Go elsewhere?

Something wrong here. The town centre was pretty empty, not much traffic around either – possibly due to the chaos of roadworks and an incident earlier on the A338, which blocked the main route into Bournemouth. Yet this town park by the Pier proclaims it is full (when it isn’t).

The infrastructure round here is ridiculous. Limited routes in and out of town - which are gridlocked during hot summer weekends. The buses are being held up by road works and ‘incidents’. The trains by strikes and ‘incidents’. Affects all of us, including local businesses.

The council throws money, and/or time and effort into follies (some of which never happen): the Imax cinema (up a short few years), voted the ugliest building in the UK, then demolished, the surf reef (which never worked) and cost £millions, and last summer on a money-losing pop-up beach cafe. Not to mention a fortune on cycle-lanes - which you rarely see anyone using, most still cycles on the pavements - narrow the available road - and are one of the reasons for endless roadworks.

Now permission has been given for a 24-storey monstrosity, which is totally out of scale, and will take the light and sun from other buildings. All these new residents using buses (which are all packed recently - with elderly forced to stand).

Soap box over. One of those days. Going to relax and watch the box.