The State Of Breezehurst Drive!

Whilst I was sad to see houses being built on the site of the old Bewbush Leisure Center it was not a huge surprise that this would happen and to be fair Buchans Mead looks like a lovely development of housing.

My issue is with the state it is leaving Breezehurst Drive in with the works traffic constantly up and down the road. There are pot holes all over the place that were not there before the works commenced and as this is a major route for Fastway route 10 would of thought better care would of been taken over the road.

Now we all know that the state of Crawley's roads has long been open for debate and quite frankly enough care is not taken of them, if you drive around other towns the roads are in no way the same state as Crawley have had to put up with at times.

The more I think about it the more I feel that if I was buying a home and went to view these houses the main road would be a major factor to me that it is in such a bad state of repair and lets be honest is only likely to get worse.

Now for the common sense bit surely when planning approval was granted by our "Wonderful Councillors" perhaps a condition should of been put in that the builders were responsible for the cost of resurfacing the road once construction was completed.

Not to mention the bus stop on Breezehurst Drive closes to the roundabout at Bewbush Shops that is in the most dangerous position I have ever seen for a bus stop! How there has not been an accident there I do not know.

County Mall Please Sort The Access Issues!

So as everybody knows I am from Crawley and at the weekend I went into town to do a bit of shopping and decided to park in the Mall which is not usually where I would go but wanted to get the car washed!

What the hell is going on that they have closed one whole entrance the nearest one to the Car Wash! So after a quick bit of research it would appear this has been done to guarantee footfall to Primark to get them into the Mall!

Now I would like to say I have no problem with Primark and surely people will still go there if they need to but people who do not are just annoyed by having to walk the entire length of the mall to get to any of the shops at the other end. Put that alongside the fact access has never been the greatest with only 2 lifts serving the Car Parks and now we are forcing people through one door.

Then I realised the static stairs that used to be by the lift have gone as well! Surely this is just far to much of a compromise to get Primark in the Mall, I shop in Primark and usually park away from the Mall but still go in there so the increased Foot fall can not be that essential to their business.

With the current improvements taking place to the mall which I feel are long overdue (just wish the new parking payment system would hurry up!) surely we could switch the escalators back to go down instead of up outside Boots given that they can not add more lifts for people now the building is built they should stop trying to herd people around like cattle!

The Heart Of The South! Anyone Else Miss Our Local Radio Station?

Anyone growing up in Crawley would of been familiar with this picture! It was in every rear window of the cars on our roads!

Radio Mercury WAS Crawley and the surrounding areas local radio station and most of the people presenting on the station were from Crawley and knew the area and what local people wanted to hear. It broadcasted first from Broadfield House before moving to Manor Royal and was eventually owned by the same group that own Heart FM and what happened was Mercury was merged into Heart Sussex (Formerly Southern FM) leaving us with a radio station whose only shows that are for the region are Breakfast & Drive the rest are syndicated shows across the whole of the Heart Network. Now I use the term local loosely as its very Brighton centric.

Radio Mercury was the place we went to as kids on a snowy morning waiting to hear if your school was open or closed, it was what was on in the car to hear ACTUAL traffic news for Crawley (Imagine that now you could actually hear on the radio that Tushmore Gyratory was at a standstill and go another way!).

The adverts on the station were for local companies that wanted the business of people from Crawley and as residents we were more likely to use as they were local and easy to get to! Mercury attended every charity event going on in the town and were fantastic at getting people going prior to a charity run or at a Fireworks Event.

Since Mercury was closed down I have heard a few things that suggested a new radio station was on the way but nothing has ever come of this. I have very fond memories of us having this radio station when it was independent and enjoyed Graham Torrington's late night love on many occasions.

I would love for someone to bring back a truly independent radio station for the people of Crawley as I think the town and surrounding areas could certainly do with this and are surely big enough to sustain it the same as we did for Mercury for so many years.
 

Gatwick Second Runway....Opposed By Council! Well Done Council More Common Sense!

I have lived in Crawley all my life and have grown up with the Airport on my doorstep and at one time or another most of my family have been employed at the airport and even more relatives who have been employed in Crawley as a consequence of having a major international airport on our doorstep.

Gatwick needs to expand to bring Crawley back to its former glory as I remember a town that was vibrant before Gatwick started dwindling down and we have a need in this country to expand our airports I travel Europe widely with my job and I have been in less busy airports that have 2 runways!

The council have annoyed me by opposing the second runway at Gatwick as they are not looking at what this would bring to the region and they are opposing this based on the infrastructure but surely the second runway would mean that the infrastructure would be upgraded to accommodate this. The jobs this would bring would mean more people living in the town and paying council tax so I don't see the problem (I will address the residents issues shortly). Everything takes so long these days to get anything started in this country let alone get it to the stage of completion. I have always found it strange that Gatwick is not more of a hub for Crawley bus routes to ensure workers have easy access to the airport when I started working at the airport in 1999 there was no way of me getting there except for a taxi it was not until 2000 that metrobus introduced Gatwick Direct and now 15 years later the number 10 has to go through town and the 200 is from Horsham but Tilgate and Furnace Green remain completely u reachable by bus to the busiest single runway airport in the world. Would this be allowed in any other forward thinking country? I read a comment earlier that said we are meant to be a democracy so where is the vote for local people to decide on a second runway rather than a bunch of councilors deciding what it is people want/need!

As for the residents they are beginning to frustrate me equally with the concerns over noise and aircraft movements. Firstly there can not be to many of these residents that didn't move into their homes before the existing airport was built and more importantly probably go on holiday and like the fact Gatwick is on there doorstep and use it when it suits them! I get that if you live on the flight path that noise is an issue but guess what you could move if it annoys you that much and maybe I am imagining it but aircraft have got substantially quieter since the days of DC10's and Tristar's taking off from Gatwick and will only continue to be more noise and fuel efficient as development of new aircraft continues.

I live near Gatwick and to be honest do not even notice the noise anymore bizarrely I notice more when they stop taking off for a runway closure or thunderstorm then I do with take offs every few minutes, I travel regularly and love having the airport on our doorstep.

That said Gatwick Airport are not perfect I feel the new owners have ripped the sole out of the place and even closing the drop off area to people being collected and having the cheek to charge local residents for the privilege is a real Liberty if you ask me as even the mighty Heathrow allow people to be picked up.

Surely though this is all a of the Governments own making let's not forget it was them that made BAA sell airports off and what they did was cause Gatwick and Heathrow to be competitors rather than sister airports and now they want to hold one back from competing on a level playing field, I can not imagine this happening in any other business!

Ultimately I feel this should be something that goes ahead and I think the airport should consider funds towards a new Crawley hospital as surely we should have more than one major hospital near an airport in the event of an accident East Surrey has enough new patients with all the housing being built.

There you go that's my 2p's worth not that it will matter unless more people use there voice to force change and a vote!

Broadfield Morrisons Repeat an Old Trick!

So it was announced earlier this week that Morrisons have had a terrible trading period and the man at the top has done such a poor job that he is leaving, however the other side of this story was that they are closing down 10 loss making stores and one of those is Broadfield!

Firstly I feel this is a huge blow to the town as Broadfield is one of the more accessible parts of town via various bus routes for people who wish to go shopping without going to the town center and with Tesco and Sainsburys larger stores not the most accessible from the Broadfield/Bewbush side of town its a great location. Also do not forget that Morrisons spent a significant amount of money in 2014 to acquire and redevelop the service station at Broadfield and operate that as one of their own Petrol Stations and Convenience stores (the future of the service station is still not confirmed). It seemed to be a key thing for Morrisons to secure a service station (as they do love a money off coupon for fuel! And so do we as Customers!) surely it is to far away from the new store in the town center to still be useful as a Morrisons?

Now the most important part of this story is that Morrisons are not quite as cutting edge as they think as this is a clever little trick they stole from Sainsburys! For those of us old enough to remember many years ago Morrisons, Iceland & Superdrug at Broadfield Barton was one big Sainsburys store and was fantastic for people, when they constructed the current Sainsburys at West Green the Broadfield store was promptly closed down (sound familiair?) It seems that Morrisons used Broadfield to test the demand for them in the town then constructed a new Superstore, I would like to say I have used Morrisons at Broadfield and the Service Station but not the new Town Center store as I use Broadfield out of convenience if I am going to a larger store I would go to Sainsburys or Tesco before Morrisons.

Now the final part and the bit that makes me angry about the whole thing is as I have pointed out this is a situation which has occurred in the past so what have the people working for the good of this town done to stop this? As far as I can tell absolutely nothing! Here is where common sense comes in you see having had this happen in the past surely the council could have negotiated that in order to get planning permission for the larger store Morrisons needed to commit to keeping Broadfield open for a certain period of time afterwards, its easy to work out that if you build a new store for a certain period after opening that people will try the new store out but then will probably return to their usual shop of choice. My theory (and its just that a theory) is that the council were so desperate to redevelop the area in the Town which Morrisons is now located on that they just wanted to get it done rather than worry about peoples needs!

A Background To The Naked Truth!

Firstly welcome to Crawley's Naked Truth and I thought I should at least tell people a bit about why I decided to write this blog! So here goes nothing!

So I was born in Crawley Hospital (When you could be born there) and have lived my entire life in Crawley and care passionately about it and find things on a near daily basis that I find inconceivable people in power fail to spot being an issue and also are completely oblivious to when they are sat in the Town Hall deciding on the future of this town most of these seem to me to just be a complete lack of common sense from the people elected to run the town.

I would like to add that I am not affiliated to any MP's or political parties and quite honestly have no preference and make my own personal voting decisions based on who I feel has the best interests of the town at heart however I do find it amazing that these people who are elected to run the town by the people continually fail yet manage to keep their jobs (unlike most of the working population!)

So my aim here is not to rule the world or stand for any kind of role involved in the running of Crawley but just to make people think and see if people in this town share my frustrations!

I hope you enjoy reading this!