Increasing parking charges could kill off Hanley

I got angry the other day.
I was reading the Daily Mail at the time, so it's perhaps no surprise.
And the reason for my fury? A so-called 'think piece' by that condescending toff A N Wilson, who was writing about the sad demise of Wedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent.
It seems he spent part of his childhood living in the city because his dad worked for the former pottery giant when it was a big Staffordshire business. His memories and commentary were fine - until he got to the part of his ramblings in which he described Stoke as a 'dump'; a wasteland with a failing university; a city full of immigrants.
Now that got me mad. For what it's worth, Staffordshire University has had more than its fair share of successes (though perhaps gender-neutral toilets in its nightclub is not among them).
And Stoke-on-Trent might have its problems, but why does the national Press insist on continually describing it as a dump. That got me mad too.
In fact, I resolved never to buy the Mail. Again.
Then I went to Hanley. On the bus. The city centre on a wet Thursday morning...
And after trudging round the shops, I realised I perhaps shouldn't be so angry with A N Wilson. Because it seemed to me that he's right. Stoke-on-Trent is a dump.
I don't know why it hasn't dawned on me before, but Hanley is dismal. Derelict buildings everywhere; vast swathes of land on which factories once stood; the old Woolworths store standing empty.
It was depressing and in desperate need of some serious investment. Fast. Some movers and shakers in the world of regeneration reckon it can become a shopping destination to rival Manchester and the like. Yeah, right.
City councillors and quango bosses with vision and the determination to see plans through to fruition. New jobs. Big high street names. That's what's required.
So imagine my disbelief when I read that Stoke-on-Trent City Council is planning to increase parking charges in the city centre by 45 per cent.
It's part of a drive to bring in extra money to help tackle an overspend which has seen one department go £12m into the red.
This would be all well and good if Hanley was a thriving, bustling, successful city centre. But it's not. It's far from it.
And we're in the midst of a recession (yep, it's official now.) Will people whose credit has been severely crunched be prepared to pay over the odds to park in a depressing city centre with limited retail appeal? I doubt it.
And that can only mean bad news for those businesses already struggling to make ends meet and turn in a decent profit. The council must realise there's a serious risk of more Stoke-on-Trent redundancies if this strategy is pursued.
(There's also the added issue of the Potteries' remaining five towns - Stoke, Fenton, Longton, Burslem and Tunstall - all trying to pull in punters too.)
I just hope somebody on the council sees sense before this proposal is rubber-stamped. Otherwise, those who vote in favour of it could simply be hammering another nail into Hanley's coffin.

First Choice? They'd be my last choice

First Choice? More like Last Choice, if one of the main stories in my local paper, The Sentinel, today is anything to go by.
Stoke-on-Trent newlyweds Claire and Michael Kirk tie the knot and book thier honeymoon to the Dominican Republic with the aforementioned tour operator.
They pay £220 extra for premium class seats on their flight to a fortnight of marital bliss. So far, so good.
They get on the plane at Manchester Airport and indeed are shown to thier swanky seats. Yet there's just one problem. They're told they can fly first class, but they can't sit together.
Is it me or is there a credit crunch on? I know I'm obsessed by the economic downturn, but are we Brits not feeling the pinch? Are we not cutting back? Are we not thinking twice before putting our hands in our pockets?
And are some of the biggest names in business not going bump? Are previously gargantuan commercial powerhouses not crashing to the ground as the recession takes hold?
Well it's no bloody wonder, when hard-working punters are treated as shoddily as this.
I loathe bad customer service. In fact, when I'm on the receiving end of it, I go out of my way to (a) complain; (b) complain again - loudly; and (c) never darken the offending business's door with my shopping list and wallet again.
It's about time companies like First Choice got a grip. For too long they've been able to treat customers badly and get away with it, not least because of their sheer size and market dominance.
Claire and Michael Kirk, from Sneyd Green, near Hanley, in Stoke-on-Trent, apparently complained when they got home. But they got nowhere.
It was only when The Sentinel contacted First Choice and its Holiday Hypermarket at Festival Park, in Etruria, that First Choice offered a refund.
It shouldn't take the local press to ensure that common sense prevails and these bungling big boys do the right thing.
And if companies like First Choice want to survive the economic downturn, they'd do well to realise that - as cliched as it sounds - it's the customer who should always come first.

Doom and gloom at JCB

You know the credit crunch is truly biting when a company as big and iconically British as JCB stars to massacre its workforce.
I reckon most casual observers might have thought the 400-odd redundancies announced by the digger manufacturer earlier this week would have been enough.
But it seems the future looks grim for those left behind. According to my local paper, The Sentinel, JCB, based at Rocester, near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, are now giving their workers an ubearable ultimatum: choose to reduce the number of hours you work (and brass you take home) or risk many more job cuts.
The economic gloom being experienced across the board already feels like it has lasted a lifetime. Soaring shopping bills (bad news when you can eat for Britain like me); a collapsing housing market; rocketing gas and electricity bills; and banking chaos.
You'd like to think that companies with as robust an image as JCB were equipped to weather the storm better than most. After all, the firm has enjoyed such phenomenal success from humble beginnings in a garage in Uttoxeter.
Yet there's no escaping it. The future's looking grim, and if firms like JCB are to slash their workforce, what hope is there for less mighty businesses out there?