15/04/2009

Councillor tries to make Development Corporation more accountable

Posted in Planning permission, Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation at 8:45 pm by henrysgauntlet

Good to learn that the Council thinks the Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation should be more accountable.

Tory Councillor, Rob Gledhill, who has a fine record of fighting for the community even before he became a Councillor, put forward a motion at a recent Council meeting calling on the Corporation to hold all planning meetings in a location and at a time more accessible to the local community.   The motion won cross party support.   And so it should as this unelected body is seeking to bring about changes in our borough which will be with us for many years.  To hold planning meetings in a place with few transport links, and during the working day, only adds to this unaccountability since local residents are unable to make representations.

There is a wider point though.   I’m sorry to repeat myself so often.   But nobody asked us if we wanted to have an unelected development corporation taking control of us.  I certainly didn’t want it.   And shame on the Labour government for appointing it.   Thurrock is quite big enough now.   We don’t want further expansion.

09/04/2009

The masts have to be somewhere

Posted in Mobile 'phones, Planning permission at 4:39 pm by henrysgauntlet

So it seems the residents of Lodge Lane, Grays, who were protesting about a planning application for a mobile ‘phone mast  at the Spinney, are to get their wish.   When they started the protest, the Council had yet to consider the application, and now it has, and the application has been rejected.

That’s fine.   I’m sure the residents are delighted.

There is just one thing.   I wonder how many of the residents use mobile ‘phones?   I suspect almost all of them, and probably their children too, since these days it seems that little tots stop suckling at their mother’s breast and clamp a mobile to their ear instead.

And if the mobiles are to work, there need to be masts to transmit the signals;  and the masts need to be located somewhere.

05/04/2009

Was Hipsey ever a Conservative?

Posted in Conservative Council Group, Labour Council Group at 2:37 pm by henrysgauntlet

So Terry Hipsey has resigned as Leader of the Conservative Group on Thurrock Council, and thereby Leader of the Council.   Apparently he has fallen out with the Conservative Group.   Well, the last fifty years have proved it’s not difficult to do that.

Not, of course, that he has resigned as a Councillor.   No,  he’s joined the Labour Group and appears to be a fervent recruit.   He’s now busy rubbishing all the policies that he thought up as Leader and compelled the Conservative Group to support.

Terry Hipsey only came to prominence when the Tories took control of Thurrock Council.   He says himself that he has only been a member of the Conservative Party for six years.   And that’s the trouble.   Many of the Conservative Group can only trace their membership of the Party back to that time.   They still have little experience of politics either in the national party or in Thurrock.   They have no Conservative background.

They don’t know, or perhaps don’t care, that when it gets tough you hang on in there and fight what you don’t like from the inside.   Loyalty should be everything.   If you are not loyal to your fellow group members, what chance that you will stick by the electorate.

Make no mistake;  the Labour Party are no better.   They, too, have a record of deselecting long-serving and loyal councillors, often so that one of the chosen can take a so-called safe seat instead.

Given a choice between the two, I’d still rather have the Conservatives any day.   But what Terry Hipsey has done makes you wonder whether he was ever a true Conservative.

Posted by Anne Godwin