We loved you in The Age of Innocence, in Harry Potter and the many other parts you played on stage and screen – but Dear Miriam you’re guilty of character assassination in your latest role as the carefully modulated voice of reason on behalf of Protect our Waverley, AKA Protect our DUNSFOLD Village!
Now, we don’t know what you were paid for your latest role as a voice over artist – or did you, perhaps, do it out of the goodness of your heart? But what we do know is you’re guilty of trying to bamboozle people … Oops! Silly us! Of course, that’s why they got an actress to do the voice over … They needed someone who could pretend, in the hope that it would cause their audience to indulge in what we all do when we watch a video: the willing suspension of disbelief! Got it!
You see Miriam – you and the other Save Our Dunsfold folk out there aren’t really Saving Dunsfold, what they’re intent on doing – whatever the cost – is saving their own back yard, because if they cared about Waverley they would be fighting all the development proposed in Farnham, surrounded by protected heathland, around Cranleigh which was under water in 1968,1985, 2014 and on numerous other occasions, because it is built on a swamp – that is why historically it was called CRANE..LEY.
WW loved your description of the tranquility of Dunsfold’s leafy, ancient wooded airfield against a background of twittering birds.
Did anyone tell yo before you embarked on this charade that birds were banned from the airfield following an horrendous air crash on November 20 1975 when an HS 125 leaving the British Aerospace flight test and assembly centre with the Chinese delegation on board. Because it crashed due to a bird strike resulting in the plane smashing its way through the hedge and belly sliding across the A281 Horsham Road colliding with a car killing a mother and five children on their way home from school!
Fact: Birds and airfields – do not mix and Dunsfold Park is an airfield.
Fact: Dunsfold was and is not not tranquil – anything but in fact. Dunsfold was the home of British Aerospace with over 1,800 employees, hosted many thousands of visitors from all over the world, and deliveries of huge transporters bearing aircraft parts and planes were a daily occurrence.
Fact: You claim the owners of Dunsfold are making huge donations to the Conservative Party. Really? Where’s your proof? If you provide it we’ll publish it.
Fact: You claim none of the infrastructure will be built to support housing. Considerable Infrastructure is already there – gas was brought in 20 years ago, a solar farm already provides electricity into the Nationasl Grid and permission for a Bio Digester was approved three years ago. Dunsfold village does not have a GP, the resident GP left years ago. Did anyone tell you Alfold and Dunsfold have both lost their village schools – one of which was donated by a local benefactor but is now in rack and ruin? A new health centre and primary school at Dunsfold Park will be a huge boon for the residents of Alfold and DUNSFOLD who have to go into Cranleigh to see a doctor and take their children to school. And, yes, they are deliverable if Waverley BC makes that a condition of planning. Simples, as your fellow thespian Aleksandr Orlov would say!
Fact: A new village at Dunsfold Park – and it will be a village, with 1,800 homes, not a town like nearby Cranleigh which claims it is England’s largest village with over 16,000 inhabitants!
Fact: You claim it will be “A Souless Place.” The ultimate insult! Dunsfold airfield is steeped in character and atmosphere and was where history was made. It and the people who worked there – many of them local people – were and are justly proud of its heritage. It was where General Eisenhower, accompanied by some of the major players in the D-Day invasion, inspired the pilots and crews of numerous British Squadrons as they prepared for Operation Overlord in 1944. Where Neville Duke first broke the sound barrier. Where pilots died testing planes including the Harrier Jump Jet and its successors. Where a memorial names those who died flying from Dunsfold. Souless? How dare you!
Fact: The Aircraft Museum based at Dunsfold will be at the heart of the development, and many of the people who will live there will also work there – because it is the largest employment site in Waverley!
Question: If the largest brown field site, the largest employment site, and a licensed airfield in Waverley is not the “right place” – where is “the right place?”
and… please Ms Margolyes carry on doing what you are good at – and make sure in future you get a better script writer?
I think we all know 1800 is the thin end of the wedge so please be realistic. The infrastructure needed for this development is not there and never has been, hence the reasons it has been turned down in the past. People must be living in cloud cuckoo land (or Farnham) if you think this is a sustainable development.
What a super film, it does get the message across. I see that on the same YT account there is an aerial film of the area showing just how not brownfield it really is. Silly trying to plonk all those homes in that very rural place.
I think you misunderstood what she means by “souless” here. Not on past souls but on the poor souls of future inhabitants. One only has to look at Camborne, Cambridge to see that this simply wont work.
Also, It seems a very good and informative documentary. It looks like they have gone to a lot of trouble to try and help us residents of Cranleigh and surrounds. Probably the usual few helping the many, thank you. Everyone I speak to doesn’t want this built.
Some of the poor souls you refer to may just be homeless, living in cramped conditions with parents and eager to get their foot on the first rung of the housing ladder? Where do you propose new homes should be built – on a green field near you, or near someone else?
Just for the record, as Miriam is more than capable – should she so desire to reply for herself. She was paid NOTHING to do this – she did this having spent 5 weeks in rehab in Guildford after a knee OP and got to know the area well and stayed in Alfold. Having been stuck in traffic and seen for herself the traffic on the A281 – was keen to do her bit for this – So please don’t cast aspersions on things you know nothing about.
WW, it is not my job to propose where homes should be built. If I really did have a say on that it would certainly not be in a unsustainable rural area.
If a new settlement really had to be built then it should be built somewhere totally new and separate with a well thought out infrastructure. Welwyn Garden City springs to mind. And yes that would have to be on a greenfield somewhere out there. But then, do we really need new homes? You could try looking at that argument from a different angle now that would be refreshing otherwise all you doomsayers will be building over everything forever and past our lifetimes until eventually, one day, it will all be concreted over.
WW apologises to Miriam for suggesting she might have been paid. Cynical old us hardly believed anyone these days does anything for nothing – that is except us of course! We understand from our followers that the local transport situation in Alfold is dire. Older people could be isolated in their own homes if they did not have access to a car. Dare we suggest that if there is development nearby, things may improve. Are we right in thinking you once had shops, pubs, a taxi service, a greengrocer/farm shop, a regular bus service, a French restaurant … and… a village school?
Why don’t you all lobby the Flying Scotsman to provide you with all or some of these things, before he jumps on that train and goes back to whence he came?
No point trying anything with “The Flying Scotsman” – He bought for only £3m, sold for £50m+ to Trinity College Cambridge and also managed to carry on in running it to boot. Oh course he will carry on milking it for as long as it takes.
Maybe we should be lobbying Trinity College then? Set the academics against the Burser. But hey, they want to have another big strike like they did with Felixstowe port and bug**r any locals affected by their great money making schemes.