“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
Anne Milton MP could clearly learn a thing or two from Abraham Lincoln, an exceptionally astute politician!
In a Surrey Advertiser report, read in full on the link below all ye followers… Guildford’s MP is said to have ‘great concerns’ about proposal to build 1,800 homes at Dunsfold Aerodrome. Her concerns about the scheme say the Surrey Ad, are ‘in relation to flooding, sewage, water supply and roads.’
Seriously? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Look, Anne, we know your role as Treasurer of the Royal Household must keep you very busy in the corridors, linen cupboards and pantries of Buck House but surely even you can get your head around a few basic facts – or have you just swallowed Protect our Waverley’s (PoW) briefings hook, line and sinker? If so, shame on you! As Ab Lincoln also said:“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
FACTS! Anne, REAL FACTS! that’s what people are interested in, not the misquoted, misappropriated spin that has been shamelessly disseminated by the PoW desperadoes and the Bramley Babes.
Shame on you for swallowing their bilious bile! In doing so you bring yourself and the office you hold, as a Member of Parliament, into disrepute. In case you hadn’t noticed, as you glide down the rarefied corridors of the Crown, this country is in the midst of a national crisis – a housing crisis – and no borough or county is immune to it and it behoves our elected representatives to deal in facts not spin at a time like this!
We know you’re a politician and we know their speciality is to try to control and influence what people think by interpreting events to their own – or their supporters’ advantage – but, frankly Anne, you – and they are in denial.
OK, we know you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place and don’t want to offend the worried well-to-do who not only vote for you but swell your party’s coffers, but for better or worse we need more affordable housing in Waverley.
Your colleague, Jeremy Hunt MP, has already prepared the ground and distanced himself from PoW and maybe you should consider doing the same or, at the very least, do your homework and ensure you know what you’re objecting to!
We’re sorry to puncture your over-inflated sanctimony but torpedoing development at Dunsfold Park with ludicrous arguments about flooding and sewage just don’t hold water!
Don’t stoop to sophistry and falsehoods, Anne, it’s very unbecoming and hard to row back from when it’s been splashed all over the front pages of the Surrey Ad. OK, enough of the water puns!
The Waverley Web doesn’t pretend to be an expert on all the planning applications teetering, perilously, in Waverley Planner’s in-trays, but we do our best, our very best, as mere laymen and women, to get to grips with the basics of applications and because we’ve done our homework and we don’t cheat – like some! (PoW and the Bramley Babes) it is immediately apparent you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about when you tell us you’re concerned about flooding and sewage in relation to the Dunsfold application.
Even an eight -year -old knows that Dunsfold Park is in the lowest risk flood zone – unlike the recently consented Berkeley Homes development in Cranleigh – and will build its own sewage works to deal with its waste on site, unlike any other proposed development we’re aware of in the borough.
In fact, if you and your cohorts in Alfold, who regularly have to poop-a-scoop their baths, dishwashers and washing machines after heavy rainfall, were to ask them nicely Dunsfold Park might even offer to take the effluents from the affluent in Alfold. After all, as we’ve said before, Dunsfold Park has taken so much S**T from Alfold and Dunsfold over the past ten years why not ask them nicely to take a bit more??? But no, the affluent would probably rather eat their own S**T than admit that development at Dunsfold Park could actually bring some benefits to their village.
As for traffic, concerns Anne.Where the hell do you think all the traffic from development in Cranleigh is going to go? If Bramley’s lucky it might, just might, take the scenic route through Rowley, Shamley Green, Wonersh and Chilworth but much more likely it’s going to go straight down Elmbridge Road onto the A281 and through Bramley!
If you’d done your homework, Anne, instead of just reading signs posted on the A281 by the Bramley Babes – you know the Boden-wearing yummy-mummies, who set such good examples to the children they are so terribly worried about, by playing in the rush-hour traffic, claiming that development at Dunsfold Park would add 41 minutes to the A281 commute – you’d know that the 1,800 home development at Dunsfold Park’s accompanying traffic mitigation measures will actually reduce those predicted delays to 2 MINUTES! Yup, 2 MINUTES BUT …
There will be a 25 minutes delay if nothing is built at Dunsfold Park!
PoW didn’t put that little fact in your big red box, did it Anne? It’s one of those very inconvenient truths they’d rather not acknowledge and have spun into a disreputable sophistry which has led to a significant spike in objections to Dunsfold Park’s planning application from people who have been deliberately misled by PoW and the BB’s !
Bob Lees, PoW’s leader, has boasted objections ‘Clearly illustrate the strength of feeling within the communities directly affected by the possible development and shows how effective the recent leafleting and poster activity has been in drumming up support.’ But omits to mention that before PoW’s master spinning exercise there were only 1,937 objections. Furthermore, Waverley Planners think that many of the new wave of objections could be duplicates of original objections, casting doubt on Mr Lees’ claims.
Q: How many people would have written supporting development at Dunsfold Park if PoW and the BB’s had not distorted the facts – and instead told them development at Dunsfold would actually REDUCE delays on the A281 from 25 minutes to 2 minutes?
Strikes us, Anne, would have been better for all if you’d done your homework, got your facts straight and looked carefully and intelligently at what Dunsfold Park has to offer the community rather than sounding off on a topic you clearly know very little about!
We started with a quote from Ab Lincoln and we’ll leave you with another, Anne:
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
Oh WW – You do like to have a go…. Really! If YOU believe the rubbish about how Dunsfold Park’s Traffic Mitigation will make journey times better (that is if they EVEN DO THEM!) then I am afraid you are living in LA LA Land. Reading the Vectos TA is like reading a very BAD Novel one that should be thrown away before the end of the first chapter. Balance it with the Vision and the Mott Macdonald ones and you see a clearer picture – Good for Anne for sticking up for us – About time someone did. Your Lovely Mr Hunt … what can I say? talk about a Volte-Face!
I think Anne Milton’s ‘concerns’ to the Dunsfold Planning Application come too late. You see once the site has been approved as a Strategic Site in the Local Plan (at 2600 houses) then it will be merely shaping that Housing strategy through planning applications. Waverley will be relying on the site to deliver the numbers her Government requires (We hear this matra from the Concillors time and again, even though its Party policy for Councils to set their own numbers). I understand that consultation is now closed. Did she respond to the Waverley Plan? What is her strategic vision for Cranfold? Unless she pops up at the public enquiry we may never know!
Saying she has a concern to the planning application is too little too late.