Grand designs

[bagpuss]

Okay- so we've heard about another retail opportunity for Wick. How about a wish list of facilities? I was on the phone to a friend who reckons a theme park might be a good idea; a cinema for Wick; a massive sports complex etc.

Any suggestions for a crowd puller for Caithness that would also bring in good money and would keep the yachts and tourists piling in for more...?

[Victoria]

I personally want to more to Caithness because it doesnt have all these things!!!

[Marty McFly]

How about some decent employment positions, i.e. manufacturing of some description?

I can't help thinking that if everyone ended up working in the new stores or in all the leisure facilities we all would like to have in our town, then things would become very unballanced, and there is nothing to stop it all falling apart.

Untill we can attract incomers from the beautiful south by offering employment other than shelf-stacking (and I don't mean to be nasty to shelf-stackers by saying that, as i've done it myself), then adding new facilities to Wick is a bit like putting a shiny coat of paint on an old shed door. ;)

[Lolabelle]

As a soon to be tourist, I would rather come for the peace and beauty rather than a theme park or shops. We've got shops everywhere. Not that I think that the locals should not have good shops and facilities. But for the area to do well, I would imagine that long term employment opportunities would be more beneficial, so some kind of industry other than tourism would be the go. But then you don't want to destroy the peace and beauty with big ugly industrial sites either. In the area in Australia that I live in, there are hundreds of miles of open cut coal mines and they are absolutely disgusting. They dig great holes every where and then say they will put it back "exactly" as it was. But instead we end up with these awful rounded mounds with rows of grass and trees. Nothing like what the natural bush looked like. [evil]

[NickInTheNorth]

How about some decent employment positions, i.e. manufacturing of some description?

Don't be silly Britain has given up on manufacturing, there's no future in it.

The future is in service industries, such as call centres.

Oh no, silly me, the call centres are now all in India so that most of the customer service personnel can not be understood by the customers and we can just get them to read a script that doesn't say anything relevant. But tht's ok, we'll be giving a good dividend to our shareholders. They can therefore afford to pay plenty of tax to keep folks in the UK on benefits, 'cos there aren't any jobs.

I know, we'll create lots of jobs in tourism, that's a service industry. Caithness is a good place for tourists because of it's beautiful unspoiled coastline and countryside. Let's build lots of wind power schemes up there so that we in London can share in the vast amount of money that Caithness will reap as a result of the lovely tourists we are sending up there in droves. What do you mean they don't want to go 'cos there's too many wind turbines, bit selfish of those folks in Caithness to spoil their countryside.

They better build some shops.