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You couldn't make it up!
Recently the webmaster of this site was asked, by a Northampton borough council employee, if the phrase 'Save the Market' on this site could be changed to 'Support the Market'. Apparently 'Save the Market' can be seen to have certain negative connotations, as if the Market might be thought to be dying out, like an endangered animal.
Well, exactly. It is dying. Day by day, week by week, empty stall by empty stall. It is endangered, and never more so than at the present time, when the number of empty stalls in proportion to full ones is higher than ever before.
There is an American saying in the IT world - 'An optimist is someone who does not want to read the data' and this is very true of Northampton borough council's attitude towards the market. They seem to feel any amount of fluffy, foggy, woolly optimism is good, and any sign of hard sharp realism is bad, because it reveals the stark truth, which some politicians try to avoid at all costs.
It is almost a year since the market traders were forcibly moved, and 61% are still taking less than before the move. Several long-standing traders left because of the move, and others have left since. The truth has to be faced: despite the new pop-up stalls, the razzmatazz, the events, and the massive bull-shipping from certain councillors, the market is at a low ebb. The recession has not helped, of course. But aren't markets supposed to do better in a recession? Not much sign of that around here. Perhaps it's something to do with the cost of parking in the town centre. People won't pay much to park during a recession; they prefer to park very cheaply, or for free.
But what of the hundreds of pensioners who could come in for free on the over-60's bus ticket? Well, since the majority of our older customers tell us how they perceive the market has been cut down to half its former size, ("It's dreadful what they've done with it, my duck"), and therefore has a lot less interesting stalls to browse around than it had before, no doubt that has something to do with why they don't come in.
So the market is very much endangered, and it still needs saving, mostly from the people who are throwing a great deal of government money at it, but not much common-sense.
Ask Fitzy next time you go past his stall. Save the Market! Save the Market! Save the Market!
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Holding on...
All of you who are interested in the ongoing saga of the Liberal Democrats closing down the public toilet facilities in Northampton (a real election-winner there, don’t you think?) may like to know that we have been told the town centre Superloo at the top of Sheep Street will be closed at the end of March this year. Previously our market traders’ committee had been told it would not be closed until the ‘community toilet project’ is ready to be phased in. So far NBC seem to be keeping very quiet about any such ‘community toilet project’, which leads us to the conclusion that it does not exist. And will they open their council office loos, like Richmond has done? Read on.
The community toilet project is the Liberal Democrat name for a scheme that entails shops agreeing to throw open their private staff toilets to every member of the public who wants to use them, including, presumably, the drunken ones. (“Oh, what a frightful mess! Where’s the cleaner? Mr Chapel, are you free?”).
The recently demoted Woods is enthusiastic about this sort of scheme, because he read that it worked very well in the well-heeled London Borough of Richmond. Some 80 plus shops in Richmond have been persuaded to open their toilets to the masses, given an average sweetener payment from the council of around £600 per annum. Each shop has a nice blue and white roundel on its front windows or doors indicating its availability, and you can obtain maps of different areas of Richmond showing where these shops are, including maps downloadable from the Richmond council web site:
http://www.richmond.gov.uk/public_conveniences
It has taken Richmond council about three years to fully implement this project, and in addition to some 83 ‘shops’ they have also opened up to the public the toilets in 15 different council offices throughout the borough. We do hope that NBC will be doing the same, as well as the 83 shops, of course. When you look down Richmond’s list of ‘shops’, most of them are actually public houses and cafes. There are not many newsagents or tailors or estate agents or butchers or fashion stores. A small retailer would probably want at least a couple of grand a year to compensate for opening up his toilet to the public, particularly on Friday and Saturday evenings, considering the risks to security and cleanliness.
Since before last spring NBC are supposed to have been asking shops in Northampton to join their ‘community toilets’ scheme, but so far we haven’t seen even a short list of volunteers. Perhaps NBC aren’t even offering the £600 sweetener - who knows?
Anyway, we can only speculate on what form the sign on the shop windows will take. Perhaps fairly discreet, like the ones Richmond uses. Or do we need a more explicit one here in Northampton, the meaning of which cannot be mistaken? And how will one enquire about this new facility when entering the shop? Will there be a prescribed form of request? The polite: “Oh, do excuse me, but where is your rest room?” The direct: “Do you have a council-funded toilet here, Jimmy” Or the desperate: “ Where’s the kharzi mate, I’m bursting?” Or the drunken request, which is perhaps better left to the imagination. The opportunities for a particular kind of humour will be endless; “I’m just going in for a quick one” will take on a whole new meaning.
The availability of this much-needed facility will no doubt greatly enrich the retail experience in Northampton Town Centre, particularly for shop staff - if it happens. At present, it doesn’t look like any replacement toilets are going to happen, it looks like NBC want to quietly close down the Superloo and hope nobody notices. But they will be in for a great deal of protracted criticism from both the public and the market traders over the months ahead, and it won’t go away. When the General Election looms the loss of public toilets will be dragged out and discussed with particular vigour. Would you vote for the candidate of a Party that closes down public toilet facilities? Us neither.
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