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Have your say on local news, local issues or the national issues.
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anon
Hemel Hempstead
I have been e-mailing and phoning the DVLA with regards a vehicle parked in my car park for nearly 6 months now. The car in question has not been taxed since October so indicates no MOT or insurance also. I have rung the police every day this week, as it is now parked on a public road (with a broken handbrake, leaking oil and petrol tank.) The police have said keep saying they will come and have a look but havent. It seems that car tax and all the other expenses to do with being a responsible citizen and making sure your car is road worthy etc is now optional!!!
Joanne Cronan
Highfield
I think the whole part of this county in hertfordshire such as highfield, grovehill, bennettes end, warners end and everywhere else is dangerous and disgusting place because these younger child dont understand why we try to make our homes and streets a safer place, they dont care about anything and it isnt just highfield with a bad name!
k
highfield
i have lived in highfield all my life and as a kid there was plenty to keep us occupied youth clubs,parks play schemes in summer hols now there is nothing!!! i still like living in highfield but feel it would be a far nicer place to live if they had something for the kids to do rather than walk the streets there is a community centre that stands empty most of the time or is just open for old people i know they need stuff to do but so do the kids. The people of highfield should make a stand and not be proud of the fact that Jeremy Kyle was in our part of town so people could air there dirty laundry in a pub car park of all places do you really think that has given highfield a good name!!!!! So people of the council do something with our council tax and put it to making the community of highfield the place it was a few years ago so the men can live longer.
Norman Cutting
Chestnut Drive
BERKHAMSTED
Gosh, is it really 10 years since the Borough Council 'outsourced' rubbish collections to save money, only to bring it back 'in house' following the realisation that the contractors got the contract to make money, not provide a service to the public. Now in 2008, the same thing happens again, only with housing repairs. I recall asking one of the now current 'portfolio holders' why they think outsourcing is a good idea and the answer was 'they are motivated'. Perhaps it is beyond the management of the Council to 'motivate' their staff, so it seems obvious to change the management rather than making a profit for a private company.
Anon
Hemel Hempstead
I have lived in Highfield for 5 years, and within 3 months of living here ( I moved from Garston) my asthma was a lot worse, I am now severe asthamtic and within the last year my arthritis has gone from very mild to needing a knee replacement. My doctor has said that highfield is the worst place in Hemel for asthmatics.
Debbie
Hemel Hempstead
Re the road block Fennycroft/ Polehanger. I live on the Halsey Estate and have done for 8 years. I am still wondering who's bright idea it was to divert traffic from a lane to go round a housing estate where you will find children and pets playing? Had there been any fatal accidents on the lane?? Surely the money could have been much better spent on other dangerous roads around the county?!! Maybe traffic calming measures would have sufficed here if people tended to use it at speed?
Deano
Hemel
I'm was from Highfield (planets area) which used to be a good place to live. It's gone down hill a little bit in the last 10 years, the junior school Jupiter Drive has been shut so the government can build another housing association estate to bring down that part of Highfield even further...The other part of Highfield (Bellgate/Thumpers/Highfield 14/ Fletcher Way) has always been rough, and from what i've seen looks even worse then 10/15 years ago!!
Sian
Berkhamsted
Is it a coincidence that both Gazza and Jeremy Kyle are in Hemel on the same day? Having read your story about families airing their troubles in front of the cameras, perhaps Mr Gascoigne should head down to the Royal Stag car park this afternoon. Now that WOULD be worth pulling a sickie to stay at home and watch the Jeremy Kyle show!
Mike Read
Hemel Hempstead
Party In The Park Fiasco. Hundreds of people mainly women and children who had attended the special organised event "Party In The Park" at Gadebridge in Hemel had their days enjoyment ruined when they returned to their vehicles to find they had been issued with parking tickets.It was plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ higher than that of a dead ant that this was an anomaly to the normal day to day activities at Gadebridge Park.I call upon the Gazette to support its residents and readers in requesting the Council to contact the Parking Company responsible on 0845 600 3490 to account for their actions and to waive the absurdity of those tickets issued. Mike Read
D
Hemel Hempstead
Karen's message regarding the DIGS scheme. I had not heard of the DIGS scheme but I am not surprised. Presumably if tenants in this scheme got jobs (that obviously wouldn't pay very well given their skills sets), they would become ineligble for (as much) help and therefore their best option is to stay where they are and remain unemployed. The alternative being to get a badly paid job and have a poorer standard of living. What this country lacks is any incentive to work for a living. If you work, you're charged full rent/mortgage, income tax, council tax, ever increasing commuting costs and childcare. Whereas if you're jobless and your income falls below a certain amount, you don't have to pay any of the above and are probably eligible for all benefits going! I feel sympathy for people who find themselves in difficult circumstances through no fault of their own but Karen is quite right in that for many, the situation she describes is the only financially viable option. With the closure of local health facilities and schools, coupled with the departure of several employers offering skilled jobs in the town, I fear that the working public (i.e. those who have a choice where they live) will leave in droves over the next 5 years, leaving Hemel with only the elderly, unskilled/semi-skilled and jobless and no-one to subsidise them. The Government need to do something to encourage people to work and to stay in Hemel
karen
I read with much amusement the Councills comments re getting unemployed people in Dacorum back to work. Since the DBC has been operating thre 'DIGS' scheme they have actually condemmend many young people to a life on benefit.
If you are not familiar with the ridiculous DIGS scheme then let me enlighten you. In the Dacorum area there is an every increasing population of young people who do not work so therefore claim benefits and have young families. As there is no council list and even if there was ususally these people would not be entitled to accomodation anyway as many are in their late teens/early twenties and have just met their partner and become parents. Therefore the DBC have come up with the DIGS shceme as no money has been put in building council properties for many years - only housing association, the councils solution is to put such families into private rented accomodation which on average is between 650 - 700 pounds per month (in some cases more). So the situation is now that many young people who have never worked or have very limited skills living in rented accomodation with absolutely no chance of earning enough money to keep thier family and pay such extortionate rents which are often equal to an average morgage!!
So I will be very very interested to know exactly how the DBC plan to help these people out of the benefit trap that they have put them in to. Single people on benefit do not fare much better as due to lack of accomodation are put into housing association rooms in shared houses with a rent of 90 pounds per week - again a lot of money to find weekly without considering other bills when on a minimum wage.
Kerry
Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead
That doesn't surprise me at all. Those places are complete dumps. I lived in Highfield for about 2 years and in that space in time we had an attempted burglary, my car was keyed, my car was broken into and my radio stolen, my car was smashed into by drunken under age drivers in a stolen vehicle (All while it was parked outside my house, all on different occasions!) and somebody stole my cat!! It was probably the most stressful two years I have ever had, resulting in us moving to Boxmoor where have lived, peacefully, for the last 6 years without a days bother!
Richard Johnson
Wingrave, Aylesbury
Regarding the sad news of Mr. loveridge's hit & run fatality in Long Marston, I have to say that, when I am passing through the village and obeying the 30 mile an hour limit, more often than not I am being tail-gated and hassled by some mindless idiot determined to overtake me and streak off with little regard to the environs. Sadly it was a disaster waiting to happen. We have the same problem in Wingrave, due to people rat-running across from Tring to the Miton Keynes area. There are a number of places to be watchful of in Long Marston - people parking on the blind bend outside the church, the cross roads in the centre of the village, and the narrow section from the Marsworth junction to the canal bridge, where you can encounter horse riders, and the limit is justly applied. I do have issues with some of the seemingly arbitrary speed limit policies implemented in Bucks and Herts, but where it is a village or suburban area, 30 is not unreasonable and people's mindset about this obviously needs to change. Let Mr. loveridge's death be a warning to those whose recklessness cannot be tolerated.
karen henderson
watford
When driving to work as a community nurse in Hemel Hempstead, I drove past Tesco Super Store and noticed that the price of petrol had gone down to 1.13 a litre. Great I thought I need to get petrol, I will get it at work in Hemel Hempstead. When I got there tesco petrol was 1.15 a litre. I asked the sales assistant why they were more expensive compared to watford, she said to me that they work on a three mile radius and keep in line with the local competition. Surely when Tesco buy petrol by the barrel they pay the same price regardless of where it will be distributed. Tesco and the other garages are keeping prices artificially high because they know that people need to use their cars!!!!!!! The price of petrol is really making a dent in my wage packet as with all the other customers who rely on their cars to earn a living. Karen Henderson
pauline paterson-bryant
hemel hempstead
Ok. So they want to build 7000 homes in dacorum including sites at Marchmont Farm and Fields End. Will the people who occupy these homes have no children? because from where i'm sitting they are closing the three nearest schools to these sites - the maths just dont add up.
John Newberry
Hemel Hempstead
Further to the Red Kite sightings in the area. I was fortunate to visit the site where the original two pairs of Red Kites were released soon after they were relocated there. The site was on the Paul Getty Estate in Oxfordshire, in the valley below the village of Ibstone. As a regular visitor to friends who lived in the village my wife and I were able to walk down the valley to observe these fine birds. Over the years the pairs bred and eventually there were too many Red Kites for the area to be able to sustain them, so they naturally moved further afield so that they are now widely spread over the whole of the Chilterns. It was an amazing site to see these birds wheeling round and round in the sky giving their characteristic high-pitched whistling call. We would place chicken pieces on the lawn in the front of the house and move back and sit quietly waiting for them to feed. The kites would circle ever closer and closer, getting lower and lower, until they would swoop in over the rooftop to pick up a piece of meat in their claws without landing and then fly off into the nearby trees. As a previous correspondent has stated Buzzards are easily mistaken for Red Kites when viewed from a distance and very often people's wish to see a Red Kite will convince them that a Buzzard is a kite.
Norma Cutting
BERKHAMSTED
Interesting your piece regarding the 'new' Dacorum Health Campus (one of their possible names). At the meeting we were assured the funding was in place although the exact facilities provided will de decided in the autumn. We were informed that all local facilities would be under one roof including health care and health improvement such as healthy living faciities (gym/pool/diet), mental health, elderly care in fact, everything under one roof on one site. Not quite the picture you present in your story. On the other hand maybe they told us what we wanted to hear to your reporter what they wanted you to know without committing to anything. Nah, they wouldn't do that, would they?
J WALKER
WHARFDALE, HEMEL HEMPSTEAD
(DUST STRIKE) Regarding the 6 percentpay rise, I AM at this moment in time seperating my OWN rubbish into 2 different bins, one green and one black, also I am placing these bins on alternate weeks out on the street. Which part of the 6 percent pay rise will I be recieving? ALSO, as part of my council tax pays for this service, will I be recieving a refund for the 2 days that they are on strike? What will it be next...... Us loading the bins on the dustcarts ourselves while the driver sits in the cab?!
S. Fulford
crabtree lane, hemel hempstead
since there is sad person in hemel that feels the need to keep stealing the green recyle box and previous weeks the glass recyle basket was taken after collection, we were fed up of having to keep ordering new ones then having nothing to put rubbish in whilst waiting a week for a new one to be delivered. I live with several other people in a shared rented house and we all have tried hard with recycling waste and have had no choice but to put all our recycle rubbish into the only black box that we have from the council for which until recently has always been collected. However, it seems that are council rubbish collectors have started to behave childlike by ignoring our recyle box that is always lined up with our neighbours so that it does not get missed. It has been impossible to try and get through to anyone on the telephone at the council refuse department. We have decided that it's not worth recycling if the rubbish collectors are being petty & not collecting it. If our normal bins start overflowing on to the street and making a mess as a result of not being able to use the recyle service it will not be our fault. We pay enough coucil tax in this area, so we should at least have the services that we pay for.
Michael O'Shea
Hemel Hempstead
In your June 2008 Photos On Line, a photo has been submitted and said to be a red kite that was seen over Chiswell Green. The red kite always has a distinctive fork in the tail, even when fanned, quite unlike the tail of the bird in the photograph. The red kite is part of a program of reintroduction based at Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire, about six miles west of High Wycombe. I have seen them over farmland in Redbourn and Harpenden and there have been an increasing number of sightings throughout this area. I think that the photograph is of a Common Buzzard, which has a fanned tail with muted markings and is more commonly seen in the North and West of the British Isles. The buzzard infrequently appears in such parts of the British Isles as the Eastern Counties, far from its natural habitat. One main cause is that of sudden strong winds. The buzzard, soaring at a great height, suddenly finds itself caught up in a current of air against which it is powerless to battle. A slow, lazy flier, it finds it easier to drift with the wind, and before very long it finds itself in a strange locality, where it may reside for a short while. The Rough-legged Buzzard would be unlikely to be seen in Britain during the summer months and I think that the wings are too broad for it to be a Honey Buzzard, which is a rare summer visitor between May and September. Anyone wanting a definite sighting of Red Kites should travel westerly from Wendover on the B4009 and expect to see them anywhere between Little Kimble to Chinnor. For safety's sake, it is advisable to have a passenger along as a spotter because they glide quite close to the ground.
Mrs A Reeves
Hemel Hempstead
We would like to know what result can we expect from the enormous excavations and earth moving which have been going on for the last few months at the Hemel Ski Slope ? We live nearby and many other neighbours are wondering what we are going to see eventually.
Martin Parr
Hemel Hempstead
Reading an article in this weeks Herald Express (10/07/08) concerning School crossing problems encountered by Maija Fisher reminded me of a personal experience with this particular patrol. As I approached the patrolled crossing point I took note that no other vehicle was in sight in my rear-view mirror, should I need to stop. Nor was there any other vehicle in sight aproaching from the opposite direction. Nevertheless I was stopped by the patrol person to allow a solitary, adult female who was just approaching the kerb to cross. This is at a point in the road where a central pedestrian refuge exists. Surely, if these type of patrols are asking to be treated with more respect, would it not be reasonable to ask for a little more common-sense approach on their part to the implementation their powers, and not unnecessarily inconveniencing road users.
Ellis
I was also very upset by the use of the hawk to 'scare' away the pigeons. Both children and adults were present as the hawk savagely killed several pigeons and at least one duck. It was very distressing to hear the noises they were making as they were obviously being killed in a painful way. There are much more humane ways to scare the birds away. I think it is disgusting that we as a community are paying for this so called service.
As a driver in Hemel Hempstead it appears to me at times school crossing ladies or gentlemen have no idea of the speed of traffic is doing, so they see children coming up to them and immediately stick there stop board up causing motorists to brake heavily. Not only that they see adults without any children over the road, which does wind people (motorists) up. I think these crossing patrols need a training to do there jobs better. Jim K.
Help 'bag a tagger'
These toe-rags want to get maximum exposure for their tags. You have done them a great service. They would have to be pretty happy with world wide exposure!
Have a look at world leaders in the war against graffiti and ask yourselves why they don't advertise the handiwork of these vandals.
A Crampton
Marcus Nicholls
Apsley, Hemel Hempstead
The joys of the British summer are with us again - two days of sunshine, heavy rain and the now customary plague of maggots emerging from our wheelie bin, thanks to this damnable two-week collection schedule. I tried talking to the so called Dacorum 'Environmental Health' department, and received the most patronsing, useless reply imaginable from 'Isabel Edgar' (probably a fictitious name), so I shan't bother doing that again. We use bleach, liners in our kitchen bin, a wheelie-bin liner and we keep the lid shut, but the flies aren't getting the message - but when will the local authority also get the message that a two-week collection is a threat to public health?
Karen Goddard
Chesham
I have recently been issued with a Fixed Penalty Notice for alleged speeding on the Leverstock Green Road, Hemel Hempstead, East of Pancake Lane, Travelling Eastbound. My "offence" was travelling at 38mph in a 40mph area. Hertfordshire Constabulary show this speed camera as being set at 30mph. In reality and I have looked several times there is a 40mph painted onto the road before the camera, a 40mph sign before the camera and a repeater 40mph sign after the camera. Yet I was travelling at 38mph! I have written to Hertfordshire Constabulary who insist I will have to go to court if i want to contest it as I have committed an offence. How many more of your readers have been caught out without even realising it? All of the websites for speed cameras show this camera as being 40mph apart from of course Hertfordshire Constabulary. Has anyone else noticed?
GEOFF NEWMAN
ONTARIO, CANADA
After my visit from Canada in 2007 I was looking foreward to returning to the Top of the world in 2008 for some more of their hopitality. Unfortunately the management had changed hands and instead I found the food was so so, and the service was the worst I had ever encountered. I had presented my credit card before the meal, which was accepted, only to be told after the meal that because it didn't have a "chip" on it, something no North American cards have, it was unacceptable. We had planned to have most of our meals in this pub after last year's experience but needless to say that was the only one. I think it will be a while before we return to the U.K. and certainly never again to the Top of the world.
carla farmer
bennetts end, hemel hempstaed
today i was down town and i saw the hawk that is suposed to scare the pigeon's away kill a duck on the roof top above gregg the bakers,lots of people saw this,the pigeon's are not even scared,this sort of the thing should happen when the town is closed not when people or children are around,the duck was on a nest,the handler brought the duck down in a bag.this was very upsetting for all to see,not everybody hates pigeon's.
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Weather for Hemel Hempstead
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -0 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 6 mph
Wind direction: South west
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