Just desserts

The councils decision to rubber stamp the “performance stage/bar/cafe” on the recently ruined Strand Gardens has obviously raised the blood pressure of a good few folk and traders struggling under the burden of these recessive times.

I have always been led to believe that our elected councillors were tasked with giving us “best value” in any financial dealings and I find it hard to justify any form of “value”, best or otherwise, from this decision, or the Strand developement as a whole.

Sadly, I must also draw some cynical pleasure from the whining of the “Exmouth residents”, who, not that long ago, were up in arms against the Asda on the Exe plans, yet are now reaping what they have sown.

Their sabotage of ASDA’s plans has left this town totally open to a near-monopoly by Tesco.

It was obvious to anyone with even a remnant of an IQ, that The Strand was being set up as an ideal “market venue”’ with its vast swathes of concrete and room for multitudes of stalls, the smell of “cash for the council” was in the wind. Likewise with the bar/cafe project.

Who, one wonders, will be successful in tendering to run such an establishment?

The only thing that is blatantly obvious, is that many hard-working traders have been betrayed by the council, which, like a modern day Sherriff of Nottingham, is bleeding them dry with taxes, while stabbing them in the back with the other hand.

As a town, Exmouth is now sadly getting its just desserts at the hands of public servants, who have been kept in power for far too long.

What a shame the traders will pay the price for the electorates’ lack of spine when voting such people into power.

Ian R Woolger

(via email).