A school hall full of people unconvinced about the proposed traffic lights etc planned as part of the Section 106 agreement with the MOD developments at Basil Hill.
And an area board telling us that the legal team says it is not their business to change anything!
Who is running Wiltshire - the Elected Members or the Highways Department? Yet again it seems the 'silos' of local government are not communicating with each other - Highways - Planning - Conservation.
The problems seem to be:
- A massively overblown scheme to cope with a fictitious traffic projection for 2020
- Conflicting projected figures for traffic growth
- A concern that due process has not been followed
- Lack of consideration as to the conservation area setting at Pickwick
- Works which are unconnected with the impact of Basil Hill
- Lack of public consultation over this aspect of the project
- A huge amount of (public) money (about £2.5 million?) to be spend on these works
- Still no public transport plan in place
- A plan which is contrary to current thinking about traffic management
- A general disbelief that traffic lights are better than roundabouts
I was amazed when the chair of the meeting announced that this issue would no longer be on the agenda at the next Area Board meeting in October. I think he may be wrong!
I would not be surprised if this issue went to a judicial revue.
1 comment:
I'm increasingly of the opinion that we simply no longer live in a democracy.
Our elected politicians are powerless to do anything at almost every level of government. Our MPs are told what to do by the EU bureaucrats and the US. The Scottish and Welsh MPs can set policy affecting us, but we have no say in their parliaments, the NHS is run by quangoes, highly-paid 'consultants' and fat-cat business-men. The BBC rob us blind by forcing us to pay for dozens of channels when it's only humanly possible to watch one at a time! Local governments are 'capped' if they fail to toe the New Labour central goverment line.
To add insult to injury, our government paid the banks billions of pounds to bail them out of their own stupid failure.
I ask you - who is running the country? It's certainly not our elected politicians.
There's so little to choose between the three main parties now, the only real point in voting is to make sure the BNP don't get in. That's hardly a great use of a democratic vote, but sadly will be the one and only reason I will be voting come the next general election.
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