Yes, that’s right. The Boots Corner debacle, the traffic problems It has created for everyone beyond the Planners masterpiece and the now ghost-like roads just a stones throw from the Town Centre have been an evolving problem facing local People and Businesses for 6 Months.

The glad-handing and self-congratulation that we see pouring out in response to every legitimate concern that is tabled, wouldn’t be a problem for anyone outside the Council and the ‘project’ itself, if it weren’t absolutely clear to everyone else that the passage of time and every new thing being added is making the problems worse and worse.

Be in no doubt, the quantitative data that will be used to legitimise this train wreck of a Town Traffic Plan will inevitably support everything that Officers and Councillors say.

What it won’t do is consider any of the qualitative or experiential impacts which are the real consequence for local People, Businesses and frequent visitors or commuters to the Town. Simply because that was never what this vanity project was about.

Out in the real world, Cheltenham’s many passionate Small Business Owners know what does and doesn’t work in the Town Centre. They’ve done the trial and error already, many times over and know intrinsically how footfall and the number of customers who enter through their doors is directly affected and proportional to the cars and traffic that travel past and have direct access and line-of-sight knowledge of who they are and what they are offering to customers.

They possessed this knowledge long before the Boots Corner project got underway and have since increased their level of knowledge and understanding in a very practical way. Information which the arrogance and ‘we know best’ attitude of the controlling Councillors and the Planners both before and since the Scheme was launched has been overlooked.

The only figures and data which now matters to the Council are the number of feet on the High Street. And the answer to the question which should automatically follow this reality simply raises many more questions and a justifiably significant level of concern about what the priorities of Cheltenham’s District Authority now are as opposed to what they should actually be.

Take a walk in the streets behind boots, M&S and John Lewis and only the most unaware of people could walk away from the experience without recognising the physical and atmospheric change to what is still a part of Cheltenham Town Centre.

Whilst the confusing mish-mash of changes to what used to be a straightforward and accessible road system may seem much safer to some faceless bureaucrat in an office somewhere, the strange silence of these roads doesn’t foretell a beneficial change taking place for any of the businesses that cannot afford the significant rents and mortgages of the revamped High Street, forcing them to go beyond.

No, it tells us that the priority in Cheltenham is only big retail business, and that the lifeblood of the town which will always be it’s plethora of Small Businesses is being condemned by both the actions and words of both elected and appointed Public Representatives.

Unpalatable as it may be to idealistic Councillors and influential Officers who have been culturally conditioned to believe that they have no other way to respond, people notice and remember the places that they want to go when they are travelling through the Town in their cars.

Yes we may have a wider, cultural problem with the dependency upon four wheels that there is.

But there is nothing practical in trying to pretend there are not natural laws at work and that human behaviour itself dictates that the lack of foresight and absence of intuitive consideration of what these changes to the Town Centre have already and are set to do, confirms that this Council will only ever deliver on its own ideas, whilst paying scant regard to the consequences of its actions upon others. Namely the very people it exists for and is there to serve.

What is effectively the closure of what used to be the inner ring road is an avoidable blight on a large swathe of Cheltenham Town Centre which will mean existing businesses will fail, new ones will never get the footfall that they need to keep going, and instead of being a destination of business opportunity for the many, this idealistic approach to managing a Town Centre will instead only really be of benefit yet again to the deep pocketed few.

For the people who know and love Cheltenham for the great Town that it already is and has been for a considerably long time, John Lewis and The Brewery are great enhancements for the Town to have. But they should never be interpreted by anybody as being all that Cheltenham is now about.

Changing this Council may be the only way that Cheltenham can now overturn this injustice, as political action is the only way that self-serving Councillors are likely to be pushed to respond to any thoughts, feelings or ideas other than their own.

How we govern the Net, it’s use, the transfer, storage and sharing of data is a Policy area that like many others our Government should be on top of and ahead of the game.

That it isn’t and that many of our politicians simply have no understanding of what is happening around us in the parallel world of data is not, however, a sign that we need the EU Bureaucracy to take over and install a set of draconian and out of touch rules that demonstrates Brussels has even less understanding of the changing world than Westminster does.

Scare stories some might think.

But the reality of what the EU is attempting to do is very real and the iceberg which is coming is very much deeper beneath the surface than the relatively tame tip we now know to be GDPR.

Right now, we could be well on the way to being legally unable to share material such as newslinks from the Internet, or even take pictures of or in public places because of what the EU is now attempting to deem as being assumed copyright for things like buildings.

Idealistic, dangerously impractical and without any real regard for how life works within the world of the Internet and in its relationship with everything else, unelected bureaucrats lurking in an office somewhere in Brussels are about to take nanny-stating and big brotherish concepts to a whole new level.

If we either Remain or worse still, embrace May’s deal, we will have no choice but to accept these undemocratic and choking restrictions however far reaching and personally restricting they might be.

In governmental terms, the arrival of Internet based technology and the online universe has caught legislators napping.

To many, a fallacious idea now exists where the Net has broken down geographical boundaries and barriers and heralds a new age where concepts such as cryptocurrencies and blockchain will make localised governance systems redundant and that markets will now reach across the world and take care of everything that crops up in between.

They won’t.

The reason they won’t, is that no matter what we do online, be it personally or for our business or employer, the dehumanisation of relationships which the rise of the internet has already inflicted upon us has shown that real life requires a level of tangibility and physical stimulation that technology will never offer us, even through virtual reality.

Centralising and ceding power to the EU over data and the rules which govern our Internet access and use would be a catastrophic abuse and denial of the real opportunity to take control and influence the response necessary to the powerful technological and informational changes taking place around us. And to do so for the better.

Our businesses, our people and the physical environment across the UK are very different to the 27 other Countries that make up the EU.

We must have regulation which is sensitive, tailored and responsive to UK needs. Regulation must not be set on a one-size-fits-all basis which at best will be modelled on a false commonality between 28 very different Countries and more likely will be much worse, offering no basis of practicality at all or any sense in which we could identify consideration of any specific UK need – either domestically, or for our interactions with the whole of the outside World.

This will not be possible if the UK’s choice to Leave the EU is ignored. Or through the dishonesty and lack of responsibility to the Electorate on the part of Politicians, the UK is coerced into a much closer and technically irreversible union with the EU as will be the outcome of May’s deal being adopted, or an alternative series of false choices are created which mislead us to Remain.

We will only have the flexibility, the adaptability and the necessary cultural intuitively to give the UK the right Data Policies that we need, if we Leave the EU, take complete control of our own Policy making once again, and then push our self-orientated Political classes to get on and deliver the key Policy areas like Data which will return the UK to the place where we can meet opportunity or crisis from wherever it may come, head on.

 

image thanks to entrepreneur.com