OPINION: Letters to the editor of the Newbury Weekly News
What can be done about petrol prices in town?
Yesterday I filled up my car with E10 petrol at the Tesco Andover supermarket; the price was 134.9 pence per litre.
On returning to Newbury, both Tesco and Sainsbury’s E10 petrol prices are both 141.9 pence per litre.
Tesco Andover, 60 litres cost me £80.94.
Had I filled up at Tesco or Sainsbury Newbury, 60 litres would have cost me £85.14.
How can this £4.20 difference be justified?
I know that the totally unwarranted high price of petrol in Newbury, compared to the rest of the country, has been raised before by other NWN readers, but the Tesco and Sainsbury fuel price rip-off continues.
Shame on them, what can be done about it?
John Watson
Woolton Hill
Pedestrianisation will kill the town centre
Once again the comedic council clowns are raising the spectre of extended pedestrianisation in Newbury.
The existing pedestrianisation never brought shops and trade to the town centre.
Those of us who remember a bustling market town remember flourishing shops that you could park outside and carry your shopping bags to the car.
Bear in mind the population was half what it is today yet shops thrived.
What did pedestrianisation bring us?
The Kennet Centre, and we all know what happened to that.
The retail park came and took shoppers away with the lure of free parking outside the shops.
Since then we have the struggling Parkway with expensive parking.
If only we had elected people who understood the basics of sales and trade.
If you make the shopping experience easy and cost effective people buy but all pedestrianisation has ever done is taught people to buy online from Amazon and get it the next day delivered to your house.
However, the best our waste barons can come up with is block off the roads, making deliveries even more difficult just so people can sit outside the restaurants a bit longer like they do in southern Europe.
Unfortunately we don’t have Mediterranean weather.
If we think of the centre of the town as its heart and the roads as the arteries then Newbury is having a fatal heart attack with the council wondering if they can afford a defibrillator.
John Gotelee
London Road, Newbury
Is the NWN skewed in favour of Old Town?
I see the developer has now written to the Newbury Weekly News, apparently under the impression that his Old Town scheme has almost succeeded (Newbury Weekly News, February 20).
Your paper however has published several letters, including mine, saying Newbury does not want such a development, and would prefer the present Kennet Centre to be refurbished, even naming the stores they would like to see there again.
There must be hundreds more out there not in favour but who don’t like publicity.
According to one of the developer’s assistants at his Friday presentation the building is showing signs of subsidence, leaks etc. (As a keen follower of Homes Under the Hammer I believe such problems can be solved without actual demolition).
Your newspaper seems somewhat skewed in favour of Old Town – ‘Residents give thumbs up to Old Town plans’ (Newbury Weekly News, February 6)/several photos of beaming local residents/pages of pretty pictures etc and glosses over such minor details as provision of affordable housing – now absent from this scheme.
Why no comment on this omission by the council – by law there must be a 30 per cent component in any such development – and why no comment on the three-and-a-half years of chaos and disruption it will take to demolish the present centre and erect the above?
I don’t think people realise what they could be in for.
Joy Nelson
Hampton Road, Newbury
Exhibition at The Base is outstanding
Last week, I visited the exhibition of prints by Yinka Shonibare at The Base and can confirm it is every bit as wonderful as your reviewer wrote (Newbury Weekly News, February 13).
We have indeed been fortunate to be able to experience work of this calibre on our doorstep.
Congratulations and thanks to whoever was responsible for securing this outstanding exhibition.
I hope we may see many more such gems.
Mary Hills
Speen Lane, Newbury
Do you have a relative buried here in 1886?
Since 2009 the Friends of Newtown Road Cemetery have been trying to find out exactly who is buried in the cemetery.
Most, probably all, cemeteries have a Plot Book which gives that information.
It lists every burial or interment of ashes in every plot.
But our Plot Book was lost in the 1950s.
So, as a tribute of remembrance to all the people who were in the Plot Book we have been inserting their details on our website.
Originally, we were told there were 11,500 interred there, now after nearly 15 years research we know that figure should be at least 12,600.
Our information comes from the incomplete Berkshire Burial Index (pre-October 7, 1867, and between October 1, 1884 and January 3,1898 are missing), back issues of the Newbury Weekly News (where would we be without the local paper?), the monument inscriptions (only the rich) and the Burial Accounts held at the Royal Berkshire Archives.
For the past eight years Friends such as Alan Vince and Sylvia Green have been trying to fill the gaps in the accounts.
The gaps are caused by stamp collectors cutting out the stamps from the accounts ledgers!
We don’t mind the stamps being taken but the information on the back of the page has also been lost.
Many hours of detective work, latterly by David Clow, means that our records are almost complete.
But one page was completely torn out, leaving the burials of February 13-March 22, 1886, a mystery.
If you have relatives that might have been buried in Newtown Road Cemetery between those dates, indeed, for any other dates please let David know – (01635) 40188 or clow@ntlworld.com
Ros Clow
Friends of Newtown Road Cemetery
Did you used to work at Opperman Gears?
Opperman Gears in Hambridge Road were a major employer in the Newbury area in the 1960s 70s and 80s.
We are organising a reunion for anyone who worked there or Limitorque or Mastergear.
It’s on March 21 at 7pm at the White Hart, Thatcham.
Please contact me on 07342 274526 or epanting2006@yahoo.co.uk
Any photographs welcome.
Eric Panting
Thatcham
Making people pay to park by phone is unfair
I see that parking in The Wharf and adjacent car parks has been made ‘pay by phone’ by ‘those who know better’ in West Berks Council.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another example of discrimination against people who are uncomfortable with technology or prefer to pay by card or with cash, because they give us no other choice.
Robert Paterson
Sutton Road, Speen
