I SEE there are plans to build a new link road from Walton to either Penketh or Sankey.

Hooray I say and about time.

My only sadness is Warrington Borough Council has got to enter some kind of government competition to win the funding for it and even if it’s successful, it could be seven or eight years before the road is actually built.

Yes, I concede this would be a major civil engineering project and involve building two or more bridges over the Manchester Ship Canal and the Mersey.

But as the famous sportswear company motto says: Just do it.

The facts are starkly apparent to anyone who has tried to drive through Warrington town centre at rush hour that our road system just can’t cope with the volume of traffic.

Being brutally honest, it’s probably not been able to cope for the past 10 years and I speak from long and bitter experience of trying to get home through Stretton, Stockton Heath, over the Brian Bevan island and the Bridge Foot gyratory system.

It’s no fun sitting in your car watching traffic lights change time and time again with the traffic not moving because it’s not cleared ahead.

(This does raise another question. Who in their right mind gave planning permission for a major business development at Centre Park with one road in and out which emerges at Brian Bevan island, one of the busiest junctions in town? The answer is probably the same bright spark that gave permission for Riverside retail park with one road in and out which emerges at one of the busiest junctions in town.) In the words of the Radiohead song Just: You do it to yourself.

Anyway, back to the the so-called Western Link road from Walton to Sankey; when the news broke, I phoned the council to see if my home was going to be affected as several homes and businesses will have to be demolished if the plans go ahead.

I was told my house wasn’t in the path of the road but one of the proposals would see the Western Link run a couple of hundred yards from my house.

Don’t worry, said the man from the council, we are sending 6,000 letters and you should get one in a day or two. It didn’t arrive.

Then we took a phone call from what was obviously a southern-based private company that called to check if we’d received our letter.

We said we hadn’t and were then promised we would be sent one.

It still hasn’t arrived.

With any major project, good communication is absolutely vital – especially one as radical as this.

If the council can’t even get a letter to me after twice promising it will, I don’t hold out much hope for the rest of the scheme.

  •  I’M glad our little heatwave is over. To be honest I’m really, really glad and I just hope we don’t have temperatures and humidity like that again this year.

It’s just not British is it?

Weather in this country should be no more than pleasantly warm, the kind of temperature where you still feel the need to take a jacket with you ‘just in case’.

You should be able to sit in a beer garden and not worry about getting sunburn. You should be able to walk to the shops and not get heatstroke or become dehydrated.

Let’s face it, we are just not geared up for Ibiza-style weather.

I took a gentle stroll into Warrington town centre over lunch one day last week and there was more flesh on display than a Saturday afternoon Magaluf booze cruise.

Call me old fashioned but I genuinely believe there’s a time and a place for everything and wearing a bikini top to buy a steak bake from Greggs is neither the time nor the place.

And yes, it was hot but that does not give carte blanche for 20-something blokes to whip their shirts off in the middle of town.

Believe me when I tell you I you wouldn’t want to see me with my top off and similarly, I don’t want to see your naked torso when I’m queueing for my meatball marinara in Subway.

Let’s have a little decorum please. Is that too much to ask?