Published at 19:27, Thursday, 29 July 2010

WHAT a wonderful weekend of music and happy people we enjoyed in Maryport last weekend.

I make no apologies for being parochial. I know that people had a great time at CockRock too, and that the festival, perhaps aimed at a younger age group, will continue to grow.

I also know that Solfest, billed as one of the country’s best family festivals, is coming up and, once again, we are lucky to have it on our doorstep.

The difference between those and Maryport Blues is that the Maryport festival incorporates almost the whole town – or, at the very least, the whole town centre.

Pubs, clubs and cafes are involved. The festival committee organises bands for them and allows them some of the huge economic benefit the blues have on this town.

It used to be estimated that it brought around £3 million a year into Maryport. But I doubt that would have been quite the case this year, with chairman Dave Park describing it as the “make or break festival.”

They don’t yet know how much they have made.

The committee is determined that the 12th festival will not be the last. However, spiralling costs and the expense of hiring the calibre of act that makes Maryport the best blues festival in Britain is definitely taking its toll.

To lose the blues would be nothing short of catastrophic, I believe. Pubs and clubs are struggling already and without this once-a-year weekend, I think many of them would already be out of business.

If that is not enough, there is more bad news for Maryport.

This week Maryport Inshore Rescue has been told that it will not be getting a £1 million new boathouse with room for a maritime museum.

That means the volunteers will have to continue operating in a boathouse that barely fits their boat, with no hot water and no kitchen facilities – nothing that could ease their discomfort while involved in saving lives at sea.

The news is devastating to the lifeboat volunteers but I also wonder what else it means.

We have all been lulled into believing that there is going to be a multi-million-pound development of the harbour. The water would possibly be impounded, new houses built, shops and cafes opened.

Nobody is sure what is actually going to happen but I have an awful feeling that we are about to see a pipe dream go up in smoke.

It bothers me so much to think that something with such huge potential will now no longer happen.

A couple of weeks ago I covered the opening of a new footbridge over the Ellen or, as it is called in Maryport, “the bridge to nowhere.”

It is a perfectly nice bridge and will allow people to access the harbour from Mote Hill and Furnace Lane.

The bridge cost £250,000. Now if we had money to burn I’d be leading the parade to get that bridge built. But could the money not have been spent more wisely elsewhere?

We need a new hospital and doctors’ surgery here that would enable the efficient delivery of health services.

We need a new school and we already know we are not going to get it.

I am concentrating on one town but, while the details may change, I do believe that West Cumbria has some difficult and painful days and months and possibly years ahead.

Maryport stands for all of us. Our town may be a little poorer than yours, a little smaller or a little bigger. But we are West Cumbria and I am starting to fear that what happened historically is about to happen again.

When the going gets tough at central government level, it is the already poor who become poorer.

We are as entitled to a good education, good health care, a good job and a good standard of living as anywhere else.

If someone can help to save the blues festival we want to hear from you now. If someone can think of a better way to spend the £250,000 used on the bridge to nowhere, let us know.

But most of all, let’s not just sit back and allow “them” to make us victims.

The greatest enemy now will be apathy. Let’s not make it easy for the Government to forget about us.

Let’s make sure they get the message that we are not going to be the sacrificial lambs this time. We are not going to lose quietly.

Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk