Cllr Roy Gerstner – Community Activist

Connie and I have known Jeanne (Beaumont) for many years, a wonderful happy and cheerful lady.
Jeanne was born in 1927, and on arriving in London she worked for the United Service Nursing Club, after the war she moved to Hazelmere where she met George and they got married on the 22nd September 1951, they had one son.
After owning and running a farm, she ran ‘The Royal Oak’ on the old A1 for 17 years, afterward they ran ‘The Catworth Fox’.
George and Jeanne arrived in Whittlesey 22 years ago.
Involved in voluntary work, she worked with the Red Cross at Peterborough Hospitals for 15 years. Jeanne has 4 Grandchildren.

A Very Happy Birthday Jeanne and many more to come….

The above was/is a typical example of the ‘issues’ I can assure you it is a pretty frightening experience – happens many times daily – even when anticipating or stationary.
These pictures taken before the ‘Traffic Calming’ was in place – see below….

Nothing ‘ new’ here I am afraid, having lived off Ramsey Road for 40+ years I and most residents are ‘very’ aware of the problems with Traffic, Parking and Highways issues.
I did approach a WTC/FDC councillor on a few occasions who informed me – ‘There is NO problem’.

Earlier this week, at about 5am a car had to swerve in order to miss an oncoming lorry – a very regular occurrence I might add….
The yellow bollard was smashed and considerable damage to the sign – not sure about the car or the driver.
On Wednesday I saw a truck with a basket reversing to the sign and the next day it had gone….sawn off at about 1+ metre.

I understand that the cost of the damage is in the order of £5,000.

There has been and there is still is a considerable amount of concern about the issues of :
Traffic, Parking and Highways along the whole stretch of Church Street/Ramsey Road.

There is to be a ‘public’ meeting of residents of Church Street/Ramsey Road (and adjoining estates) at 6pm of Friday 15th December – A venue to be announced.
Residents will have to register in order to attend.
I ‘strongly’ advise you to attend this meeting and have your say on these issues and concerns.

This meeting is being organised by WTC Cllrs J Windle and Cllr D Mason.

So some weeks ago, the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority – Mr James Palmer
sent out to a number of people including some Whittlesey Councillors:-

We have just carried out our first Market Town Masterplan at St Neots. The plan was carried out in full consultation with St Neots Town Council and will lead to funding from the CA of nearly £6m.
Our aim is to carry out Masterplans on all our Market Towns and Whittlesey is clearly part of that scheme.

Now I perfectly understand not getting our ‘hopes’ up too high at this time – but I’m sure that if St Neots can get funding for nearly £6m – there must be something left in the pot for Whittlesey.
I am waiting in anticipation and maybe even getting excited about ‘us’ getting some money.

I have been aware of this for sometime but was holding off to see whether anything came up at the Town Council meeting or maybe in one of our ‘Free’ magazines – which by the way has also gone extremely ‘quiet’ from any of our representatives – alas nothing coming in the public domain.
Lets wait and see….

Is there £Millions coming to Whittlesey – from the Mayor James Palmer (Combined Authority) – Article coming tonight…

Last nights ‘Friends Of Whittlesey Library’ meeting was again very well attended, we reviewed on events that the ‘Friends’ had put on over the past year.
Planning ahead for the coming year will include:
A possible ‘Photographic competition.

A Coffee and Cake stall at the Library on Straw bear Saturday 13th Jan 2018 10am – 12:00

13th Feb ‘Alice in Cuckoo Land’ – more details to follow.

Friday 16th March Quiz Night – which as usual will include a Fish & Chip supper – more details to follow.

More plans to be discussed at Januarys meeting – 09th Jan 2018

Having driven all over the world without too many issues or problems, I and many others agree, that ‘if’ you can get out of Whittlesey in one piece – you’ve cracked it.
Today for example, being ‘blocked in’ by a Big People carrier, I could not see to get out of the parking space by Sunshine Café, after several minutes of manoeuvring back and forth I eventually got out, a short ‘friendly’ beep’ was met with Road-Rage abuse….and gestures –
If this was my Dad or Grand-Dad I would be truly ashamed.
Blue Citroen People Carrier Reg SV16 YVM – if the owner has issue with identification I am more than willing to show him and the Police the rest of the Dash Cam footage.

A very well attended New Queen Street Surgery PPG (Patients Participation Group) meeting last night, which was the AGM.
A great deal has been achieved by the group in the past year and fantastic engagement with both the Surgery and Patients.
I am one of the original members I believe it is an excellent ‘interface’ between we the patients and the Surgery and Practice Manager.
We do on occasion have the senior doctor – Gary Howsan pass by the meetings, which he did last night and thanked all those who make the PPG a success.
Whittlesey NQS PPG is one of the best attended and most active of those in/around Peterborough

Sign in ‘Freemans the Butcher’ window – taken today 28th November.

Farewell to another well known shop in our town, but all maybe not lost – just yet.

I wonder ‘who’ may be taking over ‘Alices’ old shop – and for those on Faceless Book… it is NOT McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks or Subway – at least NOT in this unit.
It maybe…or it could be, or just possibly be….

Reply from Amazon…The real Amazon.
Thank you for writing to Amazon.com to bring this to our attention.
Your message has been forwarded to our security department, and we will investigate the situation. Please note that you may not receive a personal response.
In all likelihood, the message you received was not sent to you by Amazon.com.
We strongly advise that you *not* send any information about yourself back to this individual (especially your credit card number or any personal information).
If you have already submitted any personal information to this person via e-mail or on a potentially fraudulent web site, you may wish to contact Customer Service for ssistance. To send an e-mail to Customer Service, please visit www.amazon.com/contact-us
In the future, if you are ever uncertain of the validity of an e-mail, even from us, don’t click on any supplied links–instead, type our web site address “www.amazon.com” directly into your browser and follow the regular links to Your Account. Many unscrupulous spoofers mislead consumers by displaying one URL while taking the visitor to another.
By typing in a well-known address you can avoid this trick. Also, please be assured that Amazon.com is not in the business of selling customer information.
Many spammers and spoofers use programs that randomly generate e-mail addresses, in the hope that some percentage of these randomly-generated addresses will actually exist.
If you are trying to contact us about something other than a spoofed e-mail message, please contact Customer Service for assistance.
To send an e-mail to Customer Service, please visit www.amazon.com/contact-us/
If you encounter any other uses of the Amazon.com name that you think may be fraudulent, please do not hesitate to contact us again.
Thanks you again for taking the time to notify us of this situation.
Sincerely,
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/

Thanks to SR for sending us the ‘Spam’ Amazon email – See below..
Date: 25/11/2017 6:38 To: Subj: Account Identity and Usage Confirmation

Dear Amazon customer,
Every six months Amazon makes integrity checks related to his Online customers and their accounts. How they use the account or if the account is still used by the customer.
If the customer account is not used for a longer period of time (more then 1 month) it will be disabled of by Amazon Team and then removed in the next two months.

To validate that you use this Amazon account please use the following button.

Additional Information’s:
The procedure for disabling the account according to the Terms and Conditions of Usage, will take place in 24 hours after this email was send.   – The verification procedure invoked requires a very short time for the customer.   – The generated button above is active for 24 hours only. If during this period the customer does not make the validation of his online account the account will be disabled.
What does a disabled account means:   – The user will not be able to purchase products from Amazon or from partner stores that post product on Amazon.   – All deliveries will be cancelled for the user.   – The user will not be able to sel or advertise his products on Amazon site.   – Once the account is disabled the user will not be able to create or use another account in his name. Thank you for your understanding and apologize for any inconvenience that this may create. Amazon Customer Service Team.

Please note: This email was sent from a notification-only address that can’t accept incoming email. © 2017 Amazon.co.uk, Inc or its affiliates.
All rights reserved. Registered office: Leadenhall Court, 1 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3V 1PP, United Kingdom.

The above is a ‘Spoof’ e-mail Do Not repeat Do not click on any attachments if you received an e-mail similar to the above.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday – Christmas around the corner – Amazon is doing MEGA business (Not me at present)  – I received from a correspondent this morning…
Please keep a sharp lookout for these scams –
People in Whittlesey – yes – here are being scammed by the day…..

Just a note re scams,
We received a spam email purporting to come from ‘Amazon’
It was a very good facsimile of a genuine Amazon email and could have fooled a less astute person.
My radar was alerted by the heading which started “Dear Member” – always a give away, but the cruncher was the senders email address.
“From:Amazon.co.uk [valid0000040@online.co.uk]”.

I find this is a good way of deciding if the email is genuine and suggest you tell your readers to examine the senders address.
I have forwarded the email onto Amazon….

I was somewhat taken back yesterday whilst entering Hunstanton, to find that yet another Supermarket is arriving on the outskirts of the ‘Small Town’ – Lidl is building a medium size Supermarket.
I also noted that there is now a Morrisons as well.
Hunstanton has a permanent population of around 6,000 / Half the size of Whittlesey, I dare say the population increases somewhat during 7 months of the year.

So Hunstanton will have a Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons and Lidl all managing to compete with one another – Kings Lynn with a population of near 150,000 is 16 miles away.
So is it the Peterborough effect!!! – we being 7/8 miles from our nearest hub with all major players present or is it that ‘Supermarkets’ can not see Whittlesey as a potential place to do business.
Not so long ago, several hotel chains, Travelodge/Holiday Inn Express/Premier Inn were all approached to find if Whittlesey was on their possible build plan – at present none are interested.

I like Whittlesey the way it is…maybe not everyone agrees – I am not a big fan of the Co-Op – whose prices are high and quality sometimes questionable (many agree) – and they now taking over NISA – may mean that ‘some’ changes’ may happen in the future.
We have some very good shops, run by local people – we have a business forum with 55 members (not all businesses) and on the whole a safe environment to do shopping and best of all – FREE Parking.

All we need now Cllr Dorling – Is for some FREE electricity to charge up our Electric/Hybrid cars….wouldn’t that be nice.