Taxi!!

Denbighshire County Council has today announced another little gem. On the same day that they seek approval for a compulsory purchase order for the old North Wales Hospital, they today announce the end of bus services to the rural communities of Prion, Saron and Nantglyn.

In a story which you couldn't make up, they have replaced the old bus service with a local taxi service. They have been working hard on this one though. They have subsidised the service for those who intend using it - as long as they give the taxi company 24 hours notice of when they will need it! Is 24 hours enough? How about a week's notice? After all, they are just yokels who live there anyway aren't they? Unbelievable.

Clearly the service wasn't cost effective as it was but I'm sure even Denbighshire could have come up with soemthing more imaginative than this. I know its radical, but how about a small minibus instead - it might even be more cost effective than a car. Heaven help us, a minibus might even allow up to a dozen passengers. Its even possible that because they come from the same neck of the woods, they might even know each other - they could even converse with each other! No, the council is right. Better to have a taxi come all the way out from Denbigh to take a person to town and them take them back again. This is just the sort of short sighted thinking which seems to define local councils. I'm firmly of the view that they don't actually like the idea of promoting community because every decision they take seems designed to further fragment the already brittle communities we have.

To avoid too much embarrassment (although this doesn't seem to have stopped them in the past), they have also announced that they are paying for even bigger advertising hoardings in case anybody notices the appalling state of the front in Rhyl where the funfair used to be. No offence, but evryone knows what a disgrace it is. You can build hoardings to the moon but everyone will still know. As an alternative suggestion, why not do something about the mess? Oh well, just another day in local government..