Two new town maps have been installed by the riverside and Rye Farm car park. They were created and paid for by Pat Bryden in memory of Alan Bryden ‘who worked to make Abingdon a better place’. Alan was often involved in community events, and also served as a County Councillor and Town Councillor.
Here he is leading the Boundary Walk on 1st January 2012 and talking to former Freeman of Abingdon, Mrs Janet Morgan.
What a wonderful legacy, well done Mrs Bryden!
Hear, hear!
Pat and Alan – and other Friends of Abingdon and Ramblers members – were heavily involved in the original Choose Abingdon project which produced 5 of these attractive maps. Two of the others are still in place, at Abbey Close car park and outside Waitrose but the Market Place one disappeared in one of the refurbishments. It would be great if the other two could be refurbished in the same way as these have been and a new one put in the Town Centre somewhere.
Hester perhaps we can ask VWHDC/SODC chief exec Mark Stone to sponsor them from his just revealed massive salary? According to today’s papers at a staggering £333,493 per year he’s the 10th highest council C E O in the country, little wonder then the councils skint
Could we posters on this blog sponsor one? Town map, not CEO 😉
The whole report makes interesting reading, but that is split between two councils. Neither councils have any other employees paid over 100,000 when the average is 6. https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/12th_edition_of_the_town_hall_rich_list
User_lless, if I remember correctly the last “vake” chef exec was Terry Stock? He was allowed to write his own redundancy package (the likes of which most of us could only dream of) on the grounds that merging the Vale and SODC would save council tax payers one ceo salary and thousands more by sharing services etc, then, I think he was on around £110k pa and the ceo of SODC similar, the merger at the time make perfect financial sense, however the £330 paid to Mark Stone could arguably be split in two so we, the Vale, could have our own, dedicated ceo again without any extra cost to tax payer? Think of it from the council tax payers perspective?
Ten years ago we had our own ceo, now we share one for the same cost? Then also we didn’t have a police and crime commissioner, we do now and more recently he’s been given a deputy! Question is what are we getting for these extra financial burdens?
Interesting also that if we are to understand it, The previous CEO was paid off in secret after less than a year after falling out with Barber and Cotton. Barber having overseen many of the disastrous cabinet decisions in the Vale over the last few years jumped ship last May is now the Deputy Police Commissioner (new post) and by all accounts is set to become the new PoliceCommissioner. And all this has gone on with a background of opaque decision making by a small group of cabinet members . often behind closed doors rather than in full council, as reported in the Herald recently. Hmmm is it ant wonder there is little faith in the Vale. A shame because there are councillors and officers who have/are doing their best to make things work. Time to sort the wheat from the chaff …Election Day May 2nd…accountability 🙂 🙂
Time, perhaps, to vote tactically against anyone standing for one of the major political parties as they are complicit -by-association with the conspiracy of incompetence in Westminster. Some of these ‘personalities’ have been voted in solely because they’ve been ‘safe-pairs-of-hands’ (aka forelock-tuggers) and not because they’ve ever exhibited an ounce of initiative. Heaven forfend that they should ask questions of their Party Bosses’ nincompoopery and endanger any future preferment …
Any future vote for an independent will be a vote for sanity.
The high salaries paid for government/council employees sanctioned by the elected is entirely due to the latter being so incompetent that they’ll pay any price for someone to ‘nanny’ them through and hide their lack of abilities … the employees’ ability to ‘hide’ being most valued …
Yes, but what does all this have to do with maps?
Thank you David.
I have just seen this and would like to say one or two things.
First, Backstreeter omitted to say in his post that almost all the photographs on the board came from this blog. Thank you Alastair.
I could not have produced these boards without the help and encouragement of many people including three town and district councillors and in particular the head of the parks department of the district council which owns the land.
The project is not yet quite complete because the riverside board will have two sides. One is the map which will be orientated in a better direction and the other will be all about the River Thames at Abingdon which has been planned by three well known local historians. Look out for this in the next few weeks.
Many thanks to these and all the others who have helped
with proof reading and checking these boards.
Pat
I was very proud to serve alongside Alan on the County Council and these maps are a fitting tribute to him.
Well done Pat for persevering with the project.