IT'S fairly obvious that Bury's Chamber of Trade knows which side its bread's buttered on. Its very welcome £500 cheque to the Metro Arts Centre will go some way to providing a day's entertainment when Streets Ahead comes to the town on May 6, but while fun and frolics might draw in the crowds two of three times each year, there are now 363 shopping days between Christmases so somewhere along the line somebody's got to do some radical thinking.

That fearful word Dumplington hasn't been mentioned for a while, but quite recently Selfridges announced that the Trafford site earmarked for this planned, whacking great shopping emporium will see the arrival of their first store outside London.

So if Selfridges are going for it, you can bet your life every other big store will be there too. Bargains are bound be available somewhere on the site on a daily basis, and, a very important consideration, they're hardly likely to be charging for car parking.

Bury charges for car parking. In fact on its long stay car parks Bury overcharges. A fiver is not only ridiculous it's legal robbery and I'd love to hear from anyone at the Town Hall who can justify the figure.

And this time I have to say that if I don't get justification, my car-driving readers will doubtless assume, as I do now, that the figure was plucked out of thin air.

What, I wonder, makes the town so puffed with its own importance that it can charge more than many car parks in neighbouring Manchester?

The Manchester Arena, for example, for several weeks displayed an advertising banner which offered all-day parking for £4.

But by driving around you can do even better - as low as £2.50 per day and with an attendant on site.

And incidentally, did you notice that Bury's proposals for cuts in its expenditure didn't include making its staff cough up for those parking spaces they've been getting for free ever since Pay and Display started?

However, I have a feeling that Dumplington will change car parking policies in all Greater Manchester's boroughs - including Bury.

Big retailers know that free car parking brings droves of customers while paid-for car parking attracts fewer, and no car parking at all attracts only the odd handful who live around the corner, and can walk.

Even the environmentally conscious would sooner ride than walk so the basic message is still that free car parking attracts customers. So remember the name - Dumplington.

Believe me, Councillors, if you don't do anything before this great shopping paradise arrives, you might find yourselves having to hurriedly scrap your Pay and Display and come up with something really exciting - like machines that PAY US TO STAY!

ZMEMORIES are short among town hall staff. Not so long ago free car parking in Bury was the norm. Today they're compiling reports which talk of an 'experimental' free car parking area that will accommodate cars displaced while the new town centre multi-storey car park is being built. What's experimental about it, I wonder? Wherever they are, free parks attract cars! REGULAR readers of this column will recall that a couple of weeks ago I saw Bury Metro officials as being people who seem to spend their time either dreaming up schemes for grants, or searching for grants to match schemes.

Now there's a new twist. The English Basketball Association has made an application to the National Lottery Sports Fund for cash to provide 10,000, all-metal, vandal-proof goals which will be given to councils, sports clubs, youth clubs, schools and community groups throughout the country.

Our town hall boys in Bury are already wanting to identify sites in "public parks, open spaces, old car parks, disused tennis courts, or areas of tarmac or concrete attached to community centres" etc.

Next thing you know they'll be looking for a grant to maintain 'em! And its just an idea, Councillors, but this summer, instead of hanging baskets you could charge us half the price and give us all a vandal-proof goal!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.