Re-gentification

High Street Re-gentrification.  Its definitely on – oh no it’s off.

Maidstone’s ambitious plans to pave the High Street and make it a bus, taxi, disabled badge holder, emergency services, dustcarts, cyclist, delivery vehicles and pedestrian only thoroughfare have fallen victim to the wave of common sense that temporally disabled Maidstone’s senior councillors last week. The council had previously stated ‘under no circumstances whatsoever would the High Street re-gentrification be affected by cuts to the council’s budget’ – and then changed their mind. High Street Liberal Decimate ward councillor  Clive Of England spoke to The Tissue, through a clairvoyant, about why he was in broad agreement with the Tory led decision. He said ‘as a Literal Decimate loyal to the great leader Clegg I reserve the right to say one thing before an election and take a diametrically opposite position once the peasants have been suckered and I have been elected. We have paid the consultants, had lengthy meetings, formed committees and sub-committees put up lovely artistic licence impressions of how it would have looked if the High Street was ten times wider and because nobody was aware of Travis Perkins just down the road at Aylesford sourced the building materials from China. In the end it came down to how best to waste four million quid and quite frankly in these constrained times we believe together with expert and expensive consultants we can collectively find an alternative way.

A note of sadness was expressed by Councillor Kaffy Culture who said ‘isn’t it a pity, isn’t it a shame. We were going to encourage the night time economy junk food retailers to put out nice indigenous aluminium tables and chairs. It would have been so Mediterranean as Maidstone’s decent, hardworking law abiding stakeholders could sit outside -  responsibly sipping a cheeky Pinot Noir that speaks of stones and fresh rainwater - whilst enjoying the ambiance of throwing out time at The Chicago Rock Cafe. She added ‘this project has not been abandoned but stored in the box marked ‘mythology’ alongside ‘the southern approach road’. I would like to assure the residents of our wonderful county town that it will be periodically re-evaluated and consultants and lawyers given the opportunity to submit their invoices for payment in the usual way.