JUMPING THE GUN

In the minutes for Harvington Parish Council's meeting on 8 December 2008, the chair made it clear that the parish council had decided to support VVASP's shabby anti-windfarm campaign.

This was BEFORE Harvington PC conducted a poll of residents and only 31% of those polled expressed opposition to the windfarm!

Church Lench Parish Council was effectively taken over by active supporters of VVASP several months ago.

Fladbury Parish Council has now voted to contribute to the 'Windfarm Working Party's noise date and 'legal advice' on the Environmental Impact Statement.

Has anyone seen this Environmental Impact Statement, yet? Or are our parish councillors preemptively seeking legal advice, before the EIS has even appeared?

In other words, have they already made up their minds to oppose the planning application for the Lenchwick Windfarm? And how much of our money are they prepared to spend while they go hunting for excuses to oppose it?

Any parish council which shows clear prejudice and bias to a planning application before it's even submitted can have its objections disqualified by the district council planning committee.

Now, wouldn't that be fun? Thousands of pounds of council tax payers money wasted by your parish councillors, and for what?

To have their objections ignored because they couldn't even PRETEND to be giving a planning application due consideration?

Well, at least Norton and Lenchwick Parish Council are playing by the rules and striving, in the face of intolerable pressure, to do their democratic duties properly. They were tricked into shelling out £750 from the precept to keep VVASP/Church Lench Parish Council quiet. But they're doing all they reasonably can to remain properly impartial until the planning application actually arrives.

But let's hope that the others continue to make their lack of impartiality, their evident bias and their tendency to be hoodwinked by VVASP's blatant propaganda obvious to all and sundry.

And then they can explain to their local residents why they threw so much public money away on a fruitless and misguided exercise, and why their failure to remain properly objective led to the district council disqualifying their objections.

Then life in the Lenches really will be interesting!!!