7 Big Issue
Welcome to “Fantasy Town”, a new game, devised uniquely for Peebles Life, which everyone is invited to play. There are few people or families who have not looked at those giant lottery jackpots and imagined what they would do if their numbers came up and that £100 million landed in their bank accounts by the following weekend. Well, this is pretty much the same idea – a local philanthropist (think William Chambers, Andrew Carnegie) has set aside that sum of money for the benefit of Peeblesshire and is inviting suggestions from the general public, what would you want that money spent on? Here are a few of our suggestions – some of which are designed to be thought provoking and others which are intended to be more frivolous in nature.
Starting with the practical, let’s get the potholes fixed across the whole county, and while we’re at it, could we mend a few drains too to stop those awkward puddles (ponds this winter!) that slew half the car over the road when they hit one. Could we also maybe fix Dirtpot Corner to avoid those soul-destroying detours via roads not meant for the purpose? Purely on the subject of roads, a second bridge across the Tweed would seriously reduce the through traffic on the High Street and that can’t be a bad thing.
Which leads on neatly to our second set of wishlists. We know Peeblesshire is a great place to live (after all, we all chose to reside here) so we understand others might want to share and that probably means more houses. Could we therefore please look at helping the GP surgeries to cope with us all, maybe fund another doctor or two to increase the number of available appointments and, if we’re going to be greedy, could we also have some more nurses and specialists as well? Finally, on the topic of healthcare, there’s none of us getting any younger, so we would like to look into home care and making sure that the people who come into our homes have the time to help us with what we need help with and maybe even have a little time to offer us some company.
If more families are going to live here, we’re going to have to consider educating them. We wonder if we could maybe consider another
primary school? We already have two of the largest primary schools in the Borders so perhaps rather than having super-primaries, we could build a fourth? And if we’re going to have four primary schools in town, why not have a second High School somewhere in Tweeddale as well? Peebles High is already twice the size of several other High Schools in the Borders and we’d quite like a sparkly, new one to take the pressure off.
So that’s the kids educated, our health taken care of and the roads mended, what next? Not all of us are as fortunate as others, and we think some of the groups in town do some fantastic work which we’d like to support. As much as we might wish the likes of the Borders Children’s Charity or the Peebles Foodbank were unnecessary, they are and we’d like to give them help, along with the many other local groups who do so much quiet work to support those who need help.
So far, we’ve sounded pretty unhappy with quite a bit of our lot, but two areas we think we do well in is sport and the arts because there’s a lot of voluntary work put in at grass roots level and success like Olympic medals and national champions demonstrate that that pays off. We think a fund to support our future champions would be marvellous as well as paying the rents on the empty shops on the High Street to allow our budding craftspeople and artists somewhere to show what they can do.
Finally, and we know we’re pushing our luck here, we’re very fond of our annual festival and we know lots of Peebles folk come home to the town for Beltane every year so we’d like to do something nice for them too. If there’s anything left in the pot, could we put some money towards that – maybe a giant barbeque on Tweed Green, with free food for everyone to round things off on the Saturday afternoon before the Beating of the Retreat?
So there’s a few suggestions to start the ball rolling – what would you do? A huge party for everyone in town, a fabulous building a la Chambers Institute, an improvement in the infrastructure? We’d love to hear what you think!
Jacqui Please mention Peebles Life when responding to adverts
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68