Tag Archives: Ashford

Talking about the town

Posted on by
3

Today I was lucky enough to be part of a session at Ashford Borough Council on regenerating the town centre.  I’m not going to use this blog to repeat everything said there’s indeed, although it wasn’t made clear what rules applied I’m fairly confident Chatham House rules would suffice – but attending the session got me thinking again about what I should want out of my home town.

Ashford’s situation has changed a bit in the time that we lived here.  When we arrived, Ashford’s Future existed, with grandiose schemes for making Ashford truly Best Placed in Kent.  But a change of government funding policy and the overall impact of the economic downturn has put paid to that.

About 18 months ago, I was asked to speak at a Council awayday about my thoughts on Ashford 2030- the vision for the town in the next few years.  While my thoughts remain in a similar vein now, I’m aware that nothing can really happen unless funding is available, and in a recession both the public and private sectors find this hard to come by.

Now, Ashford has achieved Portas Pilot status.  This means funding is available for some things, and a snapshot of these shows that the priority areas are thought to be making the most of the market, connecting the designer outlet centre with the town so that the town can share in the estimated 5-7 million visits made there each year, and seeking arts-based development (something the neighbouring town of Folkestone seems to be doing successfully).

So I promised a few thoughts that flowed from all this…

1) Why come into town? Who is it for?
Today, rightly, the focus was on footfall. From my perspective, wrongly, it focused solely on footfall in the town centre rather than looking at the circumstances affecting that…a town centre accompanied by an outlet centre, an out of town park with restaurants and the cinema, ringed by the third biggest Sainsbury’s in the country, two Tesco extras, a Waitrose, an Asda… These things affect the High Street as much as what is actually here or not here because all of these things can be described as coming to Ashford but they are not complementary and do not feed each other.
By ignoring these factors, the towns similar to Ashford information generated felt wrong – it did not seen to bring up those with similar challenges (Swindon, Maidenhead, that sort of place) – just those with similar footfall.

More interesting is the demographics, information also potentially accessible via the 2011 census. Folkestone may well be prospering by matching its retail to its demographic- Primark, TK maxx, Peacocks. Ashford, it seems has a large, affluent, family-based group of consumers who are not being sufficiently catered for in the town. While I might feel that the fashion offering is generally either too young or too old for me, it seems the silver surfer generation feel that it is not for them either. And as the two social groups with most disposable income, this is not a healthy situation for a town.

Tenterden has many of the more upmarket retailers and those stores have indicated before that with a store there and another in Canterbury, they wouldn’t also be looking to have one in Ashford. So simply increasing market share of available consumers is not a simple matter.

Everyone always talks about pop up shops, but while they are OK if you already have regular shoppers, I can’t see how they attract new visitors or, more importantly, attract long term investment in an area. Similarly the trend for street food has not yet reached Ashford, but while street food vendors have lower overheads than hospitaIity units in permanent buildings,that lack of permanency means no long term legacy when they decide to move on.

And as for hospitality in Ashford, independents seem to keep disappearing but while there are pubs and coffee shops, I’ve found little for the mums and kids beyond fast food. I like the occasional McDonalds as much as the next woman, but what if you want to have hummus in preference to chicken nuggets?
The “nice” restaurants are outside the town centre, in Kennington, Tenterden, Mersham-le-hatch, Mersham, Bodsham… But if you’ve got to travel anyway (all of these are car journeys from Ashford) it is also in Wye, Canterbury and Folkestone’s regenerated harbour – and all of those are on the same high-speed train line as Ashford. Destination food that might lead me to spend time in the place I get it from. That’s one thing Ashford is really missing.

2) Transport: a mixed blessing
In identifying competitor towns, the tendency is always to think local. Canterbury, Folkestone, Maidstone, and slightly further afield Sevenoaks and Tonbridge Wells might seem like the natural alternatives, but for a day out shopping many Ashfordians head to Bluewater (40 minutes by car, the same by train-and-bus combo), or to London.
While there have always been commuters in Ashford, the arrival of a 38 minute high-speed link to Stratford and St Pancras International means an influx of relatively affluent families looking to spend London wages in cheaper and more rural surroundings. Season tickets at over £6000 a year are such a chunk of income that many look to get their money’s worth. So weekend trips are effectively “free” and shopping at Westfield Stratford is only half an hour away with a massive food court.
Also, without retail at the station in Ashford, I often shop on the way home from London so my wages are gained by M&S food hall at St Pancras rather than in my home town. This is daft.

The problem though is also more local. I always laugh when monorails are mentioned, remembering the conman in The Simpsons, but seriously the 50p bus ride between the outlet and the town is not doing much to encourage interchange and a fifteen minute walk under a damp railway bridge is not really going to cut it either. So feature transportation might be a worthwhile investment – something that means the kids pester to be allowed to do it (a bus ride to the hospital yesterday was described by my son as a fun day out so this is not as ridiculous as it may initially sound). And a monorail might well do just that.

3) On foot, on street parking or online?
If I need something quickly, I’ll pop into town. Particularly if I have to have something in my hand that day.
But it depends what I want. So while apparently there’s no reason why a town Ashford’s size should be sustain a music store, if there’s no hmv there anymore for that last minute birthday present, I don’t go elsewhere, I hop onto Amazon and get it delivered to the recipient’s door. Even if it does mean I won’t have it immediately.
If the small retail units in town mean that what I need (maternity clothes, big bras) are not stocked, then I’ll go online. Some retailers in town now offer to do this for me (hats off to Debenhams) which at least guarantees them the sale and I’m no worse off as delivery to home is free and only takes the same time as ordering it from their website at home would take.
Internet shopping is after all simply a glorified form of mail order, but with access to a range of products no high street could reasonably be expected to stock. But it is a threat to the high street.
I don’t think about driving into Ashford – I live within five minutes of one part of the town centre, but many people cite parking charges as prohibitively high. The lesson from Swindon seems to be to ignore the clamour to raise revenue through high parking charges and recognise that an unattractive offer becomes even less attractive if you are charged excessively to experience it.

4) Ashford is a European town
When we look for ideas we so often look to America. Some of the idea as concerning alternative rent and rate models are certainly US in origin. But the nearest non-London provisional centre to Ashford isn’t Southampton (as the Meridian TV region would have us believe). It is Lille. And getting there takes less time than you might think from Ashford, given our transport links.
No self-respecting French town would dream of talking itself down. There are syndicates d’initiative everywhere, and everywhere boosts its heritage and local produce.
Ashford is uniquely placed to take a similar approach. We should embrace the railway heritage, mediaeval buildings, 760 year market charter…
We should have an artisan farmers’ market selling local produce – the sort of thing the sadly departed Rachel’s deli sold and Evegate has a bit of. Quality is key if you want to attract regular shoppers.

Conclusion
The classic problem with Ashford is that to get it right it would be better not to be starting from here. There is a leisure park where the commercial sector should be, empty buildings and a planned commercial quarter where that leisure park should have been linking the station to the town. A new much welcome and needed John Lewis at home is going into a greenfield site outside the town rather than the vacant space between the town centre and the railway.
There’s so much space that could be used for retail but hard to know which stores are intending to fill them. And Ashford has 50% more occupation of retail by the charity sector than ought to be expected in a medium town with this population.
But we are where we are.
I think we are finally asking the right questions.
But this is a complex problem, and we need to make sure we are not reaching for simple answers just because they don’t cost as much as really investigating what can done and taking some calculated risks.
Who knows, it could make this medium sized market town really a lovely place to live.

Lighting up Ashford for the future

Posted on by
Reply

 

(image of International House from www.luxmagazine.co.uk’s article on the light installation)

As we walked out of the station at Ashford International last week, there was a TV camera focused on an office block opposite the station entrance.
The office block in question – International House- has a multi-coloured light display on it.  We had no idea why, but it is rather pretty – as you whizz into Ashford at high speed, the display catches your attention.

Watching the local news later, all was revealed: you can watch the item here.  Essentially SEEDA (the South East of England Development Agency, shortly to be got rid of) owns the building and spent £200,000 setting up the art installation.  The building is now full, bringing jobs to this area were they are badly needed.

While not exactly the Angel of the North, this is a striking piece of urban art.
It is also worth noting that this is a dark and windy corner of Ashford, an ugly office block between a car park and the station. Station areas are notoriously ugly, so bringing interest and excitement to an otherwise unremarkable building is a clever idea. If it can be solar powered lighting – it isn’t but could it be? – that would be for the best too.

It turns out that the issue was made public by the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
Now don’t get me wrong – there are probably many things done by local government organisations in Kent that deserve close scrutiny, particularly in straitened financial circumstances.
But it looks like this artwork is an investment in Ashford’s future, and with the organisation Ashford’s Future being disbanded at the end of March 2011 (a few people based in Ashford Borough Council simply will not be able to give the same impetus or resource to strategic planning that this innovative public/private organisation tried to) anything that can attract investment to Ashford has got to be a good thing.   Employment is a sensitive issue in Kent with Pfizer closing, and Ashford a designated growth area in desperate need of more major employers.
While the coverage in The Mirror that gets a mention on the TPA website has a “they should’ve spent the money on nurses and doctors” comment, it is noticeable that the comments from the locals on the BBC piece seem to have been a bit more nuanced.  And ultimately the more positive comments are coming from people who are taxpayers too.
I just wonder whether this perhaps wasn’t the best target for the TPA?  What if Ashford’s taxpayers thought a bit of public spending was an investment in them as well as quite pretty?

Justice? No, it’s criminal lack of foresight

Posted on by
1

image from www.yourkenttv.co.uk

I know this is an age of austerity but it’s amazing what these cutback look like on the ground.  It’s also worrying the lack of joined up thinking amongst those with the power to make the cuts.

Don’t worry, I’m not naive.  I know there’s no masterplan, no overview of how and on what cuts are made.  That’s the problem in believing in local decision-making though, is that you do kind of expct some sort of consistency in the local area.  I’ll show you what I mean.  As you may have noticed because I’ve blogged about it a bit, Ashford in Kent is one of the growth towns in the UK.  Here’s what Ashford’s regeneration agency “Ashford’s Future” has to say about it:

Key facts about Ashford:
The fastest growing town between London and the Continent
Plans to create 31,000 homes and 28,000 jobs by 2031
Around £2.5 billion planned investment
37 minutes to London via the high speed rail link
Paris in 2 hours and Lille in under 1 hour from Ashford International
Exciting shopping opportunities in the extended County Square shopping centre and the Designer Outlet
Some of the best leisure facilities in the South East including a multi-million redeveloped leisure centre and international standard athletics stadium
Excellent and expanding education facilities including a multi-million Ashford Learning Campus for further education
2 million sq ft of commercial office development
Office rents 68% lower than in London and 40% lower than in the South East
House prices 28% cheaper than in London and 14% cheaper than the South East average
Fantastic countryside, including part of the Kent Downs area of outstanding natural beauty and extensive areas of woodland
Easy access to beautiful countryside, charming villages and the south coast
And – 85% of Ashford residents value the quality of life in Ashford

So what’s the problem?  Out on Saturday, I heard the story of a 15 year old, wrongly arrested for shoplifting in Ashford Town Centre. As ths is town gossip, I’d be delighted to have facts corrected, of course.

The police cells at Ashford police station have been closed.  This means that said 15 year old was apparently taken all the way to Folkestone for questioning. The way the story was told to me, once it had been acknowledged that it was a case of mistaken identity the 15 year old was released.  But he’s in Folkestone, 20km (12 miles) from where he was taken.  Fortunately he was sensible enough to point out that he was under 16 and get the police to get his parents to come and collect him.  But carting a 15 year old 12 miles from home on a mistaken basis, with no obligation to return him to his original location?  That doesn’t seem like an intended consequence, nor in line with the standards of child protection we’d expect from public authorities.

So then we learn that the closure of the custody suite is to be used as a justification for closing Ashford’s magistrates court.  Describing the court as “underused“, the money saved by not doing maintenance recently is also given as a reason for transferring magistrate court functions from Ashford to Folkestone and Dover.

But a letter in this week’s Kentish Express (not online, will see if it is still available) from a former Magistrate sets out the cost errors in the assumptions that this would save money, including the extra fuel and travel time of all the Ashford-based solicitors alone (NB there are only a couple of solicitors firms handling court work in Folkestone, and none in Dover).

One local solicitor pointed out the propensity of magistrates to grant bail to those kept waiting long in the day.  Another firm, Griffin Law, which is involved in the campaign to save the courts says:

The closure of a [...] Magistrates Court in Ashford is particularly ill thought through, given the government’s intention to grow the population of Ashford and surrounding villages.

And that’s exactly the point.  While it might be a short term saving to close the older magistrates court based in Ashford, it is Ashford, not Folkestone, which is well placed in terms of transport links (road and rail), Ashford that is designated the growth town, Ashford that is to expand so substantially.
It is therefore not the case that the population of the south east kent area is best served by moving the justice functions to Folkestone. Even now, Ashford is bigger than Folkestone.

This is a short-sighted decision, exactly the sort of thing that the level of cuts needed in public spending are likely to bring about, but without the careful holistic thinking that we might have hoped would be in place given the amount of time and warning the various different public bodies involved have had to think about it all.

It would also be great to see Ashford’s MP taking a leading role in fighting this sort of nonsensical decision that could potentially affect quality of life in Ashford.

Oh, and the international standard althetics complex Ashford’s Future mentioned?  That’s not being used properly – no compatitions etc. being attracted to the area – so that’s in line for closure too.  What a waste.  The Facebook campaign on this one is here.

Traintastic ideas for High Speed 1

Posted on by
Reply


Eurostar image from Wikipedia
 

As you know, the HS1 high speed route has a lot of importance for me.
Not only is it my route to Brussels – vital for work – but also to London. So with HS1 in the news today, some thoughts…

1) Commuter Routes

HS1 covers both Eurostar services to the continent (not “to Europe” please, rail spokesperson on the radio earlier, the UK is in Europe geographically as well as politically), and  high speed train services to the Kent coast.

At present there is overcapacity on the North Kent route, but by contrast at rush hour standing room only on some Ashford trains.  With the number of Ashford households due to grow by 20,000 in the next 15 years, this is a ridiculous situation.

It is also deeply annoying the frequency with which the trains are late leaving Ashford in the morning due to the coupling up of two train sections coming from two different places – if one half if late, or the coupling technology fails, everyone’s journey is affected.

And it is not obvious why there’s an Ebbsfleet only service running during the rush hour with very few passengers.

Similarly, not all of Kent is served by the high speed service, and the most obvious loser is Maidstone.

So – deep breath – here’s some ideas for solutions to these issues…

Firstly, stop the pretence that the North Kent route is ok – a six-car train would probably suffice at most times of day.
Then, stop pretending that Ebbsfleet needs the level of dedicated service it currently receives.  The “build it and they will come” approach is very noble, and the potential catchment area may be wide, but the demand is just not there at present – was the station really just built to attract more public transport visitors to Bluewater shopping centre?
So that gives us potential carriages free, and a train pathway that is not full.
So let’s address the Ashford problem.

Why not have that random Ebbsfleet train go through to Ashford at rush hour?
If this service were available, it would make the frequency of trains to Ashford comparable to that of Guildford and with a similar journey time – and thus really attractive to commuters, bringing more money into the area.
It would also mean another train starting at Ashford, neatly avoiding the coupling problems experienced at present.
And if the two halves of the current train could run separately, 10 minutes apart, it should be possible to have 6 trains an hour in the rush hour rather that one every half hour.
Now that’s a good commuter service.

And what about Maidstone?
With the regeneration and redevelopment work there, there are more households expected there too – but the commmute is now inferior to Ashford’s current service.  So, build a Maidstone Parkway station on the high speed line.
Yes, I know, recession, no public spending, austerity, hard times, etc. but if we don’t use the public sector money that remains, in partnership with the  private sector, then

2) Ticketing

I pay a vast amount each year for a Gold Card season ticket even though I work part-time.  It only costs a little more to do that than to buy individual tickets each day for the days a week I work and means I can use it on non-working days or at the weekend if I need to.  But this is still a silly situation.
Another silly situation is that this super-fast high speed line issue paper season tickets which fail on a regular basis. Sometimes on the day of issue.  It’s not keeping the tickets with mobile phones or BlackBerries that does it, it’s the ticket gates, at Ashford, St Pancras and mainly on London Underground.  Reissuing costs me time, and staff time.  Letting me through the gates instead takes queuing time and staff time, and if no one’s there I might miss my trains.

Both of these have an easy solution – use Oyster, or an Oyster-compatible system.  The technology is already in place and in use for much of my journey.  My experience as an Oyster user in London was that failure was rare, replacement speedy and generally a much more pleasant experience than the current one.
And electronic ticketing (with a paper receipt) would surely allow me to by an annual ticket valid on certain days only.

3) Attitude to ticket holders

A month or so ago, I had a week in which on the Wednesday, my train suffered birdstrike.  I was in work about 4 hours late.  That same week, on the Friday, my train suffered electrical failure and eventually, after threats of being shunted etc. we made it at a crawl to Ebbsfleet where we “detrained” (at last, a useful for that station!)
Forms to reclaim the cost of the journey as compensation were pressed upon us.  But when trying to do so, my husband was informed hat as a season ticket holder, no compensation was due.  So for the privilege of spending several thousand pounds a year, they bank your money and assume your goodwill in the case of delays?  That’s not on.
If the majority of commuters have a season ticket, then the financial incentive to run on time is greater if those passengers are also due compensation in case of delay.  That’s basic economics…

4) The Stratford problem

The problem of Stratford has been covered in other blogs.  Merely calling a station Stratford international is not enough to guarantee that international trains will stop there. 
We know that having a private company operating transport links can be problematic for local populations when the commercial interests of the operator and the socially and economically necessary for the area supposedly served do not necessarily directly coincide. 
But essentially, the problem of Strateford is that it’s not quite enough in Canary Wharf to be convenient for the city gents based there, and again, as with Ebbsfleet it seems to have its success or otherwise linked to a shopping centre wit the suggestion that the shopping centre’s owners might be instrumental in its success or otherwise. 
But there’s the possibility that a rival to Eurostar, say ICE from Germany, might stop trains there and at Ashford rather than St Pancras and Ebbsfleet?

5) High Speed 1′s infrastructure

If it is true that Network Rail is the most expensive track and infrastructure maintainer in the civilised world, and a competitor might be invited in with HS1 as the guinea pig, then it’d be great to know that the contracts for all this were genuinely the best, and not simply to the lowest bidder.  In fact, I’d like to see the Maidstone Parkway idea built in from the beginning…

I cannot pretend that these ideas are mine alone.  But if Ashford’s Future, the borough or county council, or anyone with an influence on these things is looking for a more detailed view on any of this, there’s a contact form on my blog here, please do get in touch…

A sporting chance

Posted on by
Reply

(picture from www.parentdish.com)
Just heard an interesting piece on Women’s Hour about why so few women are involved in sport in the UK.

To be honest, I’ve never really enjoyed sport.
I always came 4th (out of 4) in the running races at primary school.
I was always last or second to last in being picked for teams.
I was always allocated the Wing Defence role in netball and the equivalent in hockey.

The only time I really enjoyed participating in anything sporty was when we breifly introduced tag rugby at school (turns out I’m stronger than I look, but don’t like getting covered in mud).
I used to sort-of enjoy tennis, but I’m left-handed.  This means lots of people tell you that you will have a big advantage if you can build a strong backhand, but you get stuck on the far side of the net and given occasional attention while the “normal” righthanders are coached through the next bit of the normally righthanded coach’s plan.
I also liked it when my House discovered that, given the way points were given for sports day (5 points for taking part, 10 for third, 15 second, 20 first, plus extra points for decent times and distances) meant that if we all did as many events as possible, no matter how badly we performed we stood a chance of winning the House Sports Cup. And we all applauded each other.

After school, I didn’t really do sport.  I did musicals at university, learning dance (as it turned out, the beginning of 10 years of ankle trauma).
I did yoga – brilliant, and genuinely leaves you aching.
I tried pilates (awful, repetitive) and as a bit of a departure, and inspired by a PhD student working at the same office as me who was a third Dan, I tried Tae Kwando.  And damaged my ankle so badly (originally damaged by the tap dancing) that I ended up on crutches.
So I learned that, as I’m not motivated by competitive sport,  the often mocked “it’s the taking part that counts” really means something.
What wrong with that?
As far as I can see it’s the sporty, competitve people telling me that you have to be the best and that excellence is all that put me off sport all together.
Rather than dimiss my view on this, perhaps if there was a chance to take part in something, building skills.
Women’s hour spent a few minutes on a mums-organised non-competitive netball team – no scores kept, everyone changing positions and teams.
I wonder if I’d get bored though, as it does rather emphasise the pointlessness of it all.

Now of course, time is an issue.
I have a Wii Fit but get little chance to use it.
I work three days a week, walking to the station in the morning and dashing back to collect my son and babysitting until my husband gets home, which can be really late.
Weekends are filled with trying to go out as a family, seeing friends and family, mowing lawns, cooking, and trying to combat the tiredness the rest of the week engenders.
On the days I don’t work there’s playgroup, play dates and chores – housework and paper work, all of which take time.
And I don’t work full-time as I actually want to spend time with my son, and there’s precious little exercise that we can do together and would actually get me fit – swimming with a toddler is babysitting in water. And if I stick him in a gym creche, I’m hardly spending time with him, am I?

But I’m way too fat now, and need to do something about it.
Given the time factor, it’s probably going to have to be something both a two year old and I can do together.
I’m wondering about both of us trying horseriding, which should be relatively easy to find lessons for in our new semi-rural life?
Or may be the local rugby club does a mum’s team (or could do one)?

If you know of a fun, amateur sports group in Ashford that doesn’t require you to be any good to take part and caters for toddlers and their mothers, give me a shout!

Some things I learned about “real” life, work and childcare…

Posted on by
3

image from http://www.boloji.com/women/0103.htm, please do read the excellent article there

I’ve met so many lovely, intelligent women this week.  We’ve been talking about working and childcare.  (This is probably because the common theme to the various groups I’ve been meeting is children rather than because it’s a particular preoccupation…)

It’s been a real eye opener.

In my working life, I am surounded by highly educated, ambitious people.
Most of them live in London. Many don’t have kids.
They pretty much reflected my real life when I was newly married and lived 20 minutes from the office and everyone I knew was terribly high powered and some were (self?) important and the office would not be able to do without them.
The other people I met then were living in a tower block with 5 children with at least one called Kayden or Precious.  But I never really knew them, I just got chatting to them at the Health Visitors’ clinics as we waited to have our babies weighed.

That’s no longer real life.  I mean that in the sense of, if I woke up one morning and the office wasn’t there any more, I wouldn’t be walking past the site of it each day.
Real life for me is in my hometown.
And that means that real life people are the ones I now meet.
The musings below are widescale generalisations.  There’s no stats included because I’ve been chatting with new friends, not interviewing research interviewees.  Becuase of the way things have worked out socially, I’ve not really met single parents so that side of things doesn’t feature.  And I guess it is right to focus on those in most need.
But I wonder if it’s given me access to a group of women who don’t often get heard about and so their norms get overlooked?

The women I meet here that don’t work seem to have three or more children.
And there’s a lot with three children.  I’m beginning to wonder if the logistics of three are actually slightly simpler than two, because the stats show that once you pass three, one parent is then pretty much forced to take on the role of the stay at home car driving, child-oriented parent while the other brings in the money…

So most women here work.
But I’m not meeting high powered business women – presumably I need to do that by talking to them either at their workplace or on the train to London when I commute rather than behind a pushchair in the town centre?
No, most of us here seem to work part time for someone else.
Some are, say, working a few hours in the evening when their partners can do the childcare.  Or working the lunch shifts in town to fit in with the school run.  Or volunteering. Or supply teaching.  Another has a husband in the sort of job where she’s expected to take on the pastoral side.
I’ve met so many teachers too, often married to other teachers, fed up with the 9-3 jokes and wondering how to fit their own kids in.
So many have stepped down, either in terms of their actual jobs or their ambitions.  Local jobs count.
Most think I’m insane to have a roundtrip commute of over 100 miles.

Most of the women I meet work part-time. We know there are disadvantages to this in terms of lifelong earnings, pension, and career prospects.
So why not do more hours?
The response is who’d look after the kids?
The primary concern is not the long term but the day to day logisitics.

But surely the answer here is childcare?
Well, when we talk childcare, the response is that, even with the staff pretty much on minimum wage, the cost is too high.  We’re talking nurseries really.  Talk about nannies and you’ll hear what a guffaw sounds like.

I tested the idea that seems popular in feminist circles that actually even if the cost is the same as or slightly more than what one working parent can bring in, the parents should take the hit now, so to speak, for the sake of the future earnings potential and pension provisions.
This was greeted universally with horror.
The issue might make sense to economists, who apparently were touting the same approach to saving for pensions on the radio this morning, but the main question from the real people I know is what on earth do the people who suggest this think we live on that we can “take a hit” in the short term?
I’ve heard stories of taking in lodgers, the ruination that going a few pence overdrawn the day before being paid and losing your whole next day’s pay to the bankcharge. I’ve even heard about not being able to afford to pay into the state pension, let alone a private one.  And yes, that’s even with tax credits in play.  But what can you do if the available jobs don’t meet the cost of living – a living wage if you like?

There is also an issue of childcare availability.
It’s not really a question of provision for 3 and 4 year olds, although the thing that upsets parents is not getting the place they want for their child when parental choice is the most touted concept in education.
I know some mums taking their children to two different schools each day because they’ve not got places for both at the same one.  Not only is that disruptive for a family, but it has an impact on whether parents can work. Logisitics matter.  Not to mention the carbon footprint issues of this sort of thing!

Actually, work-wise, the availability of wrap-around care is the most difficult – a limited number of nurseries are available for children 6 months plus and fewer still offer the full wrap-around hours, and even fewer of them are conveniently located for commuters.
I’ve only had one actively recommended to me by the parents who send their kids there – and that’s the most expensive, naturally.
And the school-level wrap-around care provision appears not to be at every school but for some it is at a centrally-designated school a good drive away!

But finding a childminder to wrap around other nurseries or schools is also a nightmare – finding someone you are happy to leave your kids with, who has space for children of the right age, and who takes and collects from the right schools is not simple, even with the information available from Kent children and families information service…

Family matters
Because leaving your child with someone is not just a matter of that person having a paper qualification.
You have to be happy that your child is looked after as you would wish, and often even the best is a compromise at heart because it’s just not you doing it.  Is it any wonder so many of the parents I’m meeting seem to seek to avoid doing this?
And while mostly we all seem to be begging time from the grandparents, we shouldn’t be counting on it as who knows when it might suddenly not be available?
And there’s the big unspoken secret too – parents actually want to spend time with their children, see them grow up, see the firsts, help them learn and develop.  However much childcare is available, ultimately many parents are going to want to raise their own children directly if they can.

So what are people doing about all this?
The majority of people I’ve met are married or in marriage-like long term relationships.  That affects the approach that’s taken.
Basically, those that can, seem to think as a couple – whose job or career takes precedence, how to handle the logistics, even to the extent of working out how to live with each other’s pension provisions.
For the majority of people I’ve talked to about this, they recognise that this isn’t ideal for them as individuals but they see it as part of the reality of being a family and having children.
While with one eye on the divorce stats this may not seem wise for individuals. Just as pre-nups are not popular or common in the UK, I think there is still an innate social (small “c”) conservatism and a dash of romance in the country overall.  We don’t want to think about marriages failing.  And we don’t want to plan on the basis that ours would be one of them.
So families balance the childcare between them, prioritising local over high paid, working out sometimes complicated logistics, choosing between them who gets the career rather than both trying to in order that they get to see their children rather than have someone else raise them.

But that raises a small question for me.  If families are doing all this, then how will the need for better childcare provision that would allow them to do otherwise be identified?  And which companies are going to do that research with parents in order to see if there’s a viable business?

Unwrapping this one is going to be a bit more complicated than even I’d thought…

Yes, it’s worth seeing

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s get that out the way, up front.   It is very funny indeed.

We’ve just come back from Mark Watson’s pre-Edinburgh warm up show.
I’m not going to give away the material really, because that’s his. 
Even if I did though, it’s a preview show so it’ll probably have changed a bit by the time he gets to Edinburgh. 
It is still a bit of a work in progress.
( But we’ll hold him to the three quid thing!)

So, what’s it like? 

Well, when we arrived I still had sunglasses on, and that was a bad move as they’re prescription ones. 
I made my way to a seat and was ferreting in my bag for my normal glasses when my husband says “the warm-up guy is already on stage!”
Once bespectacled, I pointed out that this was actually the headline act himself (but without his glasses which make him more recognisable).

Very excitingly for a social media geek like me, he was commenting on well, stuff, on a big screen behind him.  
Hooray I though, a Twitter wall!   What’s the hashtag to join in?
But actually it looked like a normal Word document on screen. 
Never mind. 
I suspect it’ll be a Twitter wall by the time the show hits Edinburgh.
On the plus side, he was actually on Twitter and was answering Tweets from the audience.
On the minus side, it seemed I was the only person in the audience actually on Twitter. 
It made me wonder – is Twitter a 30-something thing?
He got a bit of material out of the first one (have you ever been to Ashford before?) but my combined spelling-and-predictive text problem on the second one I sent caused a bit of confusion…
Maybe it reminded him, maybe it was me feeling a bit sensitive about it, but he did actually have some predictive text jokes in his routine even though he called it out of date. 
But then, who uses predictive text these days except me?  Clearly I need a much hipper phone…

My husband and I (I say as if I’m the Queen) had both had tough working days, so absolutely the best compliment I can give was that I forgot all about my rubbish day and just laughed for a hour. And my husband stayed awake.  For the dad of a toddler who works long hours, that’s high praise indeed. (My toddler doesn’t work long hours, obviously, he just stays awake all evening).

Bad language?  Not much more than I’d routinely use (sorry Mum!), but I’m not sure whether it was a bit toned down for li’le Sha’e…
Having established that the audience age range was 11-67, Watson asked 11 year old Shane if he had ever heard much bad language.  
This was met by the best audience response of the night: “he’s from Ashford!”

Later on you could see why Watson had been a bit worried.  One whole sketch is built around the C-word and its application on Watson in the comments on a YouTube clip Mark Watson.  I hate that word – but it was a funny sketch.  And if he is a c***, does that make his show a vagina monologue?  (Sorry again Mum!)

But poor Ashford’s Future… you can make us twice as big and much flashier as a town, but essentially we all start from the perspective that Ashford’s a bit shit.  It’d be great if we could all feel a bit better about ourselves.
Still, at least we’re not Maidstone…

And that’s pretty much the show’s theme – what can we do to make a difference in the world and feel a bit better about it all? 
While you might expect a bit of the Watson environmentalism here, the focus is (currently) on one of the biggest changes anyone can have in their lives – impending fatherhood. 
Just for a moment though, with all the talk of death, I wondered if he’d found religion.

I mentioned the show is a work in progress and what it lacks at present is a clear ending – yes, the Mark Steel-style approach of taking something local-but-a-bit-away and getting a slightly snobbish laugh about it (yep, it was Maidstone) worked, but that story was an afterthought.   The actual last scheduled story was a bit weak.  a shame as the rest really brings home the bacon…
(I wonder if there’s a different special word each show?)

Final thoughts – we arrived 5 minutes after doors opened and were practically the last people in. 
Ashford has a comedy club but it is only held once a month at the Ashford International hotel.  And this show (held, weirdly, at the local private school) was absolutely packed out.
Mark Watson finished by trying to remember where his tour was going to visit, but there was nowhere in Kent. 
There never is once comedians get properly successful – Tunbridge Wells at a push if you are lucky, otherwise it is the 60 mile trek to London. 
But it’s obvious from tonight – this town is starved of the chance to have a good laugh!    
So Ashford’s Future is consulting on what we need in the revamped town and what we need is a decent theatre that can be a comedy venue, get the touring plays, Peppa Pig Live, lectures, proper gigs with bands we’ve heard of – that kind of thing. 
But if we were focused on comedy and music, then that differentiates an Ashford venue from the Marlowe in Canterbury.   
There’s no real comedy festival in Kent (not sure there’s been once since The Mighty Boosh played the Hop Farm near Paddock Wood in 2008?) but given the Continental climate, and huge distance from Edinburgh, that’s got to be worth considering… 
Come on, we need our bread and circuses.

Churchquest 2010…

Posted on by
Reply

Well, we’ve been here long enough and done enough unpacking that we can’t avoid it any longer…  we need to find a church.
There’s probably a lot of people that think – why bother?  Surely if you’ve done without one this long you’ve found there are plenty of other things you can do on a Sunday morning?
The truth is that both my husband and I are better people when we are going to church regularly.
We’re nicer to each other, which makes for a happier house, and we think more about other people in the comunity and beyond.
So we’ve started to try to find a church that we’ll like as much as St Mark’s Battersea.

The problem is that St Mark’s is a really amazing church.
It’s big, for a start.  It’s an urban church to which people are willing to travel.
It works in the community (running a kind of half-way house for young offenders, running Alpha at Wandsworth prison…) and people that are helped by the church often join the congregation.  The morning service that we used to go to was so popular that they actually had to split it in two, and even then there are enough children attending that the groups could be split by school year. The music – incorporating both band and organ – was  uplifting, and while primarily Graham Kendrick/ New Wine/ GreenBelt worship type songs, has more traditional hymns mixed in too.  The sermons were based on the reading of the day, really explaining the gospel helping you to go away are really read the bible for all its worth.

Ashford, for the size of its population has a phenomenal number of churches (something at work here, perhaps?), so there’s plenty of options to try.

There are a few things which influence the church we’re going to go to:
1)  we need the church to be a member of the Churches Together in Ashford partnership (this is important for primary school places);
2) we want it to be within about 15 minutes of home (means we get integrated into the local community, actions undertaken by the church for the community should be taking place where we can actually see the results, increases our chances of making friends in the local area, also means my husband can stay in bed later on a Sunday morning);
3) we’re looking for a service as similar to St Mark’s (and indeed my previous churches The Bible Talks at Christchurch Mayfair and Holy Trinity Brussels): liberal evangelical, encouraging thought, questioning, Bible-based preaching, catchy music…
4) we’re looking for a welcoming, friendly, mixed age service, with good children’s groups;
5) I’m looking for a homegroup that is on a day I can attend and where my son is also welcome… or where I have the possibility of setting one up that runs like that…

Two further thoughts.
Firstly , we heard this morning (more of which in a seperate post) that churches preaching to unbelievers need really good sermons, and churches preaching to believers need really good prayers.  My problem is that I still need both, not because I’m an unbeliever, but because I still pray for help with my unbelief…
Secondly, CS Lewis in the Screwtape letters and in setting out the fundamentals of Mere Christianity really goes to town on the idea that you should go to the nearest church of whatever domination and congregation, and not seek a church full of people like you.
Well, possibly. But it’s easier to get my husband to come to church at all when he feels like he belongs.

So off we go on Churchquest 2010.  I’ll keep you posted…

A happy customer?

Posted on by
2

I’ve been quite impressed so far with the high speed train service from the southeast coast to St Pancras. 

We’ve had a few problems, but HSS1 is the service that Southeastern seems to prioritise – it’s been the one that’s kept running as far as possible in the snow (18 December was a nightmare) and when there’s strikes. 
But it’s not all smooth running:
- it’s hugely expensive (“only the price of foregoing a daily coffee and croissant” I think was the slogan early on?);
- the trains don’t always couple properly at Ashford, and both halves don’t always make it on time in any case;
- at really high speed I feel just a bit bumped about and travel sick…

Despite these things, my overall impression is positive.

To digress for a minute, actually I was fuming yesterday about the press coverage of a campaigner from the north Kent coast complaining that there were loads of empty seats on the 07.12 train from Ramsgate. 
Yes of course there are!  One advantage of the high speed train is that the journey is shorter – so people can get up a bit later and still make it to work at the time they used to on the old service.
Besides, there jolly well ought to be empty seats at the start of the line. 
We need them when they get to Ashford - rush hour trains are often packed and on the way home this evening there were people sitting on the floor in the door areas.  Ludicrous when the service is effectively first class throughout.
I’m terribly sorry for the people who’ve had services cut – the people of West Malling in particular have it tough, and presumably their house prices will decrease without a regular train service to attract commuters.  They should indeed fight to restore services that have been cut because in rural areas, public transport like the trains can be a lifeline. 
But that does not of itself mean that the high speed service is A Bad Thing.
As for the claim that no one is using the trains – this service has only been running properly since December 2009, and the towns and villages where the high speed service stops are only just being identified as commutable.  Of course there are people that see commuters themselves as A Bad Thing, but that’s a whole other story. 

But faced with what is actually a pretty good service, the small things really get to you. 

The worst thing for me is the paper tickets.  I got used to using Oyster in London, and the smart card (with paper ticket receipt just in case) was far superior to the wretched cards with magnetic strips.  It only failed once, and I was able to ring the Oyster helpline, and have it up and running again the following morning, with the one paper ticket I’d had to buy to get home refunded with no fuss at the nearest tube station.

But paper tickets are another matter. 
I’ve gone through four so far – that’s one every 8 weeks since we moved here (and I only travel three days a week!  That’s 24 days use per ticket on average…)  When one of these failed after two days I simply didn’t bother replacing it for a month.  I just showed it and the lovely staff at St Pancras, Ashford and on London Underground just buzzed me through.  This was never a problem although it was a source of stress to me if I was running a bit late.

The weirdest thing was the day that a ticket machine at Victoria underground swallowed my ticket.  It gave me someone else’s goldcard instead (I guess it could have been doing this for a while…).  No one was available to help, so I went to the tube ticket office.  They couldn’t help and directed me to the mainline station.  They told me they couldn’t help and directed me to my home station.  My home station accepted the other person’s goldcard but couldn’t just issue me a replacement ticket, I had to buy temporary tickets until a manager could agree it.
Eventually he did, and I was given a ticket for a refund.
Then we moved house and I lost both forms and tickets. Oh.

I found them again a few weeks ago.  This was well past the 28 day limit that Southeastern sets, but as the replacement tickets are not cheap I applied the Which? rules on seeking redress.

Let me share my top tips:
- no matter how unfair it seems, companies are allowed to set limitations on refunds – acknowledge this;
- stress that you are a regular user of the service/ product in question;
- set out the circumstances clearly and concisely that meant that you could not comply;
- note that, to you, the out of pocket expense is serious;
- point out that although there is no obligation on them to act, taking the above into account, they could consider refunding you as a gesture of goodwill.

I received a letter saying that they will refund me and the cheque is in the post :)

I wanted to tweet my thanks to Southeastern, but they’re not on Twitter yet…

I tried to send tweet @ Southeastern trains to say thanks for goodwill refunding of my tickets after deadline. But they’re not on, so can’t!
7:17 PM Apr 22nd via web

Things that would make the service better? 
- running the two trains that couple at Ashford separately, giving a service Ashford- London every 15 minutes rather than every half hour;
- switching to a smartcard system compatible with Oyster that can also be used pay-as-you-go on buses in Ashford (surely this should be part of franchising arrangements?  If not, Ashford’s Future should insist on it);
- sorting out the irregular bus between Stratford International and Stratford stations, which often gets my husband there too late for the train;
- getting the train into Ashford on time before 6pm so that I can meet the limit on my childcare timings (if the train’s late, I can face a fine);
- similarly, not retiming the 1710 to arrive those few minutes later – it’s essential it gets in on time (or slightly early!) as childcare options in Ashford are so limited… 
- resisting the temptation to maximise profit by stuffing us all in like sardines – we’re charged a premium price, we deserve to get the premium service for it!

Safe as houses?

Posted on by
Reply


Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved]   © Copyright Tony Grant and
licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
I had an interesting phonecall earlier today.  My mobile rang at work and someone asked for me by my married name. That almost never happens…
 
It turned out to be a Radio 4 researcher who had read my blogpost on moving to Ashford.   The consumer affairs/ personal finance show (to go out later this year) is to be fronted by Alvin Hall – the finance guru with the fancy bowties.  The edition they called me about was on buying houses – whether the babyboomers have got all the ideal housing stock, whether people are just a bit impatient and ought to save up more and wait a bit longer, that kind of thing.I repeated my usual joke that I had with friends in London when I was in my 20s.  We used to say that the only way we’d everget onthe housing ladder was to marry someone about 10 years older than us that already owned property.  Of course that’s exactly what happened for me in the end, but it wasn’t actually a plan! 

So while I may not be the ideal person for that show (about 10 years too old, owned a flat previously so not a first-time buyer, and I’m a “new commuter” rather than a struggling local, at least at the moment), there are a few interesting things about housing in Ashford:

  • there’s one couple (Fergus and Judith Wilson) that own lots of Ashford’s rental housing stock, although they are gradually selling it off – that should mean more first-time buyer homes on the market;
  • the high speed train may well encourage others like us to move out here from London as opposed to Hertfordshire, Surrey, Essex etc. when looking for more space, decent schools, bigger houses;
  • 29,000 more households are to be established in the Ashford area – but what sort of households are intended?;
  • there’s a difference between the villages and the new estates and south Ashford in terms of the type and cost of properties.

I asked the researcher how they got hold of my mobile number – after all, I don’t publish it, not on here, not on any social media sites.  I was told that having found my blog they looked up my ISP.  Investigative journalism skills, eh? 
But a tiny tad scary if you’re not used to the rather comfortable almost-anonymity of the internet and the idea that your blog is really only read by Russians who want to offer you viagra and a few lovely eurobloggers, of course.   

I suggested that they might be best hanging out around Park Farm Tescos to find their ideal interviewees. 

So, if you are someone or know someone who fits the bill and wants to be on a radio programme, leave me a message here.  I’m sure the same researcher will pick it up… It could be quite exciting!