TEN NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS FOR GREAT YARMOUTH
2011 will be the year when the Borough wakes up to the folly of a Government cutting public expenditure too hard and too fast. Places like Great Yarmouth will suffer especially because we have many people experiencing difficulties and living on low incomes.
2011 will however usher in the first of many hundreds of new Port and Energy job opportunities based around the town’s new Outer Harbour (strangely it will come “against the tide” just as Oil and Gas did in the 1960s in the death throes of the fishing industry).
2011 will see the Great Yarmouth and Norwich City Colleges finally working together to make sure we get a new generation of skilled young men and women to fill those self-same jobs.
2011 will be the year that the old St George’s Theatre (Chapel) finally gets a complete new makeover – along with much of King Street – and local people get a new performance / conference venue that will really put Yarmouth on the cultural map.
2011 will also see the transformation of the interior of the Yarmouth Town Hall to house many more council workers currently scattered in unsuitable accommodations around Yarmouth and Gorleston – and creating a fabulous new Council Chamber in the famous old Victorian Magistrates Court Room.
2011 will probably see removal of what’s left of the Jetty structure, and attention will instead focus on what if anything can be done to give “a new lease of life” to the old Winter Gardens.
2011 will be the year where we find out who will be delivering Yarmouth’s large Regional Casino – and importantly where it will be developed within the town.
2011 will see local people resist politically-motivated attempts to “merge” the South Norfolk and Great Yarmouth councils – but there will be joint-working with other Councils where it is in the interests of local people.
2011 will see Yarmouth leading the way with the first Referendum in East Anglia being held to decide whether the Borough is to have an Elected Mayor chosen by all 70,000 local voters or a Leader as now chosen by as few as 20 Councillors.
2011 will hopefully provide us with a proper Summer with good beach weather for July and August when children have their school holidays! – the last three certainly haven’t been very good at all.
Happy New Year!
Mick Castle, Borough Councillor for Yarmouth’s Central & Northgate Ward
10 Town Wall Road, Great Yarmouth
