And I thought the WFDC planning site was bad, sweet shop, cleaning things up.

A friend wanted to look up some details on his home, he resides in the Malvern Hills district. So I visited the Malvern Hills Planning page, which I commented was much easier to find then the corresponding Wyre Forest one. I expected good things though I'd heard how the planning site had been praised. Reality was a bit of a let-down though.

Clicking on Search Planning Applications, I was given the standard type in details I'd come to expect. Unlike the WFDC site you could choose the type of application you were searching for and not have to hit the correct enter key or visit a different search page. However one small problem marred the experience, nowhere to type an address in. I don't know the planning references. Ah well trying anyway we entered his address into the Alternative Reference field and hit the enter key. Up popped a window with a calendar in it. You have to click the search button. Supposedly this is a Bobby site, and yet I can't tab down to the search button. It sticks on the calendar, because you haven't entered a search term.

Clicking on search produced no results. Let's try the Property search. Typed in the address name and got nothing. Typed in the postcode and hey look there it is. Click to view details or click to view map? Details seemed the obvious choice. Hmm no links to planning here. back a page and try map. Nope doesn't work in Firefox... doesn't work in Opera... ah what a surprise works in IE. There's the property. Now to click on info, click on the property and... it tries to open a new window, which is blocked.

Unblocking and I get a window, no address bar; no icons; no maximise/minimise. I resize it to see all the details, click to the next page and it resizes back (Do you remember the Print key-combination?). Click on one of the planning documents and it opens in the parent page and closes the pop-up. Great now let's look at the next one... um back to the map? Yep and repeat the process.

You want to see how it should be done visit South Hams planning site A minor cosmetic error in Firefox when viewing plans, but neat and simple. Look and learn people.


I did pop in to the sweet shop on Saturday morning, heh so many old-time sweets. I picked up some jelly beans (not old-time, but I'm a jelly bean freak and these are the decent high gelatin chewy type) and some apple bon-bons. Apple bon-bons! Haven't seen those in ages. I took a couple of pictures I'll post, along with a lot of others, later this week.


Tidying things up I came across an old board game 221b Baker Street from information gathered it appears to be the 1981 second edition version with the 40 case-cards. I'd wondered where that had got to. A more intelligent game then Cluedo, you had to visit areas and solve the clues. Unlike so many games though it required extraneous knowledge as the clues could be crossword-like in their nature. Fine for adults, not so hot for a 10-year old. Anyway now I'm 20+ years older might be time for a revival. Still way too much to tidy I'm not sure what I'll come across next. Oh I've got some wall plates, I'll post the pictures later this week, farm scenes, country scenes etc. thought about sticking them on eBay. Nobody I know wants them, but I don't if anybody reading here would be interesting, only looking for a few quid each and if you're local it'll save P&P.