You heard it here first: Airport application *delayed* again.

Airport to be refused planning application by new council, recommendation to turn down at the committee.

To johnstitch.

Cllr Hendry is not the council leader yet, and if any councillors / employees of the council conspired to knock down the lonsdale, they would soon find themselves doing time for criminal damage.

Still no sign of a bulldozer at the Lonsdale....are you really going to knock this eyesore or was it a cheap electioneering false promise?

TB Thank you for taking the time to explain how newspapers and councils work, I'm sure that everyone is as enlightened and as grateful as I feel, including the goat.

I think JJ the problem is is that the newspaper is not a useful source of news as to what is happening. Everything that happens at the council, everything that is spent is all published on their website. People are free to look at it as they wish and free to attend any committee meeting and listen to the debate.
As for me, i am just a very interested observer who knows people who do know how it works. And i know that how things are reported by the press bare little to no relationship to what is happening. Not to say that their is bias, just newspaper selling.
A newspaper doesnt exist to inform you, like a big mac doesnt exist to provide you with your daily nutritional requirements. They both exist for the purpose of you purchasing them.
Councils carrying out successful but uninteresting activities doesnt sell newspapers because no one is interested in reading about it. "Council in balls up" is a great headline. "council does what it's suppose to cheaply and without a fuss" is not going to sell newspapers.

TB: After your last post, I have to say that I am now rather concerned for the welfare of the local newspaper editor's goat.

TB - Your previous stance as the representative of all of the three parties and staff members of the council and your apparently reasoned informed statements seemed to have slipped in your last two previous posts. Could it be that you are not getting the respect and recognition that you feel is your due? As for a desire for Labour councillors to listen to the whole city, maybe this oversight by the previous council is the reason that they are no longer in power rather than blaming central government and mid term blues.

As for ill-informed people writing letters to the newspapers, perhaps if the public had been kept properly informed in the first place they would have not felt the need to write to the papers. In a previous post you iterated that by the time any debate makes it to full council the decisions have already been made. Which makes it even more important that there is a way that members of the public can put their views across via the local newspaper? This is part of local democracy and is one of the reasons that people buy local newspapers and are able to hold those in power to account.

Oh give me a break BM, this site is one big mo*gie magnet. What you refer to as 'listening to the people' is a load of old hogwash, it results in listening to whatever bee is in the bonnet of some group of nimbies or what gets up the goat of the local newspaper editor/political editor.

It's called chasing headlines. Blair's government was notorious for it. The current one try but are incompetent at it.

Carlisle Renaissance tried the big ideas, the long term thinking, the cultural regeneration. The people of Carlisle rode it out of town.

Well guess what, there's nothing to replace it.

CR didnt waste 'eight million' pounds as a failed parliamentary candidate claimed, it attracted 'eight million' pounds of investment.
Much of that was in the long term, it was about infrastructure. Things that deliver dividends in ten years and twenty years time.

That thinking has now gone and is unlikely to ever be repeated. Why think for the future when elections are won on dog muck.

CR has gone because it was a big thinking organisation that was putting in a vision for carlisle.

The CR board sat for precisely twenty four months. Two months into its existence the UK entered its deepest and longest recession since the Great Depression.

It's not really a surprise that so little was achieved.

"Pete, parking couldnt be easier in Carlisle."

Well, it could be, with a bit of thought, co-operation between authorities and planning.

"One other thing. A council is there to represent the whole city, not vociferous grabbing special interest groups."

Yes it is but it is also the case that the 'vociferous' elements may also represent a considerable body of opinion in the city.

"It listens at election times. This time the people of Carlisle wanted a change and got one. I do hope the labour council do not listen to agitators, malcontents and those who post on here and write letters to newspapers airing their ill-informed grievances but listen to voters who put them there are [sic] election time."

One can only hope that council members do not share this sanctimonious, dismissive, arrogant and condescending view of the aforementioned 'malcontents'. In all likelihood it is those people who do air their grievances who are more likely to vote and more likely to play a part in the democratic process. Ergo, those very same malcontents effected this change to some extent. To wholly dismiss them, as per your recommendation, is perhaps the silliest suggestion on here for a while. It is the function of councillors to listen all the time, not just at election time and to tailor policy to ever-changing conditions. Forums such as this are useful and informative and to hold contributors in such contempt, should their opinions not be in tune with your own is is beyond rude.

Anyway, here's hoping that the 'new' council is a responsive, responsible and approachable one and one that will work to attract investment, encourage revitalisation of the city centre and at the very least maintain essential services even if expansion of same isn't financially viable. I hope that the council will see the necessity for Carlisle to grow; to make land for industry and housing available.

A good tidy up in the city centre would be a start.