Mary Portas to inspire Bangor

The reason Bangor is going down hill so fast can be summed up in four letters: N D B C (North Down Borough Council). We have a DUP run Council that has little or no interest in the town centre. We do have a small minority of decent, hard working Cllrs who are not afraid to stand up for the people of North Down, but unfortunately nothing ever happens because the DUP and other party Cllrs gang up on them and dismiss their proposals. Our Council as a whole has let the prosperity of Bangor slip from their hands, and now are unwilling to do anything to change the towns fortunes. The current state of Bangor is this: town centre shops (large and small) closing, empty shops beginning to swamp our shopping areas, money wasted on an unnecessary "Olympic" leisure centre that will not be ready until after the Olympics, our current leisure centre being sold off to whoever our DUP run council feel fit to sell it to, and only a few weeks ago, all but TWO of our Cllrs supported an increase in rates which basically boils down to the rates payer having to pay extra to fund the over budgeted leisure centre. An alarming majority of our Cllrs have no idea, or interest in the town and have left it to die. What we need to see is all of our Cllrs coming together, putting their religious and political beliefs to one side, settling their differences with one and other, and working together to pull Bangor out of the ever deepening hole it has sank into. Political point scoring, personal differences, and party policies should be left outside the town hall and our Cllrs should for once work for and on behalf of the people of North Down. NDBC has lost vision and instead of grasping the bull by the horns, rolling their sleeves up, and getting on with things, they spend their time fighting with one another, putting the interests of themselves and their parties first and keeping the residents at arms length. They need to understand that we have a major problem that will only get worse, and random gestures such as the regeneration of Pickie Pool etc which is obviously a good thing for the town, will not on its own turn things around. We need an all inclusive Council who can accept change, involve everybody, listen to everyone, and give people back their confidence and aspirations, and just maybe we will be able to move forward together and not just restore Bangor to what it once was, but take it in a new direction and to new levels of prosperity.

The question I want to ask our useless and out of touch DUP ran Council is this: If Mary Portas does take up Bangor's invitation, will our Council actually take any of her concepts and ideas into consideration, or will they do what they usually do and dismiss each and every one of them, providing poor excuses as to why. Mary Portas could bring some interesting and exciting changes to Bangor if our Council would just listen, learn, and accept that we urgently need change. I have no faith in anything in our town changing until we are able to get rid of those Cllrs who are stubborn, out of touch, out of date, and out of time. Those Cllrs who supported an "Olympic" leisure centre that will not be completed until AFTER the olympics, the Cllrs who sell public land off to whoever they feel fit to, and the Cllrs who supported the rates increase (only TWO opposed it). Until we can get rid of the dead wood that sits in our Council, and bring in people who have vision and passion, I think Mary Portas will be wasting her time.

As I see it, the source of many of our towns' woes is the ineptitude of our Planners. They encourage the large multiples to dominate the town centres, forcing out local traders. Every medium and large town resembles the next one and our once characterful towns have become sterile machines of commerce where customers are like battery hens. Now local traders are about to die out altogether and at long last the alarm bells are being heard. Alas, too late! The supermarkets and shopping centres are ingrained in peoples' psyche to such an extent that they no longer care about customer service, value, real flavour and variety or care that all profits are sent out of the country. All that matters is free parking. And what about the new Golden Goose of Tourism? Oh yes, we can have bus tours of our now dead town centres, the tourists will be facinated .... not! Oh, and lastly Mary Portas, isn't introducing market stalls to town centres only creating unfair competition and even more busimess replication. Try a ten year rates holiday for local traders - it's going to take something as radical as that to save the day, believe me. A local trader.

Bangor has been hit by the persistent over-development of Bloomfields and other big out of town shops such as the Tesco/Springhill development. It's such a shame, and the council have only itself to blame. With HMV, Gamestop, Woodsides etc all gone in the last few weeks, it won't be long before it's a shell of its former self. it's a pretty town, and they've ruined it. For a population the size of Bangor, did it really need ANOTHER supermarket in the form of sainsbury's on the ringroad, adding to ASDA, a Tesco Superstore (plus another Tesco in Bloomfields), M&S, Co-op, LIDL etc. etc.

I like the way mary portas is described as the queen of shops and a champion of the hight street. why does no one ask her about her Yellow Door PR company who has promoted the giant westfield shopping centres in east and west london at the absolute expense of nearby high streets? People must think the public at large are thick...