No 56, September 2003
Campaigners call protest over council betrayal
Titnore Stitch-Up
SLIPPERY Worthing Borough
Council is preparing to stab the people of Durrington in the back and
give the go-ahead to the Titnore housing nightmare. And it is so scared of the
massive opposition to the West Durrington development that it has decided not
to stage any public meetings on this vital issue, where people could voice
their anger. An 'exhibition' being held at the planning department’s HQ
in Portland House, Richmond Road, Worthing (hardly handy for Durrington
residents!) is a disgrace - just a couple of leaflets pinned up on a
notice board in the foyer. This pointless display is coming to Durrington
itself for just one day, on Saturday September 13, with just one councillor
due to be on duty to defend the council’s position.
The ruling Liberal Democrats came to power at the town hall in 2002 partly
because they said they would take the side of the people against the
developers over the proposed Titnore development, as well as on the Asda
issue. But now - surprise, surprise! - leader Sheila Player, executive
member Bob Smytherman and their cronies have turned out to be just like any
other politicians that ever lived.
However, they will not be getting it all their own way. Campaigners are
insistent that local people SHOULD and WILL have their say on
the council’s planned sell-out. POW! (Protect Our
Woodland!), the group behind last year’s massive protests
against the scheme, has announced that it will be doing what the council has
failed to do and will be holding its own public meeting and protest outside
the council’s cop-out exhibition at Durrington Community Centre on
Saturday September 13, at 12 noon. John Clarke of POW! invited people to
bring banners and placards expressing their views, so the council could be in
no doubt as to what the people of Durrington and Worthing think of the
development. He said the meeting was essential to allow people to have their
say in the face of the council’s efforts to bury the whole Titnore
issue. And he stressed that the meeting would be going ahead, whether or not
the authorities wanted it to. Mr Clarke explained: "When we held the big
demonstration last year, we saw a a concerted effort to frighten people off
attending and stop them having their say. But we will not be intimidated and
we do not believe the people of Worthing are prepared to be intimidated. "If
it gives the go-ahead to this development, Worthing Borough Council will be
making a complete laughing stock of democracy. We’re going to have to
show them what democracy means!"
He also revealed that POW! was launching a "stock exchange" attack on the
three firms involved in the development consortium - Heron (run
by convicted crook Gerald Ronson) Persimmon and Bryant
Homes (part of Taylor Woodrow). He suggested their share
prices could be "severely dented" by the mass protests and site occupations
that would be unleashed if the scheme was given the go-ahead."This would
seriously eat into the millions of pounds these businesses hope to make out of
destroying our countryside, hand in hand with the traitors at Worthing
council."
To contact POW! send
an email or go to the POW! website
What exactly is happening?
ALTHOUGH no new planning
application has been submitted for the Titnore area, there has clearly been a
lot of talking going on behind the scenes over the last year. Worthing council
has now issued a "development brief" outlining how it would like the
greenfield site to be developed! So much for saving the countryside and this
vital green lung for Worthing! Next step is obviously for the developers to
put in a plan that amazingly happens to fit in exactly with what the
development brief sets out, so the council can wave it through and let in the
bulldozers... The council 'exhibition' runs at Portland House (near Worthing
library) until October 24 (Monday to Friday only) and you can pick up comment
forms to fill in and send back. You can also ask for a copy of the actual
development brief. Alternatively, email your views to wdbrief@worthing.gov.uk
Borough not so thorough
OOPS! Worthing Borough
Council’s development brief for Titnore/West Durrington contains
a real clanger. The Somerset family’s well known Holt Farm north of the
A27 is described as "Home Farm". This kind of attention to detail really does
highlight the competence of the council’s planners as custodians of
Worthing’s heritage...
Give us our say!
Protest/Public Meeting
12 noon, Saturday September 13
Durrington Community Centre
Tesco complex, New Road
Asda truth sunk in?
THE SAME tricks crop up every time the
money-making sharks and corrupt councils want to steamroller over public
opinion. Opponents of the Asda/WalMart scheme to build a new
supermarket on the Worthing Sixth Form College playing fields - another part
of the master plan to ruin the Durrington area - have been quick to call
attention to the latest attempted con. Asda sent out a leaflet to residents
called "Initiative Worthing" in which they asked people to choose from three
"options" - all of which were in favour of their plans. There was no option
to vote against their new store altogether - which is obviously what a
huge number of residents would like to do! This kind of manipulation is not
only an affront to democracy, but also a real insult to the intelligence of
ordinary people. Do the rich and powerful really think we’re all a
bunch of dim peasants who can’t see through pathetic tricks like that?
Exactly the same thing happens with our political system. We are given three
or more "options" as to who we would like to rule over us. But the option of
true democracy, of making decisions about our communities and our futures
ourselves, is never offered. Funny how fewer and fewer of us ever bother
voting any more, isn’t it?
* Contact the anti-Asda Field Place Residents Association at 43 Bolsover
Road, Worthing, or go to www.fpara.org.uk
Lethal force on the air in Sussex
LOW LEVELS of competence
and low-level intimidation of the general public are standard offerings from
Sussex Police. But now the force is also about to bombard us
with high levels of radiation from its latest "Tetra" communication
system. Worthing planners have already chucked out two bids to put one of the
controversial new masts at Worthing FC’s Woodside Road
ground. However, the threat has only just begun, with West Sussex braced for
at least 89 Tetra applications in coming weeks, including some near schools.
This is because the government is using a dodgy "private finance initiative"
to pay £2.9 billion over 19 years for a subsidiary of mobile phone
company 02, to put up 3,000 Tetra masts across the UK. Reported
the West Sussex Gazette (August 21): "Campaigners warn that its
effects are potentially more lethal than mobile phone transmitters,
claiming the Tetra pulse rate of 17.6 hertz matches the electro-magnetic
signals in the human brain, causing migraine, hallucinations,
disorientation, sleeplessness, itchy skin, body warming and, they allege,
tumours, leukaemia and other cancers." The newspaper is so alarmed at the
risks that it has launched a campaign against the police Tetra masts, warning:
"We are cast as guinea pigs in a sinister experiment, the outcome of which
may be grim indeed."
* Victims of crime in Worthing who find the police are less than
enthusiastic about responding to their call for help, will be reassured to
know that the force has plenty of resources to harass the town’s famous
cannabis cafes and those using them. Several riot vans and seven
or eight police at a time were regularly to be seen in Victoria Road last
month, with cafe customers whisked off for strip searches on leaving the
premises. It has been acknowledged by police that at least
£100,000 has been wasted on trying to close down the cafes. What
is the point? People who enjoy cannabis will continue to be able to get hold
of it and smoke it, as they did before the cafes opened. If anyone around
Worthing is dangerously out of their heads, it’s the police.
Terror for sale in the UK
THIS month, Europe’s biggest
arms fair is being held in London, with plenty of British weapons of mass
destruction on sale to rogue regimes - so one day we’ll have an excuse
to invade their countries! A week of protests is being staged against the
DSEi death fair in London’s docklands and a group from
Worthing are travelling up on Wednesday September 10 for a blockade of the
conference centre and a Reclaim the Streets party. Contact
worthing@eco-action.org for more details and go to www.dsei.org for general
info. Meanwhile, back in town, two more events are being lined up by the
ever-dynamic Worthing Against War. On Tuesday September 16
Felicity Arbuthnot will be speaking about the USA’s concentration
camp in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay at The Downview, opposite West
Worthing station, from 7.45pm. Then on Saturday September 20, there will be a
protest against Israel’s apartheid wall in Palestine in Montague
Place, Worthing, at 2pm. A big national march against the occupation of Iraq
is being held in London on Saturday September 27 and Worthing activists will
be attending. Contact worthingagainstwar@yahoo.co.uk,
phone 01903 206588 or go to the WAW website
Back to front logic
WEST Sussex County Council
has made much over the last few years of opposing the housing quotas being
imposed by the Government, which, as a Tory authority, it is happy to blame
entirely on New Labour and in particular on John Prescott. So when that same
Government scrapped plans for an Arundel bypass-bypass and a Worthing bypass
(see Porkbolter 55), West Sussex was gifted the ideal argument. All it
had to do was throw up its hands and say it could no longer take on all that
extra housing, because the roads infrastructure wasn’t up to it. So what
did it do? Errr, well, exactly the opposite! It decided (Worthing
Herald, July 31) to make "all possible representations" to the
Government to reverse its decision on the A27 road schemes, so West Sussex
can go ahead with the house building it had claimed not to want to
accommodate!
Older than in 1980s - shock!
A BIZARRE piece in the
Worthing Herald (July 31) revealed how bible-bashing Northern
Ireland politician Ian Paisley popped into the Sea Lane
Cafe in Goring for some scampi and handmade tarts while apparently
holidaying in Worthing. The cafe manager was quoted as commenting: "He
looked older and slimmer than he did on the TV in the 80s". Maybe Dr
Paisley should have been visiting the new Porkbolter Cafe just along the
seafront where, thanks to the mind-warping effects of our herbal infusions and
the cunning deployment of wall-to-wall distorting mirrors, he could well have
come across as younger than he did 20 years ago - and a bit of a hippy. We
have already had visits from a very trim-looking Elvis (what do you mean
‘dead’?), a sexy Margaret Thatcher and an honest Tony Blair.
Alastair Campbell has also been telling people you can walk in off the street
and order a full Working Man’s Dinner (WMD) and we’ll have it on
your plate within 45 minutes, but that’s simply not true. (Note to
our more gullible readers: This is all a stupid and rather contrived joke.
There is no Porkbolter cafe. We made it up. So please don’t waste your
time wandering up and down Goring seafront trying to track it down.)
PORK-SCRATCHINGS
CONGRATULATIONS to Beeches
Avenue residents for seeing off plans to build 90 houses on the edge
of the Downs near Lyons Farm - developers Hargreaves have
abandoned their appeal. And the Beeches Avenue campaigners can in turn give a
nod of appreciation to the Arundel bypass protesters who helped scupper plans
for upgrading the A27 across West Sussex. Offington councillor Reg Green told
the Worthing Herald (July 31): "Their case has been
strengthened by this government abandoning the Worthing bypass scheme."
East Worthing MP Tim Loughton was also getting in on the Beeches
Avenue celebration act, despite opposing the decision to scrap the bypass! We
are fascinated by the Tories’ new-found enthusiasm for "people power".
Can we now expect to see Tim’s West Worthing counterpart Peter Bottomley
join the campaign to halt the West Durrington development? Or would that be
taking democracy too far?
* * *
MICHAEL Ball, former chief executive of Worthing Borough
Council, has withdrawn his planning application to have his home in
Pembury Road, Worthing, demolished and replaced by flats, following our report
last month. But local residents who campaigned against the proposal are not
standing down yet, as they fear another application, perhaps designed to be
more acceptable to Mr Ball’s former colleagues, could be on the way.
* * *
WORTHING Borough Council is such a well-run and popular local
authority that we just can’t believe the rumours reaching us that chief
executive Sheryl Grady and council leader Sheila
Player are daggers drawn and constantly battling for power! Scurrilous
tittle-tattle or the horrible truth about the people entrusted to run our
town - who knows?
* * *
WORTHING Animal Aid is holding an Autumn Fair on Saturday
October 25, instead of its usual Christmas one, 10am to 12.30pm at Heene
Community Centre, 122 Heene Road, Worthing.
* * *
NEWS from local dissident groups. Worthing eco-action’s
next meeting is on Tuesday October 7, 7.45pm, upstairs at The Downview
pub opposite West Worthing station. And Worthing Anarchists have
unveiled a new website
* * *
THE tenth and, sadly, final issue of a mighty Sussex publication has just been
brought out. Do or Die, to quote its own blurb, "is a journal
crammed with reports and analysis from the worldwide ecological
frontlines". At nearly 400 pages, it is a real snip for just £5 -
and this last issue has a must-read analysis of past and future struggles.
Send cheques payable to "Do or Die" c/o Prior House, 6 Tilbury Place,
Brighton. Info on their website
* * *
ANYONE who remotely remembers being a child will recall how the thought of
those long dreamy summer holidays could sustain you through the dullest
and darkest hours of winter grind. But now the authorities want to do away
with the long summer break and "rationalise" the school year into six terms.
You can defend the summer holidays by filling in a form in West Sussex County
Council’s Connections magazine, issue 14, or by going to http://wsgfl.westsussex.gov.uk Phone for
info on 01243 777445.
Warning: invasion threat
"OUTSIDE agitators" may be attending
the Titnore protest in Durrington on September 13, Worthing police have
warned. Said Chief Inspector Nick Emmall of the crack Anti-Subversion
Squad: "Following the 2002 protests, where persons arrested were found
to have travelled from far-distant Worthing, we are expecting a similar
pattern to emerge. Our intelligence suggests protesters may be bussed in from
as far away as Goring and Salvington, with a contingent of hard-core ramblers
expected to travel across from the Ferring area. We must remain ever
vigilant to the threat of democracy."
Hogging the headlines
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No copyright, no more summer freedom for our kids?
and finally ...
Reclaim Your Town, Reclaim Your Life!
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