07/01/11……Thame news review of 2010 ? Continued

FOLLOWING on from Wednesday’s review of the main Thame news stories of 2010 up to April, the rest of the year proved just as eventful.

The General Election on May 6, which saw the re-election of Thame?s MP John Howell, attracted a turn out of 73% in the Constituency ? the biggest for many years.

The sunny month of June sadly brought the death of two popular local men, ?The father of Thame allotments,? Ken Jones, who was also an ex manager of the Co-op store, and 29 year-old motorcyclist, Robert Thompson, who was killed in accident at a Bicester round-about. Thame?s very first Arts and Literature festival towards the end of June proved to be a huge success with 1,450 people attending 30 events, including poetry nights in pubs, over the weekend, June 25-27.

Early in July the beautiful land-mark Weeping Willow tree in the Memorial Gardens had to be felled by the town council because it was diseased and dangerous. But the gap in Thame?s townscape was soon re-filled with a replacement tree of the same species. Also in July, Thame responded to the hand of friendship extended by Romania, and the Thame-Sinaia Friendship group was launched.

The month brought an extended dry spell of weather and Thame fire station was kept busy putting out fires in hedgerows and railway embankments, and more seriously, a fire in the car park at Thame Show which damaged 22 cars. Thame Show was, for the first time, held during July, having been staged for generations during the third week in September.

Also in July, a town branding initiative was launched to help promote the town and ?Its Thame4Me? stickers began appearing in shop windows and on event posters etc. Soha became the first ?green? housing association to come up with practical ideas to mobilise neighbourhoods to adapt to climate change by encouraging everyone to reduce energy consumption in anyway they can.

It was during July 2010 that Oxfordshire County Council voted to take the controversial step of turning off the county?s speed cameras. (These are now due to be turned on again following a financial contribution from Thames Valley Police)

For ten years, Thame had been fighting for a new library to replace the small, inadequate building in Southern Road, and on August 2, a brand new, state-of-the art library, with computer, self-service equipment was opened.

For three days over the August bank holiday, a red double decker bus became a regular sight in the town when, in its 46th year, the now internationally renowned Towersey festival attracted top folk, blues and Roots musicians and drew some of Thame?s most colourful annual visitors to the town providing a much-welcome boost to the local economy.

Concerns over future funding for the Thame & District Day Centre began to emerge in August and the local community was asked to get behind fund-raising challenges, and as a result, in part, of local lobbying, the centre later received reassurance from the Buckinghamshire Hospitals Trust, its landlord, that it could stay for a reasonable rent, far from the