News .. April and May 2011
Since my last Kidsgrove News article we have held two Residents Association meetings and apart from dealing with business matters, our guest speakers presented some very diverse and interesting topics.
The guest speaker at our March meeting was Sydney Hague whose topic was The History and Enjoyment of Wine. Sydney started to learn about wine in his spare time when he was a haulage contractor, learning from books, magazines, courses and seminars, and found that it was a vast subject. He has a Diploma in Wine Studies, became a registered wine merchant in the 1980s and has now spent forty years studying wine.The presentation started well with everyone being given a glass of wine to sample ... Sydney has a theory that you can't talk about wine unless you are drinking it; no one disagreed with that !! We learnt about the fermentation process, wine producing countries, blending of different grapes and the reason for varying shapes and weights of wine bottles. The importance of correct storage and the temperature at which to serve red or white wine was explained with some detail. Sydney finished his talk with jokes and anecdotes, and the Chairman thanked him for a most amusing and entertaining evening ... I hear rumours that we will invite him back again !
Sydney Hague
The first topic for our May meeting was Road Calming Measures , presented by Chris Lewis from Staffordshire Highways. The subject of ‘Humps and Bumps' and how effective they are at reducing the speed of vehicles on our highways was discussed. Numerous statistics were given; one of particular interest to us was that there had been an average reduction of speed along Cedar Avenue and First Avenue of just 5 mph. Residents consider the placement and type of speed bump at the Junction of Boat Horse Road and The Avenue to be dangerous, an issue which is going to be looked at by Staffordshire Highways. Our second speaker was Glynn Luznyi .. Kidsgrove Chief Fire Officer, who gave an interesting talk on the concept of 'The Community Fire Station' which will be opened in September.
Two items of particular concern are high on our agenda at the moment, the first being the potential closure of Kidsgrove Police Station. Whilst we have no direct input to this decision we are keen to support our local Police Team and Councillors to ensure a police presence is maintained in Kidsgrove, preferably at the existing location.
The second issue is the financial cutbacks being made by the Borough Council to the Park Services, which could have resulted in the gates to Clough Hall Park being left unlocked at night. Over the last five years a considerable amount of effort has been put in, both by the police and the council, to resolve problems of anti-social behaviour and vandalism taking place in the park at night; it is felt that these problems would arise again if the park was not secured. A meeting has taken place with council officials and we have been assured that the gates will continue to be locked. The possibility of setting up a ‘Friends of Clough Hall Park' is being looked into; this will help mitigate some of these cuts and ensure the park is looked after on a daily basis. The Residents Association is committed to support such an organisation and will be involved with future meetings.
As usual a full account of the business of our meetings can be found on our WEB site http://www.cloughhall.co.uk/ and if you live in the Clough Hall area you are most welcome to attend our meetings.
Meetings are held at Hollinwood Sheltered Housing, Hollinwood Close starting at 7.15pm.
Date for the next meeting is Tuesday July 12th 2011, guest speaker : - Ged Ryan - The Life Cycle of Bats