[Acrylic-bob]

If you will pardon my intervention at this juncture, I have had a look at the "Engine" and in my humble opinion it appears to have several parts missing. For one thing there is no flywheel. The peices are behind the old Coach House/Stables up at Howarth Art Gallery and after twenty years in the open they are in a pretty sorry condition, what with rust and saplings growing round and through them. The flywheel could, of course, be inside the Coach House, but what would be the sense of putting some parts under cover and leaving the rest outdoors.

I agree with Roys initial argument that any cosmetic work has got to be a good thing. But the borough as a whole is in desperate need of such work. It strikes me that it always seems to be the council's comfort that comes top of the list when there is spare cash. In the last thirty years we have seen HBC move from the Town Hall's in various part of the borough to steadily grander accomodation, culminating in the new building attached to the Globe Centre. If the costs had not been so disproportionate and had the thing any chance at all of working we would now see HBC housed in a vast purpose built office complex on what was the site of Accy Colliery. They wasted £350,000 on feasability studies on that one.

And then what about the paving bricks fiasco in front of the Market Hall and Town. Hall? They spent god alone knows how much having the road laid with paving bricks and then allowed buses to continue using the road, resulting in considerable damage to the road surface. This then had to be taken up again and relaid with tarmac.