Oakham Town Partnership, Oakham Late Night Christmas Shopping Event, Report

Oakham Town Partnership, Oakham Late Night Christmas Shopping Event

Preparations for this event started some time ago, I met the organiser, Alison I think.
Nice lady.

I can only imagine the difficulties she experiences when organising such an event.

I heard a lot of negative comments and have my own opinion of the event as I observed
from 2pm

A lot less happened this year, it was spread out over a wide area.

The main stage was hidden away by the Buttercross? this meant that most of the performers
performed to a handful of people.

Comments from traders "Cllr Alf Dewis will not listen to anyone"

Other people "it was crap" "shit"

People complained there was far to many stalls selling booze and food.

As for my opinion some of the food was probably best avoided, food hygiene seemed
not existent in some cases, but not all. One stall was selling food which went out of date last
month Bread Rolls Best Before 15th Novermber


IT HAS BEEN POINTED OUT TO ME THAT THIS BEST BEFORE DATE
COULD MEAN 2015. I am not sure it is possible to preserve them for a year?

Rolls Sold as fresh

I was surprised the town partnership permits the fair to unplug Christmas lights to 

power their rides.

The biggest disappointment for many, after all the work to get the town a decent 

Christmas tree the partnership stuck a great big tatty fun house in front of it.

let them climb a ladder to unplug most of the tree lights so the fun house could

get free power. I asked the man with the ladders if he could plug them back in

he said he would and then drove off leaving the town with a half illuminated

tree!

Each year the town partnership makes no arrangements for waste management

this evening the town has been left in a total mess,

Victoria Hall was busy various craft type stalls.

The Town Council this year moved back into their chamber. 

Cllr Joyce Lucas displayed some interesting photographs and

offered mince pies and chocolates.

Cllr Adam Lowe dug out his WWI exhibition, which I had seen

and found interesting at a past event.

The Stamford Artisan Guild were in the castle when I visited there

were no customers. I think the problem there is there are no lights

leading to the castle or any indication anything was happening 

in the castle unless you were lucky to bump into the one person

handing out information leaflets.