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Column: John Bone
I AM not talking about the £1.5million Swiss chalet on offer last week when I declare the Journal’s property pages are increasingly full of stunning bargains. When we think how prices were moving not so long ago, the present cost of a snug terraced home in Newmarket or one of our near neighbours makes me wish I had been more careful with my pennies in the past. A little bit of capital goes a very long way in today’s bricks and mortar … if you happen to have it.
YOU would expect that the small, local social organisations whose meetings are reported in our Community News columns each week would be faltering or even slowly fading from the scene. After all, they compete with a whole new world of electronic entertainment, to say nothing of wintry weather tending to keep us indoors.
Yet my study of these paragraphs, which in some way take the pulse of our area, show a thriving scene. Far from fading, established organisations, like Mildenhall Probus, for example, are gaining membership and new organisations, like Soham Knit and Knatter Club, have hugely increased membership year on year.
In troubled times this is a source of stability and mutual support we should be proud of and grateful for.
I QUITE enjoyed watching Tony “Baldrick” Robinson lead the BBC’s Time Team dig at Palace House. It was all good fun and they managed to make finding a flight of brick stairs seem like Tutankhamen’s Tomb. But I am left wondering whether this sort of three-day stunt is the right way to go about a serious study of Newmarket’s racing roots.
EXNING Road residents facing fines if they park outside their own homes are right to be upset. But police are also right to try to chase their cars off the verge and pavement. Both sides have right on their sides but the situation is far from insoluble. The answer is not to begin by leaning on the Exning Road parkers. They merely represent the knock-on effect of other offenders who steal their spaces. Let us first tackle the strangers who squat on the service road.
MATTHEW Hancock has done well to win Parliamentary support for the idea of introducing a Bill to repatriate racing levy lost while the bookies operate abroad. But the big test will be framing legislation in such a way that it is specific to the dire racing predicament.
If the famed financial freedom of the City needed to redeem the nation’s fortunes claims the Newmarket MP’s plan would rock the bigger boat, then his task could be even tougher than he thinks.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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