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STAND UP FOR DERBY
The people of Derby must wake up and be counted
if they are to save the city from going under the
hammer of private speculators. The list of public
buildings that are being lost through ineptitude,
neglect and plunder is growing at an irreversible
rate of knots. Instead of pooling the ideas of
the public regarding the preservation of their
heritage and the development of the few remaining
open spaces in the city, so they could be used to
their best effect, the city is instead being
stolen away from the public and their views
contemptuously disregarded.
Often, these changes are orchestrated by
development companies based elsewhere, whose
plans to "improve the city" could
certainly be described as questionable. This lack
of judgement seems to manifest itself with every
fresh project started in Derby, aided and abetted
by a council voted in partly in the hope that
they might reverse the disastrous effects caused
by the neglect of previous administrations. Those
people who are being conned into thinking that
what is being done here is in the name of
progress are sadly deluded.
Unfortunately, this latter group includes the
writers who produce the Evening Telegraph
"Comment" column, who, regarding the
Government's go ahead for the "Riverlights
Scheme", described it as an exciting attempt
to make more of Derby's "riverside
potential" and urged that it is not now
drowned in "negativity and cynicism",
as if the people who are against the Riverlights
development are engaged in an attempt to preserve
an antiquated bus station with tenth rate
facilities from being replaced with a new and
shiny one.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The
passionate desire to preserve a celebrated piece
of architecture proves a wish to see it working
as it could do given the investment which it has
been denied. It is entirely the fault of the
administrators who have consistently neglected
the place that the people who have to stand
waiting for buses do so in sub-standard
conditions, often subjected to anti-social
behaviour.
This is undoubtedly a major factor in the
gridlock of cars at rush hour periods, and a new,
smaller station situated the same distance from
the railway station is hardly a positive solution
to the problem. I can only appeal once more to
the people of Derby to stand up and be counted,
before Derby is just another privatised block of
concrete on the map of Great Britain.
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