Promote Cambridge as a regional shopping hub? With the credit crunch starting to bite, it is not surprising that they have well and truly missed that boat, Assuming you can get into Cambridge, a scattered Grand Arcade, Red Lion Square, Grafton Centre, and Newmarket Road combined, don’t exactly make it too easy for shoppers. There is ‘park ‘n ride,’ but every time I saw a park and ride vehicle in Cambridge, there was one or two people on a sixty seat double deck bus, doing it’s bit to create congestion.

I too, was raised in a pub in Cambridge back in the 50’s and early 60’s, and drove a taxi for a while in the city thirty five years ago after I came out of the services. Traffic flow wasn’t too good then. Thirty five years on, and what has happened to the place could best be described as an abomination that only a combination of the loony left, a University, and the liberals, could create. The intellectual ‘bike’ Luddites of the layer upon layer of fossilized urea of City hall, could have produced no worse results throwing dice. They have been working 24/7 to prevent it from ever becoming the regional centre that it was in the post war years, and have made it one of the most expensive places in England either to live in, or do business.

If you want an example of how to plan to create congestion, go to Cambridge.

There is little parking provision, unless you work for the council, and the cost of what there is, is astronomical. It is the traffic light, bike, and bus lane capital of England, a nightmare for ambulance and fire service vehicle drivers, and is not shopping, or tourist friendly. Traffic actually flows better when there is a power cut. To add insult to injury, the people of Cambridge are to be blessed with a ‘congestion charge,’ now in the pipeline, to keep the planet and the residents green. Or, more likely to add to the coffers of the grossly superfluous council, to create more ‘diversity officers,’ and to make it even more attractive to shop somewhere else. Other than Marshall’s, there are only a couple of the old Cambridge businesses left. Cambridge now, sadly conjures up the picture of an ‘Airfix’ 1/72 nd scale version of London, dumped in an agricultural hinterland, not a developed and improved version of the city I grew up in, and is now a good place to bypass, on the way to somewhere else.

I owned a house, which my father lived in, five miles North of Cambridge until a couple of years back, and it was quicker, and cheaper, with far more choice, and easy parking, to drive to Peterborough to shop.

Also go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/21/do2104.xml to get more on this debate