I think you'll find it isn't and that all but two of your points are inaccurate.
Really? 50% of the shops? How have you arrived at this figure? Plucked from the air with no basis in fact? Somewhere on here
@Gareth stated actual proven percentages some time ago and they were very favourable compared to other towns in the area. I expect he'll be along at some point and put you straight.
I am quite sure that Gareth, as the council's mouthpiece can provide figures to prove anything you like. The best way is to walk through the town and count them.
That's why it's consistently very, very busy on a Saturday since August and why even to the casual observer it's much busier during the week than it was prior to August. Try visiting and see for yourself what the reality of the situation is.
This was the pre-Christmas rush which everywhere experiences, people looking for presents. Look again once the 'sales ' are over.
The market has stalls. Not as many as it should have I grant you, but to say it has no stalls is rediculous.
There are more empty stalls than occupied ones. The bottom end of the market is virtually a furniture storage unit now. And removing a whole section of stalls to create an owl display area does not make the stalls occupied.
And has just been bought and is going to reopen.
The university is closed and fenced off. It may at some point in the future be used as a Chinese boarding school. It will not be open as a university to which residents of Stafford could apply.
Millions of pounds are being invested to update the wards and make them fit for providing top quality health care. Services have been realigned, for sure, but so have they at all other hospital trusts. Yes, the A&E situation is a scandal that must be resolved but to state the hospital is half shut is preposterous.
Major facilities are closed. No proper maternity provision. No proper heart provision. No full time a&e provision. What a&e provision there is is likely to close imminently.
The magistrates yes, but not the Crown Court. How many other similar sized towns have a Crown Court in the first place?
Stafford is a county town. County towns have crown courts. That is one of the features of a county town.
True.
So what? Providing management do a better job than the last lot and provide a quality education for Stafford students, who cares if it's run from Stafford or Karachi? Stafford is so run down that there is not one person in the town capable of running a third rate fe college apparently.
It isn't the main car park. However it does need to be opened.
It was the main car park, and the biggest, until the council sold off the land to make money to balance the books without thinking through the consequences. It is now fenced off and shows no sign of being opened in the foreseeable future.
The biggest supermarket in town is Tesco. The building you are referring to has never been a supermarket, big or otherwise. The building was built as a supermarket. It is too large to be used as anything else
The library is well and truly open. The old library building is closed. Time will tell if it remains so now the Town centre as a whole is picking up nicely. The purpose build library, in Carnegie building, was closed many years ago along with the county library, and most of the book stock disposed of. A token library comprising a small stock of popular fiction and populist non fiction is squeezed into redundant space in the county council offices.
The current cinema is not fit for purpose and hasn't been for many years. The new, modern one being constructed will benefit the town as a whole, bringing additional folk into town to spend money.
The one surviving cinema in Stafford is up for sale and is likely to close. There is no new cinema, only a piece of waste ground for which there is planning permission for a cinema to be built in the future.
I've not been on a bus since 1983 I think so I neither know or care frankly. However, judging by the number of busses still around town I'd hazard a guess that 50% of bus routes have not been cut, unless you have actual evidence that your figure is accurate. For the routes that have been cut, would that be because not enough people were using the service and it wasn't economically viable?
Because you do not use buses does not make them irelevant. Most (i.e. More than half) of the bus routes to south Stafford areas have been cut. Most of the buses clogging up town Centre roads are from out of town passing through.
If you mean the County Council then, it's not that they have no idea, it's that they don't give a fcuk about Stafford and never have.
If you mean the Borough Council then that isn't entirely true.
The borough council is weak, powerless and ineffectual.
Not sure about no interest. No clue though, definitely.
To an objective observer that all adds up to the town looking like it has a bright future overall, with some areas still needing to be tackled.
Your reply is a master class in hype, embelishing the truth and making something out of nothing. Like all hype, it does not stand up to close scrutiny.
