Forum Diary - Updates, Rumours and General Comment

Thursday 30th November 2000
I can't believe it's a week since the last update, where does all the time go? Must be all the things that are happening ;-)
Actually, having had a couple of days off, I've been catching up on the ineveitable paperwork, but it seems that there are things afoot, the healthy people from the PCT now have a Health development worker who shares her time between Gorton and Ardwick. There is, it appears much work to be done, but rather than taking what is already 'known' about the state of general health in the community, there needs to be a long hard look at the situation as it really is. Hopefully we'll be working together on this.

I have noticed that nobody has posted a message on our new message board yet. Please post if you have anything to say, even if it's only 'hello' :) Just click on the messages link on the navigation bar to the left.

I have also put up a new link to the Bullying online website. For anybody with a need for advice or information to help deal with bullying, this is an excellent resource. I'm only surprised not to have seen references to this site before today, so go have a look, and tell others.

News just in tells me that the Gorton Wardens scheme has now been approved. In all, this is good news and should prove an asset to the area. Well done to all involved, we'll post more details when we know them.

Wednesday 22nd November 2000
The AGM was a great success last night, thanks to all those who attended, and a welcome to all our new committee members, as well as to all those who have chosen to give us another year :) Tom Russell gave a good account of New East Manchester and IMHO, the best explanation of the border question yet. Interestingly, we have a point of agreement on the fact that the borders are not immutable and that co-operation is the way forward.
Which, on the whole, is what we are aiming for.
It was also nice to hear realistic assessments of what might be achieved and an honest admission that there is much which cannot be achieved in the short term. We cannot help but applaud any strategy which looks ahead for ten to twenty years, as this kind of farsightedness, going as it does beyond the possible tenure of an individual or group of individuals, says much about commitment to the community rather than to personal glory.
We've seen that co-operation can work on a large scale with the Learning centres bid and if this is approved, which it certainly should be, I would hope to see more projects of that scope taking shape within the area.
On the European question, it seems that the East Manchester regeneration (and similar projects everywhere) could indeed be deemed illegal from an EU perspective, even though it is doubtful that the ruling was designed to scupper projects for which the EU is, at least in part, providing funding. The word is that this mistake will be rectified eventually, and that, although potentially a problem, it will in no way affect regeneration projects. We certainly hope this is the case.

Aren't large corporations brilliant??
I firmly believe that we do not complain enough. People are, in general, happier to just walk away, to use another shop/restaurant or whatever and the provider of bad service will never know why s/he is going bust. It is our duty to enlighten these people thereby saving them from their ignorance.
Unless, of course, the provider is a large corporation. It seems they're very interested in knowing why they're losing large amounts of money, it just seems that the department which deals with this is in another universe to the department which continues to dole out the crap service.
Yep, you're right, I've been plagued with telephone calls from customer service people lately, working for what is presumably the Alpha Centauri arm of a well known telephone company. The more I tell them how much I hate the service, the more people phone me up. I persevere, hoping that they will actually take note and improve the service, but, alas it is not to be. I suspect that all this is just a ploy to sell me stuff on the back of a pleasant voice and some faux satisfaction gathering, but we never get to the latest special offer somehow, so I can't be sure.
I would change to another provider, but experience dictates that competition does not spawn better service, and anyway, I now see it as a bit of a challenge, to actually get some positive response from these people. I thought I'd cracked it a couple of weeks ago, when they sent a chap with a laptop to interview me. He asked me a lot of questions and went through a complex routine with his computer (well it was in the name of market research) designed I suppose, to scientifically elicit my real views. He laughed a lot and asked me if I really wanted him to pass my answers on, but despite assertions that he should, I've never had any further response, the service is still awful and doubtless they're still chuckling on Alpha Centauri :).
Strange thing though ... I'm having terrible trouble connecting to the net lately, must be something to do with fact that the modem cable began to glow red hot and the card caught fire, when was that? ... Oh yeah, the day after that chap called, odd coincidence or what? ;-)

Tuesday 21st November 2000
Well, I'm getting the hang of these regular updates :)
Today's the day of the Forum Annual General Meeting and the New East Manchester strategy presentation. I'll post more about those tomorrow I think. It'll be interesting to find out whether the EU will declare the East Manchester regeneration strategy illegal too :)
Funny, but it's completely at odds with the White Paper which was launched with so much publicity this week, so we'll watch with interest. Despite our differences with the East Manchester Boundary Choppers, we would hate to see regeneration put in peril anywhere in Manchester and will campaign vigorously to ensure that it is not. Well, that's it for now, more later...

Wednesday 15th November 2000 (Updated)

It's been a long time since the last update, but we're back now with a vengeance. The site has been upgraded again, this time by somebody who knew what he was doing - many thanks to Ray and Ian at Webtapestry for the redesign and implementation and to the Acorn Fund for seeing the potential in what we had already done.

Those of you who have read the last edition of the Newsletter will know that there is a lot being done in Gorton, despite precious little help from outside. Coincidentally, just after we wrote that article, we were contacted by New East Manchester Ltd. the regeneration company whose borders have hitherto excluded the greater part of Gorton, with a view to their talking to people in the area about the regeneration framework.

This is an important advance and we hope it heralds the beginning of some serious effort to help the people of Gorton to carry on with what they have started and to bring some much needed investment into the area, although there is some way to go yet. As we understand it, the borders are still drawn to exclude the larger part of Gorton and the emphasis of the presentation will be on what kind of collateral benefits that the regeneration of East Manchester will bring to those on the outside.

What we would like to know is why the borders are drawn where they are, why they appear to be so immutable and on what basis some 27,000 people can be excluded from a regeneration framework, even though these people live in wards which feature prominently in the list of the 2000 most deprived wards in England. (In fact, Gorton South ward is the second most deprived ward in Manchester, according to the Index of Deprivation, much further down than all those included in the framework and in the bottom hundred on the Index.)

Elsewhere in Manchester, problems of regeneration are being addressed, problems of social exclusion are being addressed, problems of unemployment and poverty are being addressed by numerous well supported initiatives with keen workers and plenty of funding.

Would somebody please like to inform us why Gorton is excluded? We would specifically like to know who redrew the boundaries for East Manchester to skirt around Gorton North and Gorton South, what was the rationale behind it, especially in light of the fact that these two wards are not included in any other initiative, and why these boundaries seem to be absolute with respect to Gorton and not to be crossed at any cost? We cannot see one good reason why this should be so. If anybody out there can cast some light on this let us know When we find out, we'll be happy to share it with the rest of you, I imagine it'll make interesting reading

For anybody who is interested, The New East Manchester Regeneration Framework Presentation will take place on Tuesday 21st November between 3.00 and 7.00pm at Gorton Community Centre on Abbey Hey Lane, Gorton.

The Gorton Community Forum Annual General Meeting will take place also on Tuesday 21st November 2000 at the Gorton North Neighbourhood Office, Garratt Way. The Speaker will be Tom Russell, Chief Executive of New East Manchester Limited, who we hope will shed some light on the questions asked above.

Another issue which has not been resolved is the Hyde Road Problem. We've written often about the stretch of this busy road between Chapman Street and Reddish Lane and the lamentable lack of intent on the part of the City to improve it. We have been told that there are no plans to widen this, although there are plans to introduce bus corridors which will only exacerbate the problem. The official response to this is that the City Council are committed to reducing the amount of traffic on the roads in favour of Public Transport. This is laudable, except for the fact that the opening of the M60 appears to have put more traffic onto Hyde Road, despite assertions to the contrary, and the same Council has just approved a development no more than a couple of miles away which will see a heavy wagon transiting the equally busy Ashton Old Road every three minutes between 7.00am and 7.00pm five days a week.

But the really sad thing is that despite warnings, the accidents keep on happening at Reddish Bridge. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is at least one incident per week on that spot, I personally have seen three in the last six weeks. We hear that last week there was a fatality there. How many more people have to get killed before the City Council admit that there is a problem ?

My, they are at it this week, I've just had a very concerned member of the community pop in to tell me that the Tub (Neptune's Kingdom leisure pool) is to close. Actually we were aware that something was going to happen, but now we know what. We know that the Tub has been beset by problems, but the staff have been working hard to bring people in and succeeding. By closing the Tub, the Council is removing another community resource from Gorton, a resource which will not be replaced, it seems, so anybody wanting a swim will have to go much further afield. I'll update this when I know more. If you want to save the tub, or think it should be closed, let us know.

Talking of community resources, it seems that the redevelopment of the District Centre is at a standstill, and this time it's not the Council who are to blame, it appears that all the major players are ready to move, but the whole thing is being held up by the CoOp who are taking the art of dithering to new heights. This situation has been going on now for some years, and we seem to be no nearer to a conclusion. The market is still in decline, and it seems that it will not begin to pick up until there is some hope of redevelopment. We have been assured that there will always be a Market, and to be fair, Manchester Markets honoured their commitment to upgrade security and are adamant that the market will not close, but it is difficult to see how the market can survive at all unless some kind of redevelopment goes ahead. Again, I'll update this as and when I can.

Talking of community facilities, we can offer Net access to members of the community who need it, so telephone us for details on 220 7362.

If you have any comments, criticisms articles to submit or ideas for the site or the printed Newsletter let us know