Three stories from the past week in Rugby:
Anglers hit out at plans to close fishery at Draycote Water (Coventry Telegraph)
The fishing will be closed while building work is carried out at the visitor centre. However, the last time there was building work there, the fishers were allowed to carry on, with temporary accommodation supplied. One thing I notice is that there’s no hint at all in the story of restricting the boating side of leisure on the lake, which seems a little unfair.
Polish family may move out (Rugby Advertiser)
This is, if the suspicions of the family are true, a terrible story. Intimidation of a family with a young child because they are foreign? Even if that’s not the reason behind chucking something through a window, the act is pretty despicable.
Former mayor James on the road to yet another honour (Rugby Advertiser)
Very nice for the guy, but is this really on? I’m not really in favour of a municipal honours system for local politicians, with Freemen and Aldermen and all that, but I have no problem with naming the odd road or building after people, but I had always thought that it was inappropriate to name roads after people who are still alive. Checking the web, it seems councils can make up their rules, but most either explicitly rule out naming roads after living people or point to the national guidelines which also say that you shouldn’t. Some councils have brought in a policy to use living people’s names (notably Swindon), but I couldn’t find a document in Rugby BC’s website to say that they’d adopted such a practice.
I notice a few roads named after people in Rugby, and I’d assumed that Webb Ellis, Brooke and Arnold had been long dead before they got roads. I see that Bruce Williams Way was renamed after originally being named after a councillor who’d been involved in getting the Leisure Centre built. Mind you, looks like in 1932 the Town Clerk got a road named for himself (Biart Place), so perhaps it’s a local thing.
There’s a story I heard about a development in Crawley where many new roads were being built, and loads of names were being proposed. The town always had a history of theming the names of road groups, so there was a cluster named after royal houses (Tudor, Stuart, etc), one after actors and theatres, and one named for former Lord Mayors of London. In the last group was Skinner Close, for one of the two Thomas Skinners who’ve held the post. Lots of people complained about it, thinking that the (then Labour) council was proposing to name it after firebrand MP Dennis Skinner. All complainants were pointed at the correct Mr Skinner and the name was destined to be kept.
Until the people at number 4 raised a slightly more compelling objection…
The middle of the line 
November 24, 2009 at 20:32
in brief:
– Serves em right, fishing is boring anyway. If they don’t want to spend time looking at their wife they shouldn’t have married em in the first place. Next.
– Undoubtedly despicable. Perhaps if the perpetrators are found we could chuck THEM through a window. From the 12th floor. Next.
– Don’t think it really matters. Most people have no clue who these people are that they are named after anyway. Well apart from you of course. Angling for Richards Road in Crawley are we? 😉 I’ll ignore the penis joke.
That is all.
November 24, 2009 at 20:44
How dare you ignore my knob gag. It’s the height of comedy, as someone with your moniker should very well know.
Does it matter if roads are named after living people? Dunno, it’s just that I’ve always been told you can’t, and it seems you can with gay abandon up here. There is, of course, the possibility that it might increase the public feeling that politicians are working in their own interests rather than those of the electorate.