Saturday, October 23, 2010

Parking Spaces

I have just returned from a shopping trip to our local shopping centre (ok, it was The Galleries in Washington) and have just realised that the shopping centre management have a problem looming on the horizon, namely the size of parking spaces.

In my youth a large motor car was considered to be something like a Ford Granada.  A car of equivalent size nowadays is something like a Ford Mondeo which is not considered particularly large.  A consequence of this is that car parks built and laid out in the late 1960's and 70's are far too small, for instance parking my Ford Mondeo today resulted in a tight squeeze to get out of my car even though I was parked perfectly within the lines and evenly spaced with regard to the cars either side.  This means that as cars continue to get larger and larger, then the car parking spaces will also have to become larger.  The upshot is that unless extra car parking is provided then shopping centre revenues will fall as car drivers will either stay away due to lack of parking or will park across two bays thus depriving space for another car with the same result i.e. falling revenues.
So what is the solution?  I don't think you will ever stop people from using their cars but you can encourage them to leave the car at home if for instance, they won't need the car to haul massive amounts of groceries, by the implementation of an affordable, efficient and joined up transport infrastructure.  Whether this will happen in my lifetime is debatable, but one can hope!
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Education for All

Well this will be brief, I'm afraid I'm having a moan again. Our government seems intent on self destruction, I have long believed that the wealth of a country is measured by the quality of it's education system .  Now lifting the cap on tuition fees may well put more money into the coffers of the universities but how many people from poorer backgrounds can afford to send their children off for further education?  How many potential laureats will be lost to the world because this government is too short sighted to see that wealth is built on education?  I'm afraid this country will be all the poorer for the decisions been made today!