Letter to Mr M Watson

Good Grief! Is M Watson, Babsham Lane living on a different planet to the rest of us, is he plain naive or just very good mates with the FAVG (landowners/developer consortium)? The Government are not leading the way – they are in fact 2 year’s out of date with their housing figures which have gone down considerably, neither have they considered the obvious which would be to bring back into use the million properties in this country standing empty.

But let us look at his “stunning” “brilliant” eco towns point by point.
No, the “eco” town homes will not be zero carbon. Code Level 6 has mysteriously been reduced to code level 4 so the “eco” homes will be exactly the same as the requirement for any new building in the next year or two.

Could he enlarge upon the “multitude of other progressive environmental features” please? I’m afraid I can’t think of one!

By transport links I presume he means the bus that is proposed to be circulating round the site, a screen in each house flashing its impending approach, along with some cycle lanes? Could he explain what on earth would be the point of moving the station from the middle of the “eco” site to the west end of it?

Could he enlarge on the “high grade employment” proposed please? What are the proposed 4,000 jobs going to be?

The “affordable housing element” seems to have been left out of the latest plan. Land is going to be set aside for some other developers to provide that. I wonder if anyone will?

M. Watson must have been asleep when the proposed plans to provide energy from wind turbines and the River Arun were thrown out of the mix as not only unworkable but positively dangerous. Using rubbish has also been found to be unworkable as this would entail a HGV bringing waste to the site from all over southern England every 12 minutes day and night! Wake up M Watson. This is not “eco”!

But most importantly, M. Watson, if such an outrageous proposal should ever go ahead our descendants would look on us with disgust not at “failing to grasp realities”. They would look on us with disgust for concreting over fields that could have been used to grow crops so that they would not be dependent on other countries for their very food! They would look at old photos of the beautiful countryside, the meadows and wild-life, the ancient trees and hedgedrows, hear stories about quiet village life and birdsong and look on us with disgust at not trying hard enough to stop the destruction of all that beauty for no good reason, just so a few greedy and selfish individuals can line their own pockets. Who’ll then they’ll be off leaving the rest of us in the complete and utter concrete, gridlocked mess they will have created.

P.Wales,
North End Road,
Yapton