Five cars + 164 flats doesn’t add up

Watford Borough Council's decision to approve a key workers housing development at Vicarage Road which will be "car free" is the perfect example of what I mean.

"Brave or outrageous?" questioned our headline last week, reflecting the polarised views that the plan to have no parking provisions whatsoever generated.

I reckon "stupid and short-sighted" would also be applicable to the plan and the tree-huggers and politicians who think that this is a feasible development.

For a start, the country's public transport infrastructure outside of central London is in a diabolical state (not that it's anything to shout about in central London), and therefore, as I said last week, people will not willingly choose to surrender the comfort of their cars.

Now if I can see this, why can't the politicians?

Anyone who does move in to the new flats however, will have access to a car club.

Until I read the story, this was something I'd never heard of, so I looked it up on Google and it's effectively a car hire scheme.

It's actually a good idea for people who don't have, or usually need, a car. You pay a membership fee and a rental fee, and then pay a fixed mileage rate for the distance you travel.

But, for a block of 164 one and two-bedroom flats, I don't think a car club with just five cars will work.

The chances are more than five people at any one time are going to want to visit friends on the other side of Watford or do their weekly shop at Tesco - just two activities that aren't easy to do via public transport after 7pm at night or at weekends.

Come to think of it, doing a shop at Tesco, Asda or Sainsbury's via public transport isn't feasible at any time of the day or night if you live in West Watford - I'll leave you to work out the logistics of that one.

Anyway, back to the car club - it's far from an ideal solution and I suspect it wouldn't be a cost effective one even if there were enough motors to go around.

I confess I can't decide whether I agree with Councillor Andrew Mortimer - who has called the plans social engineering - or if it's simply a case that the developers have seen a plot of land where they can shove a few houses up and to hell with the fact there's not enough space to accommodate the cars that would inevitably follow.

But I have decided that this idea is complete folly and won't work - something that Mayor Dorothy Thornhill is yet to accept.

"We'll know whether it works if it ends up full or half-empty," she is quoted as saying.

Should we really be conducting what therefore amounts to an experiment that could leave 80-odd flats lying empty in a town where house prices are so high?

POOR Watford FC. To hold Premiership giants Chelsea to a scoreless-draw for more than 90 minutes, only to concede late in injury time was a cruel twist of the knife to their season.

It would have been a marvellous highlight and memory for the fans and players of their time in the Premiership had they held the champions to a draw or even sneaked one past them.

Aidy Boothroyd has done a fantastic job in his two years at the club, and I for one didn't expect him to be able to perform a miracle and keep the club up this year.

Of course, the minimal spending the club undertook on players made the impossible even tougher, but the club, in my eyes, did the right thing by not splashing the cash.

They now have solid foundations on and off the pitch for next season, which in my eyes will be the defining one for Boothroyd.

The Championship is a lot more competitive than the Premiership and all eyes will be on the Hornets next season.

I wouldn't like to predict what the club's fortunes will be, but it will certainly be interesting.

I TOTALLY understand the sentiments of 23-year-old Tom Field, one of three lads who will be jumping out of an aeroplane for an Abbots Langley charity in just over a week's time.

Tom says he has no doubts that he will jump out of the plane because, in his words: "I'm scared of flying - I don't want to be up there."

Nearly two years ago I found myself raising sponsorship for my own parachute jump and my outlook was exactly the same as Tom's as I'm no fan of aeroplanes myself.

I took part in what is known as a tandem jump, which means you are attached to an instructor for the duration of your fall and I have to say when the time came to jump, I really didn't have too much time to think about it as the instructor pushed me out and there we were, hitting speeds of 120mph plummeting towards earth.

It was at that point I realised how mad I actually was jumping out of a perfectly good plane.

I mean the Wright brothers didn't go to all the trouble of conquering the flying problem only for me to moan about not liking the sensation of flight and how I'd happily jump out of a plane at 12,000ft rather than stay in it and land safely.

But the feeling that I should section myself if and when I landed on terra-firma lasted all of about a second and after that I got on with enjoying the experience.

Which was undoubtedly one of the most exhilarating, adrenalin-fuelled few minutes of my life.

I'll bet any money that Tom will feel the same.