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Textile Conservation Centre

Saving the Textile Conservation Centre – a Winchester centre of excellence

One local story that hasn’t received the national coverage that it deserves is the University of Southampton’s plan to close the world-renowned Textile Conservation Centre at the Winchester School of Art.

The Textile Conservation Centre is not just a centre of excellence. It is the worldwide centre of excellence in textile conservation research, education and practice. The majority of trained textile conservators around the world studied at TCC.

Amongst other things, they’ve saved pirate flags, Nelson’s sails, the elephant man’s hat, Marlene Dietrich’s dresses and Freddy Mercury’s trousers.

A petition against the closure has been launched on the Number 10 website and has already been backed by more than 1,500 people. Please sign it if you can.

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Categories
Crime

101 – why is the Home Office cutting it?

I’m really surprised by the news that the Home Office is planning to pull the funding on Hampshire’s 101 service from February.

This is one of those endless Home Office initiatives that actually seemed to be working!

As explained on the Government’s website:

101 is a 24-hour number provided by your police and local council to deal with community safety issues, including certain non-emergency crime, policing and anti-social behaviour.

101 is for:

  • vandalism and graffiti;
  • noise nuisance;
  • threatening and abusive behaviour;
  • abandoned vehicles;
  • dumping and fly tipping;
  • drunk and rowdy groups;
  • drug related anti-social behaviour; and
  • broken street lighting.

Locally we’ve been encouraging people to use the 101 service to report anti-social behaviour. I know from speaking to PCSOs and local police officers how helpful it can be. It’s not perfect – there have been some teething troubles – but it’s better and simpler than what we had before. We should be trying to improve it further, not cut it.

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Littleton Mark Oaten Post Office

Littleton Post Office – a strong case against closure

Just back from an excellent meeting about Littleton Post Office in Littleton Village Hall – exceptionally well chaired – and very constructive. Around 200 people were there to question two senior post office managers about the plans to close Littleton Post Office.

A wide range of very strong points were made challenging the assumptions behind the proposed closure – particularly the assumptions made by the Post Office about how easy it would be for people using public transport to get from Littleton to Stoney Lane, the assumptions about how easy it is to get there on foot and the assumptions about how easy it would be for people who use cars to park and use the Post Office (particularly while Waitrose is being built).

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Litter Parking St Paul Winchester

Parking, litter-picking and tidy-mindedness

A good session helping Winchester Litterpickers at the station this morning. They meet every Monday at 9.30 a.m. on the Station forecourt – anyone who wants to help is very welcome – equipment will be provided if you don’t already have a litter picker of your own. It’s both amazing and depressing how much litter can build up in a week – and very satisfying to help pick it all up.

The Litter Pickers are a great institution and make a really important (and noticeable) difference to the city: it was excellent that John Green-Wilkinson’s role in setting up the Litterpickers was recognised in the New Year Honours with an MBE.

I was invited along to their annual party on Friday night as one of their occasional helpers – but unfortunately could only get there towards the end due to a public meeting at Peter Symonds about proposed parking restrictions in Weeke.

This was set up by a local resident, Steve Feeney, who also set up a helpful website to explain the issue.

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Categories
Bus Cuts Eleanor Bell Hursley Michael Portillo Romsey Sandra Gidley Tuition Fees Winchester

Bus cuts, tuition fees and Michael Portillo

Martin Tod, Sandra Gidley MP and Cllr Eleanor Bell campaigning to save the Romsey-Winchester bus service

Up bright and early yesterday to join the campaign to save the Romsey-Winchester rail-link bus. This entailed getting the 7.04 a.m. bus to Romsey, putting on a Santa hat, and travelling back at 7.35 a.m. with Sandra Gidley and a bus full of protesters from the Save Our Bus campaign – before collecting signatures on the concourse from local travellers. Eleanor Bell joined us as the bus came back through Hursley.

It seems hard to believe that, so soon after all the County Council’s previous bus cuts, we’d be seeing another but cut – this time from South West Trains. As with all the bus cuts so far, it puts pressure on the environment, parking and congestion and severely impacts off-peak travel for people without cars (generally pensioners and the young). In this case, it will also cause major problems for people commuting to and from London before and after peak hours. It follows on from SWT’s off-peak fare hike at the beginning of the year and the upcoming closure of the travel centre and makes a mockery of the various promises from the County and the Government to have a joined-up travel system.

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