A TALE OF TWO PARISHES

On Wednesday 28th July, Harvington Parish Council held an extraordinary meeting to discuss the PC's response to the windfarm planning application submitted by ScottishPower Renewables.

Typically, it seems that Harvington chose not to take up offers from local supporters of the windfarm, including those who really do know about the subject, but rather made use of the occasion to encourage and advise those who felt inclined to object to the proposals, not least of all by giving them some ideas of what they might want to object about.

Still, it was if anything a slight improvement on the behaviour of Norton & Lenchwick Parish Council. Even though only 44% of Norton and Lenchwick residents expressed opposition to the windfarm in a poll carried out last year, and even though the parish council at the time was divided roughly 50:50 over the windfarm issue, the good people of Norton and Lenchwick can rest assured that their parish council have acted in a cowardly and undemocratic fashion.

All six parish councils in the area were tricked into committing public funds to a pot controlled by the maniacal nimbies of Church Lench. Now, let's be clear - every parish councillor in Church Lench is a fierce, if deluded, opponent of the windfarm. They all have the ghastly VVASP placards and car stickers on show. These were the people who kicked up a stink if a former parish councillor expressed personal support for the plans, barking that as a parish councillor he was not allowed to express a personal opinion. But with their familiar disregard for democracy and other people's views, every single member of the new parish council in Church Lench has submitted a witless and stupid objection to the plans. Seems that you can express an opinion if it is the same as Rod Stroud's VVASP "opinion", but if your views diverge in the smallest degree from the nimby line then you are condemned to silence.

Norton and Lenchwick, knowing that they were defending a minority standpoint, submitted the woefully pointless, cut-and-paste report from the Windfarm Working Party's solicitor. For good measure, the clerk of N&LPC also sent in a digest of the objections - if you will, a summary of a summary - just so that the planning officers at Wychavon are clear as to what Norton and Lenchwick's parish council are objecting to.

In Harvington, there was at least an attempt at a show of democracy, because they invited parishioners to share and discuss the objections first. But then, opposition to the windfarm in Harvington was even more of a minority position (31%) than it had been in Norton and Lenchwick, so the crazed nimbies of the parish council no doubt felt that they had to make a bit of an effort.

So, Norton submits an objection (or rather a copy of the solicitor's report commissioned by the Windfarm Working Party), even though the majority of residents do not oppose the windfarm plans. And Harvington gathered a bunch of objectors together to make it look like they were following the will of the many, but still submitted the lacklustre job carried out on their behalf by Parkinson Wright solicitors.

30-Love, then, to the minority who feel that their opinions matter a great deal more than everybody else's.

But what the Windfarm Working Party and the parish councils are currently refusing to divulge is what brief exactly was given to the solicitor. Did the pretend-neutral Working Party ask for a report from the solicitor which would simplify the planning application so that they could all understand it? Or did they specifically impress upon the solicitor the need to find fault with the planning application - in which case, how could their actions be considered in any way neutral and without prejudice?

Judging by the pisspoor job done by the solicitor, a great deal of public money has been wasted. It has been wasted just so that a bunch of fanatics can ensure that the local parish councils have objected to something that the majority of their parish councillors do not object to and that they have done so in pseudo-legalistic language supposedly relating to planning issues. The result is hardly impressive. But it has served its purpose, which is to uphold and defend the lie, fostered by certain parish councillors, that there is some kind of mythical "clear majority" of opposition in the area and a "mandate" from the local community for the plans to be opposed.

Nonsense. Lies and nonsense - the same as ever with VVASP and its agitators.

Steps are, however, being taken to prise from the cold, lifeless hands of one clerk the actual brief given to the solicitor. If the councils are refusing to disclose this information, it's because it would be incriminating. Basically, they have lied to everybody, pretending to be impartial when in reality they are bending every rule and blagging a large amount of other people's money in order to behave irresponsibly and undemocratically.

And when we do finally get our hands on what precisely the solicitor was told to do at our expense (almost certainly to "find anything and everything in the plans which we can object to"), then there will be hell to pay. Because a few parish councillors have completely failed to represent the views of their parishioners, they have wasted our money, and they have allowed local democracy to be utterly corrupted by the Rod Stroud roadshow and those demented, self-important, utterly mindless nookies of Church Lench.

Watch this space.