Honeyed Words (From Tivyside Advertiser)

Honeyed Words

10:47am Tuesday 15th July 2008

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Dear Editor, Oh dear, oh dear. So the Bath-house scheme is going to provide us with 600 new jobs. Are these jobs in addition to the hundreds of jobs going to be available at Parc Aberporth? These honeyed words trip quite easily off the tongues of the people just waiting for the floods of money to fill their pockets. Isn't it a shame that the stark reality rarely lives up to these glib promises.

What Mr. Emyr Williams, is saying that more than a 1/4 o the population of this town will be employed at Bath-house. Where exactly did Mr. Williams get his figures from? And how, exactly is he going to accommodate this teeming mass of humanity? A hospital with the proposed 20 beds and no A & E department is hardly likely to require more than about 50 or 60 staff. The superstore - 150 staff? Retail units, 30 or 40 staff. Add the Health Centre and I estimate the total employed there to be half of Mr. Williams figure. Mind you, I haven't included the car-park attendants required to organise the staff car parking and allowing some room for the customers and patients. Come on Mr. Williams, how gullible do you think we are?

I agree with what Llwyd Edwards said a couple of weeks ago, what is planned for this town is too high a price to pay. In the past few years hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent upgrading and beautifying the town and looking at the result, it was worth every penny. Now these greedy outsiders with no connection with Cardigan and do not live here, want to despoil and desecrate a settlement that has existed for almost a thousand years. As I said, I agree with Llwyd Edwards, if this is the best they can do for our town - then it isn't good enough and we don't want it. How can they nonchalantly propose to destroy quaint old cottages and other buildings that have existed for a hundred years or more to allow an endless armada of fume-belching road vehicles which will choke our town evermore? I have no quarrel with advancement and improvement but if it irreversibly alters the character and takes away what joy we feel for our town, then I think another way must be found for this scheme.

I was in Neath, in the time when the cattle and sheep mart was right in the middle of town, right alongside the still standing market hall. The old mart has long gone as has the old fair -field and now one-way traffic systems wind round and through the town to carry the deluge of cars, buses, lorries about their business. It has changed so much since my childhood, I can barely recognise my own home town. Please don't let this happen to Cardigan.

Yours faithfully John Hemming

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