop here on a daily basis.

Is it for handbrake starts?

Cars come from the opposite direction over the brow of the hill at speeds of up to 70 mph. You take your life in your hands when you pull out from behind the lorry.

I think the lorry training companies need a talking to. Have they done risk assessment on their practices. I think not.

Waiting for the day when lorries are banned from Penyffordd as we have a bypass that is very suitable for through HGV traffic.

cc: Inspector Alun Oldfield, Dave Faulkner Flintshire County Council,

Links
Chevron Training
Emerald
Gatewen

Meadowslea awaits its fate

The newly named Elan Homes from the defunct David Mclean's building firm have got their houses up for sale on the old Meadowlea site. Penyffordd has lost two facilities, Meadowslea and Dobshill hospitals. What do we have to show for it? Nothing. No proper health care centre, medical advice dispensed from the Chemist. Who has taken their eyes off the ball. Previous county councillors?

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Meadowslea is a stunning collection of 2, 3, 4 and 5 bedroom homes in a beautiful rural spot just seven miles from Chester

Just across the Welsh border, just seven miles from Chester, Penyffordd offers the perfect balance for a modern lifestyle. Excellent road and rail connections keep you in close contact with some of the UK’s finest shopping and culture, with links to the north west motorway network making commuting effortlessly easy. Step back across the border and you enter a hikers paradise, with the stunning beauty of North Wales right on your doorstep, stretching from the Cambrian mountains to Snowdonia and beyond.

plus over a 1000 stunning speeders, quite a few with illegal exhausts a day through the village centre. Make sure you take your child to Penyffordd Primary School by car as Chester Road is deadly.

Hikers paradise? Get run over by shift workers on Lower Mountain Road.

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Link Elan Homes Meadowslea Penyffordd

Dumped Syringes found

in Penyffordd. The Evening Leader.

Free Drug Advert

The Daily Post.

Our Feudal Ancient Institutions

In the Leader ( no link as the story is not online yet) Treuddyn are trying to get the speed limit changed from open 60 mph to 30 mph. As a daily traveller on the A5104 I am uncomfortable at its danger. White lines on bends are regularly crossed as motorists who are going so fast that they cannot stay on their side of the road. I stay well away from the white line hugging the kerb.

If you talk to Flintshire County Council about speed reductions or controls they immediately get their book out which shows fatalities in Flintshire. Accidents serious or otherwise tend to be ignored. You have to have three fatalities to get attentiom. North Wales Police are also in the mix. They have a say on speed reductions or the banning of HGV's along roads.

Treuddyn and Rhydymwyn have for years suffered serious injuries and fatalities on their roads. Flintshire County Council's response, nothing!

There is this we know best attitude. You stupid communities aren't bright enough to deal with important issues such as speed reduction.

The Road Haulage Association lobby too powerful for local communities?

All this needs to change.

Here is a letter emailed to Flintshire County Councillor Carolyn Thomas, The Minister for Roads Ieuan Wyn Jones and the great and the good including Chief Superintendent Ruth Purdie of North Wales Police.

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cc. Dave Faulkner Flintshire County Council Roads; Cllr Cindy Hinds ; Mark Isherwood AM ; Cllr Tom Jones ; Evening Leader ; Oldfield, Alun (A/Insp 1371) ; Peter.J.Evans; Daily Post ; Sargeant, Carl (Assembly Member) ; Cllr Tony Sharps ; Cllr Linda Vidamour ; Cllr David Williams ; Arnold Woolley Flintshire County Council Leader.

Dear Carolyn,

Hope you are well

I read with interest the Leader story about the Treuddyn speed protest. How good to see a community standing together against speeding.

Good to see you have a proper police inspector too.

We have over a 1000 speeders each day through the village. I have managed to upset most councillors, the police and Flintshire County Council so they are all pretending its not happening, risking lives in our village community.

Last election we had someone stand for county council whose literature said he stood for Penyffordd families whilst we had about 2000

speeders a day. You really couldn't make this nonsense up!

Our children are subject to a daily rat run, no one even comes down to watch it happen.

FCC have the traffic data but are actively hiding it.

I get depressed when I read your statement about a reduction in speed limit is a long way off.

I find it difficult to get my head around why its so difficult to change a speed limit form 60 mph to 30 mph. Is it to make the county council look important?

What exactly is the down side?

A lorry taking 30 seconds more to go through a section of road.

Its time communities had the main say on traffic speed through their communities.

Flintshire County Council are currently showing themselves as complete failures and have done for many years with regards speeding in communities. I was expecting the Independents to show some leadership.

Cllr Tony Sharps recently made Head of Roads knows exactly the proper thing to do.

He has his village stitched down with 20 mph bumps.

FCC have a covert device that can measure each vehicle's exact speed, vehicle length, exact time so you can work out exact speeds

of all the lorries, motorbikes and cars that hurl along the A5104.

They are pretty shy on showing the data though as it gives communities a tool by which to measure the performance of FCC and North Wales Police.

Perhaps you may have better luck. If you wish to know the full specifications of FCC's covert speed measuring device please ask.

kindest regards

Colin Hughes

Penyffordd District

Living in a village centre with more than 1000 speeders a day.

ps. as a daily user of the A5104, I had to laugh at the Garner statement.
(Garners are a road haulage firm, I have reported to Garners, drivers who speed through Chester Rd.)

The Budget 2009

According to Colin Twiggs who I have a lot of time for.

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, delivering the annual budget statement, forecast a rise in net borrowing to £175 billion in the current financial year and an increase to £606 billion by 2013. He also announced a series of tax increases on higher income earners to help rein in the deficit. That is a mistake. Whether you tax the rich or the poor, the result is the same. Raising taxes reduces consumption. And falling consumption causes further job losses — reinforcing the downward spiral.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appears to be following a similar path, attempting to spend his way out of a recession. Having inherited a clean balance sheet from its predecessor, his government is fast running up debt in order to fund new stimulus programs. Despite stimulus spending amongst the highest (as a percentage of GDP) in the G20, according to the IMF the economy will shrink 1.4 percent in 2009 — faster than the global average. Government revenues are already 63 per cent below estimates from last May's budget and expected to worsen further. The trap is when tax revenues shrink and the budget deficit starts to balloon, it becomes difficult to resist increasing taxes. The same mistake that Alistair Darling is making — and the Obama administration is likely to follow. Raising tax rates needs to be avoided at all costs.

Another alternative would be to increase the tax grab on what's left of your retirement savings. Australians' massive superannuation fund investments are an easy target. That would save jobs, but may prove highly unpopular with voters.

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Our years of living beyond our means, of buying everything on credit and on money printed out of thin air, are over. Sure, our government will carry on with its nonsensical policy of curing indebtedness with more indebtedness, inflation with more inflation, but the game is up. It's not going to work.

~ Congressman Ron Paul in the foreword to Meltdown by Thomas E. Woods Jr.

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So batten down the hatches..............................

A step nearer to sanity?

Link
The Times
Evening Standard

Penyffordd's Own Security Camera

Some people do not like surveillance cameras. Quite handy however for catching or preventing idiots within the village causing trouble.

postscript: Or pointing it at my house. Taken down very quickly when I posted the above photo. This camera could have been put to good use elsewhere in the village. The bracket is still there on the post. Enquiries reveal that FCC say they knew nothing about its use or why it was put up on council road furniture. I have a look around but have not seen one of these cameras anywhere else in Flintshire. North Wales Police instructed FCC to put the device up. After that things get a bit blurred..............

keyword: secret, undercover,

Potholes the new traffic calmers

Link The Daily Telegraph

An email to Jim Moore - Manager of the newly formed All Wales Safety Camera Partnership.

Dear Jim,

Congratulations on your new position as manager of the newly formed All Wales Safety Camera Partnership which is an amalgamation of North Mid and South Wales Partnerships.

Carl Sargeant AM has written to me enclosing a letter by Ieuan Wyn Jones AM Minister for Economy and Transport explaining the new system and your appointment.

I live in Chester Rd, Penyffordd, Nr Mold and have been campaigning with the help of the Evening Leader and Carl Sargeant AM about a daily 1000+ vehicles which speed passed my house which is in the middle of Penyffordd, a major route to school with a 30 mph speed limit. At one stage is was around 2000 vehicles a day but has lessened due to Evening Leader publicity and a pro active speed sign installed in one direction with half a set of rumble strips.

Quite frankly it has been an uphill struggle from the initial "its nothing to do with us" attitude from certain councillors within the village.

Then followed a struggle with the Arrive Alive Partnership for the data harvested on two separate occasions. My first communication with Arrive Alive was met with the request to take some registration numbers of speeders. I can't get my CBM interested in speeding traffic so a couple of 1000 speeder's registrations seemed like a wasted effort.

My 1st Arrive Alive FOIE for data held was thrown into the long grass with eventual rejection for operational reasons.

The use of operational reasons to block anonymous data that shows the danger to Penyffordd village I found reprehensible.

My 2nd Arrive Alive FOIE for the traffic speed data for the whole of Flintshire was rebuffed on the grounds that it would take too many man hours to fulfill

As someone who has had a computer for 20 years and knowledge of current DVD copying and storage I found this excuse risible.

I am fully aware of the equipment and software used to measure traffic speeds in Flintshire.

I have tried various FOIE's to Flintshire County Council. This has led to a "loss" of about 4 FOIE's that didn't get there.

FCC now have an auto system in place that gives you a number. - Progress!. Still no success though, plenty of stonewalling, FOIE rules appear to be for other county councils. Currently my complaint is with FCC scrutiny. Again emails go missing.

Flintshire County Council is like a black hole for emails.

Their latest ploy has been to change software wasting rate payers money so that I am unable to look at traffic data on MS Excel

Currently I have Flintshire County Council, Arrive Alive and North Wales Police all acting in synch to avoid doing anything about speeding traffic in Chester Rd, Penyffordd. Quite frankly the three agencies are a disgrace.

I hope your tenure in charge of the All Wales Safety Camera Partnership will be one of leadership, transparency and of being pro active in helping Welsh Communities fight the modern plague of anti social speeding in communities. This I am sure will help to bring down serious accidents and death caused by vehicles in Wales.

Sincerely Colin Hughes

Penyffordd District

key words: Chief Superintendent Ruth Purdie, Cllr Tony Sharps Northop Hall, Carl Longland Director of Environment Flintshire County Council

Link Sites
Deadly Mates
Road Safety Wales

The New All Wales Safety Camera Partnership Manager.

Jim Moore


Industry Security..
Level Managerially Qualified
Salary
Country United Kingdom
Location Swansea - Wales.
Company Pembrokeshire County Council - Jobs Vacancies

The All Wales Safety Camera Partnership is committed to reducing the number of people killed and injured on Welsh roads. With core partners in the Local Authorities, Police Services, Her Majestys Courts Service and Welsh Assembly Government it brings together many road safety groups dedicated to reducing road casualties. The Partnership enforces the law, but also encourages legal and safe driving through investing in driver education and engineering improvements. With your input and strong influence, this is a huge opportunity to have an impact on road safety for every person in Wales. This hands-on role has a high degree of strategic working and will see you taking forward the All Wales Safety Camera Partnership, bringing together the partner organisations. Working towards current targets set for 2010, you will be responsible for developing a policy to achieve them, with effective and co-ordinated management of resources and budgets. Also influencing debate on future targets post 2010. An appropriate qualification or equivalent experience will be required, but more importantly you will need a background of partnership work and change management at a high level. A technical competence in work related skills essential, you also possess knowledge of the Safety Camera regime and legal framework. An asset to the team, you have strong interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate at all levels.

keyword: Jim Moore

Flintshire County Council Scrutiny. Are they up to the job?

cc: Evening Leader ; Arnold Woolley ; Cllr Tony Sharps ; Sargeant, Carl (Assembly Member) ; Mark Tami MP ; Cllr Linda Vidamour ; Cllr David Williams ; admin@arrivealive.org.uk ; Oldfield, Alun (A/Insp 1371)>

An email to Peter J Evans with regards lack of communication over my complaint.

Dear Peter

The continuing 1000+ speeders through Penyffordd each day reminds me that I have not received a reply from Flintshire County Council over my complaint that FOIE's are thrown in the bin or avoided by buying different software to avoid showing the true shocking picture of speeding traffic through Penyffordd. Has my complaint also been thrown in the bin?

Arrive Alive and North Wales Police have given up on Chester Rd. Can I add the name of Flintshire County Council to the agencies that have given up on Chester Rd Penyffordd to my up and coming new poster campaign that will have 3000 viewers a day every day.

regards Colin Hughes

Chester Rd Penyffordd

Where's our Metal Mickey?

North Wales Police have been promising the installation of a metal mickey (lamp post camera) in Penyffordd for over 9 months in the Neighbourhood Forums.
Other communities seem to be having better luck.
Postscript: It would appear that Mickey has been installed whilst I was not watching lol. Have you seen it yet?

Link Metal Mickey The Evening Leader

To Chirk Car Boot Sale

Click image to enlarge

This is the business end of a microlight aircraft, the propeller connected to an air cooled rotax engine. In a previous existence I manufactured parts for Raven a microlight company based in Sandycroft run by the legendary Roy Venton-Walters. Lisa and I have both been up in one of these. A quick Google shows him busy issuing patents for designs he has created.

The above shed houses the collection of aircraft owned by the man who runs Chirk Car Boot Sale. A 2 mile queue this morning and over 2000 people present.

Links  
Roy Venton Walters
Raven Southdown

Penyffordd Junior School Inspection

Penyffordd Junior School has received a successful inspection report. Head teacher Jayne Jones says we are proud our school provides a welcoming , safe, secure and caring environment.

The same of course cannot be said for Chester Rd which is a major route to school and centre of our village.
Over 1000+ speeders each day.

Currently enjoying less speeding due to the credit crunch.

The Welsh Assembly have released further money for safety around schools. Have we applied for any of the money to Flintshire County Council?

Are we asking North Wales Police to deal with speeding no!
Are we asking Arrive Alive to attend Chester Road?

Penyffordd Post Office in line for an award

Sue's hard work at the Post Office has paid off. Penyffordd Post Office is on the short list to attain an award for The Best Post Office in Wales.

Google street van spotted up the Vounog

Lisa is in The Leader today after me emailing them to say we have seen the Google streets vehicle in Hulley Lane in Wrexham. Anyway Ralph in the Post Office says he's seen it up the Vounog. Google are doing video of all streets. This is causing issues in some streets where they have even been known to block the road on grounds of privacy.

Link The Evening Leader

Overton Village gets serious about speeding

It's taken the death of a poor little boy to do it. Meanwhile Penyffordd sleeps on.. ...........
Link The Daily Post

What's Cllr David Williams doing about our speeding of over a 1000 vehicles a day?
Building a village website and wanting to titivate roundabouts that's what.

Road Safety Wales

Link http://www.roadsafetywales.co.uk/

For Penyffordd Councillors.

Penyffordd Community Council Website

Penyffordd and District Community Council now has its own official website. I think Cllr David Williams has brought it all together. The front page looks pleasing with a photo montage at the top. Progress into the 21st century. It will be interesting how long it takes for it to appear on Google searches.
It took me 9 months to get Lisa's commercial site to be indexed on Google. To get onto the first page of a Google search is a very large task. Internet firms will pay £100's of thousands to get to the top of the first page. So there has been great cheating by "black hat programmers" to get certain webpages to the top. Google's search algorithm is one of the best kept secrets in the world.
Lets see how long the website takes to be seen by Google.

Just to be little there is a spelling mistake on the first page.

It says I can advertise on the site. Since David does not even answer my email's I think this will prove difficult.

My website is free, easy to use with the likes of Cllrs Linda Vidamour or Cllrs Cindy Hinds or David being able to put stuff on every day where the Penyffordd Community Council's new site although prettier than mine will cost money on a monthly basis ad infinitum (might be wrong we shall see) . Updating the site will have to be done by a programmer of html.

I did offer to do one for free and turn it over to the Penyffordd Community Council..................

I thought I'd have a look at prices for the website but the owners are just setting up although they do say they are carbon neutral. I find this hard to believe given all the waffle (most probably wrong on that bit) they manage to put on the main page. It looks like Penyffordd Community Council is their first customer. (wrong see below)
Good luck SequentialDesigns.

Link http://www.sequentialdesigns.co.uk/

Postscript:
Second time in 14 days I jump to conclusions that are not correct
Paul Grant is owner of Sequential Designs. Paul has done work for many companies.

Paul says " we have designed websites for many companies and also been responsible for several of the graphics seen at the Wimbledon Championships 2008 as well as many LTA events, see http://www.crosssports.co.uk for one of our latest websites, if you look in its gallery of wimbledon you will see the graphic design dotted around the Wimbledon grounds we completed last year - just one example of a recent client of ours."

Paul is doing the website as a favour for Cllr David Williams.

Penyffordd Community Council Meeting April 2008

Lisa normally goes but a bad back has put her out of kilter. Now that we are in the digital age it is possible with a few mouse clicks to forward dates to all interested parties. There are kids screaming and shouting on the main road. Whilst the councillors will have been in the meeting about 100 speeders wil have gone passed their meeting room. Will speeding in Chester Rd make it onto tonight's agenda?
Will my meeting with Edwina be discussed.
As usual Clerk Nigel hides the agenda at the Post Office. This came in handy the other month when Cllr Colin Bithell was trying to get Flintshire County Council to take me to court for slander. The agenda items being 15 and 16.

Double Standards at Flintshire County Council

cc: Arnold Woolley Council Leader; Cllr Cindy Hinds ; Mark Isherwood AM ; Carl Langland ; Oldfield, Alun (A/Insp 1371; North Wales Police, Chief Superintendent Ruth Purdie; AM Sargeant, Carl ; Mark Tami MP; Cllr Linda Vidamour ; Cllr David Williams.

Hi Leader . A letter for consideration.

Re Speed Humps plan to halt dangerous drag racing.

I read in The Leader that Flintshire County Council's Director of Environment Carl Longland is considering speed humps to stop illegal drag racing where vehicles compete over a fixed distance in Deeside and Flint. Here in Penyffordd we have rat runners who hurl through Chester Rd each morning by the 100 on a major route to school. At weekends we have motorcyclists doing 140 mph along Penyffordd By Pass which due to illegal exhausts can be heard for miles. Cllr Tony Sharps Head of Roads meanwhile sits behind 20 mph humps in his village of Northop Hall.

Are double standards being applied here? Northop Hall all tied down and Chester Rd Penyffordd a major route to school as open as the A55.

The constant refrain is we have no money but Carl Longland manages to find money for roads that are not centres of communities at the drop of a hat.

regards Colin Hughes

Penyffordd District

Link The Daily Post

I'd put the Leader link down but can't find it. The Daily Post and Chester Chronicle ignore any letters I send. Perhaps the letters aren't good enough. lol

Postscript. Cllr Tony Sharps in Friday's Leader says the money needing to be spent could have been put towards better use on safety in other parts of the county. Quite right Tony.

keyword: Colin Everett