tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29960010382417346252024-02-19T18:46:27.633-08:00Hands Off Our Sussex Countryside!Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-15242899871109979312018-11-09T05:11:00.000-08:002018-11-09T05:11:18.502-08:00Astroturfing Whitehawk's nature reserve<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A strange thing happened after we posted our <a href="https://handsoffoursussexcountryside.blogspot.com/2018/11/save-whitehawk-hill-nature-reserve.html">last article</a> about a campaign in Brighton to save a designated nature reserve on Whitehawk Hill from housing development.<br />
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All of a sudden, an apparent counter-campaign was announced, declaring that "Whitehawk says yes" to the destruction of the precious green space and its wildlife.<br />
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We say "apparent" counter-campaign because, unlike our friends around Whitehawk who are opposing the scheme, it is not at all clear that it has any real community basis. Less grassroots and more astroturf, it would seem.<br />
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The "yes" campaign has been announced by a "group" calling itself Brighton YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard <span style="text-indent: 0.58cm;">–</span> a grammatically inept attempt to come up with the opposite of Not in My Backyard. Or "No in My Backyard" as they presumably call it).<br />
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They have a Facebook group with no fewer than 17 members and on Twitter they have a mighty army of 107 <a href="https://twitter.com/BrightonYimby/followers">followers</a>.<br />
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Sadly for their credibility, very few of these seem to have anything to do with Brighton. Admittedly, @BrightonNimby are followed by a local renters' union (@ACORN_Brighton). But the support of @kooksbrighton, Kooks restaurant, and @gastrobrighton, a writer specialising in "Brighton's gastro scene", seem somehow less relevant to the cause...<br />
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We could find just three other followers who say they are from Brighton.<br />
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The first of these is Jonny Anstead (@JonnyAnstead). He declares: "I build homes with TOWN (@wetweettown) and live in Brighton". TOWN is a London-based development company, which is itself also one of the select band of @BrightonNimby's Twitter followers.<br />
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The second is Brighton resident Nick Jacob (@nickNJjacob) who <a href="https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nick-jacob-30759512">works</a> for GlobalCapital magazine.<br />
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The third is Rico Wojtulewicz (@Rico4Hove). Conservative candidate for Central Hove, Wojtulewicz also <a href="http://www.kentconstructionexpo.com/speaker?name=Rico+Wojtulewicz">happens to be </a>the senior policy advisor for the House Builders Association (HBA), the housebuilding division of the National Federation of Builders.<br />
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The business connection to @BrightonNimby is strong. They are followed by a swathe of professional urbanists and organisations interested in "regeneration and development".<br />
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Apart from property firm TOWN, there is also King & Co (@KingandCompany) "a residential property developer based in Hatfield, Hertfordshire".<br />
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Another follower is Meaning Conference (@MeaningConf ) "the annual gathering for people who believe business can and must be a force for positive change in our dynamic and volatile world" which is taking place in Brighton on November 15, 2018.<br />
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There also seems to be a certain overlap with the PricedOut campaign for more housebuilding. @PricedOutUK was the first Twitter account to follow @BrightonNimby.<br />
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Reuben Young (@TheReubenYoung) of PricedOut and former director Duncan Stott (@DuncanStott), a "geeky liberal", "YIMBY" and "Brit living in America", were also quick to follow.<br />
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Most of all, @BrightonNimby is followed by other "Yimby" twitter accounts from the UK and elsewhere.<br />
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Well, by "elsewhere" we mean the USA, where there seems to be a surprising level of support for @BrightonYimby and their heroic struggle to concrete over the Whitehawk Hill nature reserve.<br />
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Among the many American followers are Santa Cruz YIMBY (@SantaCruzYIMBY) which brazenly admits it is "advocating for the construction of all types of housing development in Santa Cruz County".<br />
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There is also one Jesse Kanson-Benanav (@jessekb) who terms himself "YIMBY warrior for more housing" and is "affordable housing developer" at @BBHousing. This turns out to be "B'nai B'rith Housing", which builds "non-sectarian housing, both affordable and mixed income", in Greater Boston, USA.<br />
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On the surface, @BrightonNimby's followers seem to reflect a range of political positions. There is Daniel Francis (@danfrancis02) Labour group leader in the London Borough of Bexley; Alex Wagner (@Jenkinsite) chair of Shrewsbury Lib Dems and former Tory councillor Chris Howell (@moufflon).<br />
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More eccentrically, there is Phil Ryan (@therealphilryan) who terms himself a "Radical centrist. Globalist shill".<br />
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But the real affiliation of the YIMBY movement is not actually political in the usual sense of the word.<br />
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Take, for example, East of England YIMBY (@EofEYimby ) and their statement that they are "bringing developers and communities together".<br />
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Hackney YIMBY (@HackneyYIMBY) are even more explicit when they come out as "Pro-development, Pro-growth".<br />
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This is the crunch line, straight from the mouth of one of the UK "YIMBY" groups. Pro-growth means pro-profit, pro-money-making.<br />
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When we consider the large number of property developers associated with the YIMBY cause, we are left with the suspicion that all their talk about helping young people afford housing is nothing but spin, masking the age-old desire to make a quick buck.<br />
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Making money isn't a political belief or principle. It is a total <i>lack</i> of principle. It is just self-interest of the lowest kind, made <i>even lower</i> by the pretence that it is something else, an altruistic concern for the well-being of other people.<br />
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In the USA, the YIMBY "movement" is already being exposed. Truthout magazine, for instance, <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/yimbys-the-alt-right-darlings-of-the-real-estate-industry/">reported</a>: 'The YIMBYs’ “build, build, build' platform only stands to benefit a fortunate few".<br />
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It highlights the role of "pro-development activist" Sonja Trauss, who this week <a href="http://www.sfweekly.com/news/trauss-trounced-in-yimby-litmus-test/">lost</a> an election battle in San Francisco after more than a year of pushing "aggressive pro-development policies" in City Hall.<br />
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Says Truthout: "Entrenched online in the libertarian strongholds of Reddit and TechCrunch, and in the real world through real estate- and tech-sponsored nonprofits like SPUR and YIMBY Action, Trauss’s followers live by the neoliberal belief that deregulation and building more housing, even if it’s only affordable to the richest of the rich, will trickle down and eventually make housing affordable for all."<br />
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And it reveals that North America’s first YIMBY convening, YIMBY2016, was funded by property development groups, such as the National Association of Realtors and the Boulder Area Realtor Association.<br />
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In fact the article's headline itself tells us all we need to know, and what the people of Whitehawk and Brighton need to understand about the "campaign" being launched to deprive them of their green space: "YIMBYs: The Darlings of the Real Estate Industry".<br />
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Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-10085013745734558422018-11-05T03:27:00.004-08:002018-11-05T03:27:31.030-08:00Save Whitehawk Hill Nature Reserve!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM6b8sfKFSxTNfJF2j3oVe8s3TLwmBMShGddzYicUtbvWzRsJrFA04TN5Kya0Q1wRcQW9jz-DGoati_m69rpuubPJ9qBx1YqmgdqOvYaGkUvYsHdTiS8lLHZfw1JKzSVFC-qJo0LeD9tMS/s1600/whitehawkhill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="959" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM6b8sfKFSxTNfJF2j3oVe8s3TLwmBMShGddzYicUtbvWzRsJrFA04TN5Kya0Q1wRcQW9jz-DGoati_m69rpuubPJ9qBx1YqmgdqOvYaGkUvYsHdTiS8lLHZfw1JKzSVFC-qJo0LeD9tMS/s640/whitehawkhill.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Whitehawk Hill is a Down, right in Brighton, an ancient and sacred </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">landscape and high quality landscape which should be in the National </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Park & have full landscape & species protection.(in fact a full council </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">meeting voted for its inclusion, only to be followed by a small meeting </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">vetoing that 'democratic' vote). It is a statutory Local Nature reserve, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">a Common, statutory Access land under the CROW Act and an Ancient </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Neolithic Scheduled Monument. It's pretty special.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Brighton & Hove Council have chosen part of the Nature Reserve for a </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">housing development of 217 1 & 2 bed flats, in 5 blocks, 6 & 8 storey. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">An "Urban Fringe Assessment" was drawn up in 2014, identifying </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">greenfield sites for housing. One site, Craven Vale Allotments, also on </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">this Nature Reserve, jumped into action and ran a successful campaign </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">and the site was removed. Whitehawk has only just realised the threat </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">which the council tells us is a done deal, that we are too late. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">We are not.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">BHCC has gone into partnership with the hawkish landlords Hyde, link to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">a Corporate Watch article below if you're interested. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Locals have called Public Meeting:</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><b><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Monday, 12 November from 19:00-21:00</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">St Cuthman's community church hall, Whitehawk Way, BN2 5HE, Brighton. </span></b><br />
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">If you love our City's wild spaces and wildlife, please try to come</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">This month the World Wildlife Fund released a report which told us that </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">wild animal populations have decreased globally by 60% in just 48 years </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">- since 1970.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">This profoundly endangers the future quality of human life.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">This is not a far-away problem. It is on our doorstep.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">If we are to halt and reverse this extinction process, the protection of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">every LOCAL high-value space for wildlife is a categorical imperative.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">The need to protect nature is co-equal with the need for high quality, l</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">ow-cost housing for all.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">We must find solutions which protect those two imperatives.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">NIMBYS, NIMBYS !!!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">We have heard ourselves called 'NIMBYS' (selfish people who say 'Not In </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">My Back Yard' to developments).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Perhaps the Londoners who successfully campaigned against the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">destruction of Epping Forest, Hampstead Heath, Tooting Common or </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Walthamstow Marsh were 'nimbys' ??</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Perhaps the pre-war Brighton folk who campaigned against new housing on </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">top of the Devils Dyke and Ditchling Downs were nimbys ?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Perhaps the pre-war Eastbourne folk who campaigned against new towns on </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Beachy Head, Seven Sisters and Birling Gap were nimbys ??</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">If the breaking up of the Whitehawk Hill Local Nature Reserve goes ahead </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">then nothing will off-limits...nothing will be sacrosanct.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">If Whitehawk Hill is broken, then there is no reason why Castle Hill </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">National Nature Reserve, or the Local Nature Reserves of the Wild Park, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Bevendean Down, Stanmer, Benfield Hill, Beacon Hill and Withdean Woods </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">should not be broken, too.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Top pundits (like Anthony Seldon) have already called for this (as with </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">his call for building on the whole Hollingbury Hill inlier).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">The breaking of Whitehawk Hill WILL mean the future breaking of other </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">sacrosanct sites...and will further encourage that process nationally.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Brighton's attitude to the protection of its Downs has always been </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">contradictory.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Its pre-war council leader, Herbert Carden, both bought the Devils Dyke </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">to protect it from housing development and campaigned for a major motor </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">racing track between the Dyke and Portslade which would have destroyed </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">all its Downs.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Its erstwhile Labour leader, Steve Bassam, attempted to flog off its </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">hugely important 13,000 acre Downland Estate and opposed the creation of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">the new South Downs National Park, despite Labour Environment Minister </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Michael Meacher proposing it. (Steve B later changed his mind on both</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">counts).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Now Brighton's draft City Plan both calls for the protection of its </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Local Nature Reserves and Local Wildlife Sites and suggests ripping the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">heart out of the Whitehawk Hill LNR.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Whitehawk Hill is as important to Brighton as the Royal Pavilion</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">RESPECT IT CHERISH IT RESTORE IT</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">---- ---- ---- ----</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">A Right to Roam comrade had sited our first briefing here -</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><a href="https://walkingtheoldways.wordpress.com/2018/10/28/butchering-brightons-senior-public-space/?fbclid=IwAR2NBAQC4qthmbjIeD5Mbd25G3thR6Ut83WZWrzyNxZNSTVwZNzku_X48GY" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #0186ba; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" target="_blank">https://walkingtheoldways.wordpress.com/2018/10/28/butchering-brightons-senior-public-space/?fbclid=IwAR2NBAQC4qthmbjIeD5Mbd25G3thR6Ut83WZWrzyNxZNSTVwZNzku_X48GY</a><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Dave Bangs' book on the Hill * free PDF* - </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/nahz1odh1tcxlkr/Where%20The%20Turf%20Meets%20The%20Surf.pdf?dl=0" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #0186ba; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/nahz1odh1tcxlkr/Where%20The%20Turf%20Meets%20The%20Surf.pdf?dl=0</a><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Council's blurb on the Hill -</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><a href="https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/sites/brighton-hove.gov.uk/files/downloads/cityparks/management_plans/Whitehawk_Hill_booklet_final.pdf" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #0186ba; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" target="_blank">https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/sites/brighton-hove.gov.uk/files/downloads/cityparks/management_plans/Whitehawk_Hill_booklet_final.pdf</a><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">Corporate Watch report on Hyde -</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/hyde-housing-strapped-for-cash-or-hungry-for-profit-2/" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #0186ba; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" target="_blank">https://corporatewatch.org/hyde-housing-strapped-for-cash-or-hungry-for-profit-2/</a><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;">The housing proposal -</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" /><a href="https://www.hyde-housing.co.uk/corporate/building-homes/homes-for-brighton-hove/consultation-on-whitehawk/" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #0186ba; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px;" target="_blank">https://www.hyde-housing.co.uk/corporate/building-homes/homes-for-brighton-hove/consultation-on-whitehawk/</a>Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-1797806623801711462016-11-20T04:42:00.000-08:002016-11-20T04:46:56.060-08:00December 3 protest at Beachy Head<div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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<br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A new protest date has been announced by campaigners battling the <a href="http://handsoffoursussexcountryside.blogspot.fr/2016/11/protest-against-downland-sell-off.html">sell-off</a> of Eastbourne's beautiful downland.<br /><br /> People are being urged to meet at 10.30am sharp on Saturday December 3 2016 at Beachy Head visitor centre for a rally and walk. Facebook users can get more info <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1133206723395980/">here</a>.<br /><br />On Wednesday November 16 more than 100 people protested outside a council meeting at the town hall (photo above). See these local media reports:<br /><br /><a href="https://webmail.talktalk.co.uk/cp/ps/Mail/ExternalURLProxy?d=talktalk.net&u=paul_deacon&url=http://www.eastbournebuzz.co.uk/eastbourne-news.php::cp::2915::cp::eastbourne-news-reports::cp::61::cp::2076::cp::38::cp::amp;::cp::38::cp::amp;Eastbourne-Protestors-Unite-Against-Sale-Of-South-Downs-Farmlands&urlHash=-2.733810280767295E298">http://www.eastbournebuzz.co.uk/eastbourne-news.php?eastbourne-news-reports=2076&&Eastbourne-Protestors-Unite-Against-Sale-Of-South-Downs-Farmlands</a><br /><br /> <a href="http://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/demo-in-eastbourne-against-downs-farms-sell-off-1-7685218">http://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/demo-in-eastbourne-against-downs-farms-sell-off-1-7685218</a></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-64098256337020723592016-11-10T10:29:00.001-08:002016-11-10T10:29:42.168-08:00Protest against downland sell-off!<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A protest is being held in Sussex against the sell-off of public land in the South Downs National Park.<br /><br /><b> Downs lovers are urged to gather outside Eastbourne Town Hall in <span class="st">Grove Road,<em> </em>BN21 4UG,</span> on Wednesday November 16 2016, from 5pm.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The threat to Eastbourne's countryside comes at the same time as Brighton Council's <a href="http://handsoffoursussexcountryside.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/exposed-council-is-secretly-selling-off.html">underhand privatisation of its downland</a> and outrage at this betrayal of our natural heritage is rapidly spreading across Sussex.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">P<span class="_38my _5803">rotest organisers Eastbourne and district Friends of the Earth warn: "</span><span class="_4n-j fsl">Eastbourne Borough Council intends to sell off
most of the Eastbourne Downland Estate, putting at grave risk the rich
nature and wildlife heritage of downland that was originally purchased
by the council on behalf of Eastbourne residents for them to enjoy 'in
perpetuity'.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class="_4n-j fsl">"Please join us outside Eastbourne Town Hall, just before a
full council meeting of Eastbourne Borough Council, to protest against
this flogging off of a precious community asset. Once it's sold, it's
gone for ever! <br /> <br /> "Bring a placard or banner, if you can, and/or
something that reminds people of how precious our Eastbourne downland
is. Also, please contact your local councillor and MP too, to let them
know how you feel about losing part of what makes Eastbourne great!"</span><br /><br />Facebook users can find out more info <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/118146925333385/">here</a>. Meanwhile, below, Keep Our Downs Public set out the history and possible future of Eastbourne's downland.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Since when have we owned </b></span></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> the Eastbourne Downland Estate</span></span>? </b></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
estate was bought by the borough in 1929, after an enabling Act of
Parliament was passed in 1926. All the Downland within the Eastbourne
Council’s political boundary is within the estate ... the entire coastal
strip, from Holywell and Beachy Head to Belle Tout near Birling Gap,
north by the edge of East Dean and on up to Bourne Hill and Butt’s Brow
above Willingdon, and the entire western edge of the town. </span></span> </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Why was it bought? </b><br /><br />It was acquired to “secure the free and open use of the Downs in perpetuity”. This public ownership thus saved the Eastbourne downland from building development, restrictive fencing and ploughing up. It also protected the drinking water supply and the ancient, unfenced sheep walks of flower-rich ancient pastures, with gorse and thorn brakes and areas of rare ‘chalk heath’, where heathers mingled with chalk-loving flowers. <br /><br />The early days continued the traditional farming, provision and management of public access, including a ranger on horseback to patrol the area, advise the public and work with the tenant farmers. [See these Pathé News videos from <a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/video/sussex-downs-ranger">1949</a> and <a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/video/downs-ranger">1957</a>.] </span></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">However, post-war agricultural intensification damaged and destroyed much of those open and free pastures, and some of the memory of them faded. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the 1980s, rising pollution levels in the aquifer and shrinking internationally rare chalk grassland, due to ploughing and cliff erosion, led to a programme of landscape restoration. This resulted in the reversion of significant areas of arable to permanent grass, reduced nitrate levels in the water supply, extended and joined-up chalk grassland habitat, with increased open access and rich archaeological sites preserved under grass. This had strong political support from the town’s councillors (championed by leader Maurice Skilton), was carried through by willing officers (led by finance and downland chief, David Hazelden) and had full support from partners. <br /><br /> The new strategy for the estate revived the original principle of the 1920s acquisition and began to address the financial problems and marginalisation. The main thrust of the initiative was to take direct control of part of Bullock Down Farm and Cornish Farm, re-seed the arable with downland wildflowers, take down fences and link up areas of grassland for landscape gain and effective grazing management, open the coastal areas to public access, and employ a ranger and two shepherds to manage two municipal flocks of sheep. The estate was newly signed to proclaim the new resources we could enjoy. <br /><br /> THIS VISIONARY LANDSCAPE RESTORATION SCHEME IS THE MODEL FOR THE WHOLE ESTATE <br /><br /><b>What are its measurements? </b><br /><br />The public estate is 4,200 acres. It is 4.7 miles from south to north, and 2.5 miles in width at its widest point. There are four working farms: Chalk Farm, Willingdon, 591 acres; Black Robin Farm, 1,012.5 acres, south of the A259 road; Bullock Down Farm, 495 acres, behind Beachy Head; and Cornish Farm, 1,085 acres, NE of Birling Gap. They total 3183 acres...and this is what is for sale – 75.8% of the estate. <br /><br />The whole of the 4.5 mile wooded and grassy scarp slope from Combe Hill, south to Beachy Head is in the estate, as are all the cliffs and their hinterland from Holywell, Eastbourne to beyond Belle Tout Lighthouse. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <b>What treasures does it protect? </b><br /><br />The following designations are NATIONAL and STATUTORY. However, designated sites are NOT adequately protected by such designations and do not necessarily mean positive management results, many are in poor condition, but recoverable in public hands, but far greater risk in unaccountable private hands. <br /><br />The coast is part of the iconic nationally defined Sussex Heritage Coast, which recognises the undeveloped coastline, very rare in the built-up south-east of England. <br /><br />The estate contains 32 separately designated Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAMs). The four farms contain a large proportion of those SAMs including the most important of all: the Combe Hill Neolithic Causewayed Camp, as well as the much-researched Bullock Down prehistoric field system, the Eastdean Down field system, and many prehistoric burial barrows. <br /><br />The estate contains all the eastern part of the Seaford Head to Beachy Head Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), including seashore, cliffs, and cliff-top archaic chalk grassland and scrub, and eastern scarp chalk grassland scrub and woodland. <br /><br />Two separate parts of that SSSI, Bulling Dean and Kiln Combe are within the for-sale Bullock Down Farm. They are the southern stronghold for the nationally rare Moon Carrot, Seseli libanotis. <br /><br />The estate also contains the for-sale Willingdon Downs SSSI, a large and substantial area of internationally rare archaic chalk grassland. <br /><br /> <b>What are the threats? </b><br /><br />These threats are LEGION and cannot all be anticipated because new ones come in all the time: loss of the farms to well-off life-style owners by conversion and new building or inappropriate livery grazing – all potentially threatening the landscape and open public access with a proliferation of fencing, sheds and other buildings, jumps and clutter, lights, security cameras, new tracks; intensive viticulture, with its high fences and chemical pollution risks to the ground-water and spray residues; extended game bird management, with exclusions, rearing pens, alien plantings etc; abandonment of farming and conservation management, threatening species-rich chalk grassland; large industrialised energy schemes such as solar arrays & wind turbines...<br /><br />New private owners will be far more interested in either excluding the public or making us pay for their visitor attractions. The story of the privatisation of Mary Farm on the Brighton Downland, or the fate of all the sold-off Forestry Commission woods is ample evidence of that. <br /><br /><b>Vision </b><br /><br />The Eastbourne estate is a major public asset for its people, with annual income, a guaranteed revenue stream, forever. You can only sell your crown jewels once, what happens in 10 or 20 years’ time when the council is looking for more money?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The original aims of the estate in the 1920s, those same aims revived by Eastbourne Council in 1980s and by the new South Downs National Park will be lost forever if sold.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Let's switch this around, save these Downs “in perpetuity” ... a free, public, open, wildlife-rich, pastoral landscape, emblematic of the freedom and oneness with nature which we all seek. People of Eastbourne and surrounding area treasure their precious downland, elected councillors need to respect this and take action, to stop the sale and instruct officers to continue the positive programme of continued landscape restoration and enhanced public access, bringing redundant buildings into appropriate uses (education, visitor facilities etc) and benign farm diversification, linking the tenant farmers who are managing this public estate on behalf of the residents, the people who are the local consumers of the food, water and other benefits the land provides. <br /><br /><b> Funding / finance </b><br /><br />The stark choice is: one-off capital receipt now, once sold income lost forever; or, an imaginative plan to maintain and enhance the annual revenue accruing from the downland. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The scope is huge, from the million or more people who visit Beachy Head each year to helping improve the offer the farms can make and a firm working relationship with partners such as the National Park Authority, National Trust and others.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There are attractive grant opportunities: lottery (Brighton & Hove has a £5m project bid in for part of its Downs), Local Enterprise Partnership (Hampshire County Council has a bid in to re-vamp some of its downland visitor assets). </span></span>Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-20520603382177966692016-11-04T06:36:00.001-07:002016-11-06T08:45:17.337-08:00Exposed: council is secretly selling off our Downs!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIE_hq4ekQek_Nxd6VTxt-gt8JS5-nAz9xkVlmNBckJlV9LFIJnElAuVqnKkwp4sSIvktTjzSDrXyncTzV5ya_wlVke0yjWXdRDiaqA0gPpJ-oygFvQzxzrJVLOwGNatoEooltSRwPvwky/s1600/Downspic-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIE_hq4ekQek_Nxd6VTxt-gt8JS5-nAz9xkVlmNBckJlV9LFIJnElAuVqnKkwp4sSIvktTjzSDrXyncTzV5ya_wlVke0yjWXdRDiaqA0gPpJ-oygFvQzxzrJVLOwGNatoEooltSRwPvwky/s640/Downspic-3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A new threat to the Sussex countryside has been exposed by campaigners from Keep Our Downs Public (KODP).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Brighton Council is secretly selling off parts of the South Downs National Park which should have remained in public hands for ever.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It has not even informed the public about what it is doing with our land, let alone sought any sort of consensus - so much for democracy!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Brighton tried to do the same thing in 1995, but was thwarted by the campaigners. In 2009 Worthing Borough Council also tried to sell off public land on the slopes of Cissbury Ring, but was forced to stop after massive public outcry (see <a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2016/01/11/the-acorn-20/#5">this report in The Acorn</a>).</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-tLk91S9i1MRF3mllzT2GvOyfBEFDlWrnXr5iDtDF7YjZ0an3RyzP3CzuaQdeAca_6Hcr0JXBGIGfGz57vbN2ySUjOvCE3ZVfiGkvlo89y09m9uHEWAtzz3Tgt-ZkCDyJ3PhBh_Xnijq/s1600/cissbury_protest8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-tLk91S9i1MRF3mllzT2GvOyfBEFDlWrnXr5iDtDF7YjZ0an3RyzP3CzuaQdeAca_6Hcr0JXBGIGfGz57vbN2ySUjOvCE3ZVfiGkvlo89y09m9uHEWAtzz3Tgt-ZkCDyJ3PhBh_Xnijq/s640/cissbury_protest8.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Protests like this stopped Worthing council from selling off Sussex downland in 2009</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Eastbourne Borough Council is also currently planning to sell off part of its downland in the National Park near Beachy Head - a worrying trend for all lovers of the Sussex rural heritage (see <a href="http://www.southdownssociety.org.uk/eastbourne-downland-sell-off/">this report from t</a><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.southdownssociety.org.uk/eastbourne-downland-sell-off/">he South </a><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.southdownssociety.org.uk/eastbourne-downland-sell-off/">Downs </a><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.southdownssociety.org.uk/eastbourne-downland-sell-off/"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">S</span>ociety</a>)</span></span></span>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Brighton Council's 2016 sell-off plans include parts of nationally important Sites of Special Scientific Interest; one site contains a Scheduled Ancient Monument; and one is a superb fossil site. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Said
KODP: "We do not believe that councillors are aware of the nature or
implications of these sales. The Brighton Downland Estate, at more than
12,000 acres, is the largest and most important public asset within the
new South Downs National Park. </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"These
sales are taking place without public consultation, decided in
confidential Council Committees. We have little detail, though we
understand the justification is to part-fund the Stanmer Park
restoration and gain general revenue.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />"These
sales open the door to privatisation of Brighton’s entire Downland
Estate. Without democratic public accountability we must expect threats
to public usage, neglect, damage to important wildlife habitat,
inappropriate development, and more shooting and hunting."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
KODP campaigners warn that with government pressure for local authority
land sales, we are faced with the prospect of the new South Downs
National Park being asset-stripped of its core publicly owned estates.
This will stymie the National Park’s founding project – for the
restoration of its range-grazed, wildlife-rich, chalk grassland
sheepwalks – and open the door to multiple threats to the Downs
landscape. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is known that several of the sales have gone ahead already and that
several others are advertised on the open market by Savills, the
council’s land agents.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1K27BLHRfzPJURMHFC58mn9ltyuAHo9nZHTm0bH5XXCWWKMROkLx1insTtPcBRq3CZlyvOgXXiCFPWaXGqyilU5_5Ojb7Ooc5lUoJIkR2xYgBjE9rQgpAm0oHxB08NFZBQvQn_Dm2B7Uu/s1600/Savills+advert.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1K27BLHRfzPJURMHFC58mn9ltyuAHo9nZHTm0bH5XXCWWKMROkLx1insTtPcBRq3CZlyvOgXXiCFPWaXGqyilU5_5Ojb7Ooc5lUoJIkR2xYgBjE9rQgpAm0oHxB08NFZBQvQn_Dm2B7Uu/s640/Savills+advert.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sold already - Park Wall Farm at Falmer</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <br />Two of the sites are within SSSI’s (i.e. nationally important nature conservation sites) and yet no word of this is mentioned in the sales advertisements.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />The Junipers, the old Sussex Wildlife Trust Saddlescombe Nature Reserve, 3 acres, has been sold to a private buyer for the paltry sum of £35,000<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This is the bulk of the sole remaining site for Juniper (a rare and declining native conifer) in East Sussex, and a well-known site for rare orchid species, bats and much else. It is part of an SSSI.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />The Devils Dyke Field has been sold for an unknown sum to a private buyer, despite being bounded by National Trust land.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Park Wall Farm smallholding, Falmer, 10 acres, has been sold for £175,000: less than the price of a modest flat in Brighton. This is a crucial part of the open Downland setting of old Falmer village.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Additionally, two nearby parcels of land on the edge of Poynings have been marketed and one of them sold with some prospect of built development. </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjt63nmgynBwJINrq9TijqKaVuElDSkYQ6G92kQGImiz-3QV-STf_ACOa_SANdKQV8XmCOV4QYvwJ5sbVk8iV7dFFngLnz0CFn29_3NoaBUgEpb3rgqe_-LXRnw4KYb1qvzxtIVMg1kKJ/s1600/IMG_0508.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjt63nmgynBwJINrq9TijqKaVuElDSkYQ6G92kQGImiz-3QV-STf_ACOa_SANdKQV8XmCOV4QYvwJ5sbVk8iV7dFFngLnz0CFn29_3NoaBUgEpb3rgqe_-LXRnw4KYb1qvzxtIVMg1kKJ/s640/IMG_0508.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">KODP warns there are more to come, if we can’t stop this bleed immediately... </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />The Racecourse, the large, circa 55 acre Poynings arable field embracing all the land below the Devil’s Dyke, is targeted for sale. This is a wonderful fossil site – as good a Bridport Cliffs, Dorset, for fossils from the tropical seas of the Early Cretaceous, and the landing ground for Dyke hang gliders. This is the field which appears in all the Victorian postcards of the Devils Dyke.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Plumpton Hill, 67.4 acres of ancient wildflower pastures on the South Downs Way, mostly SSSI, is advertised for £150,000 – just the sort of money that a City shooting syndicate could stump up. It is a hill top Sacred Site of the Ancient People of the Bronze Age, and has five of their round barrows overlooking and protecting their deserted villages. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Poynings Field. The landing ground for the Dyke hang-gliders, and a crucial part of the Devil’s Dyke’s landscape setting. A wonderful fossiling site, with ammonites, nautiloids, and crustaceans. <br /><br /><b>By hook or by crook these sales must be stopped now!</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>[Upd<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ate: Keep Our Downs Publ<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ic <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">now has <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1790424137865314/">a Facebook </a><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1790424137865314/">group</a> for those who want to get involved</span>]</span></span></span></i><b> </b></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ_b71ahB5LujmXOhwCqokQVCBpKhzC9TqQ9n_BvdVTI61aF5GhLpw2w3P_bnPIO6LX2eFNBh4FHIHShA9jUKgR4jwA81mCZQN3KxYNo647OTY1DEnTgn770CBdD6KBeYzizF3u70vCCka/s1600/IMG_0064.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ_b71ahB5LujmXOhwCqokQVCBpKhzC9TqQ9n_BvdVTI61aF5GhLpw2w3P_bnPIO6LX2eFNBh4FHIHShA9jUKgR4jwA81mCZQN3KxYNo647OTY1DEnTgn770CBdD6KBeYzizF3u70vCCka/s640/IMG_0064.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The South Downs - they belong to us and to generations still to come</b></span></td></tr>
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<br />Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-73021889115548780262014-08-30T02:46:00.001-07:002014-08-30T02:46:34.837-07:00Threatened by Gatwick<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcp2X5NzSQfU3_vbTTJmEwEFlbTA1I8gg09lRiuCl77wWNZNkO2llRRNx0wGcctFxYLFVfBZQlqZ6MTqtr6NRVOh720iQCaHfOchOdxcy4RTeE1IChrcm7vyc3F4RUruQUiQ_W0AhqFsR7/s1600/gatwickmap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcp2X5NzSQfU3_vbTTJmEwEFlbTA1I8gg09lRiuCl77wWNZNkO2llRRNx0wGcctFxYLFVfBZQlqZ6MTqtr6NRVOh720iQCaHfOchOdxcy4RTeE1IChrcm7vyc3F4RUruQUiQ_W0AhqFsR7/s1600/gatwickmap.jpg" height="452" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB">THE BEST OF THE LOW WEALD</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB">THE COUNTRYSIDE OF LANGLEY GREEN, ROWLEY
AND</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB">HORLEY THREATENED BY THE PROPOSED</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB">GATWICK SECOND RUNWAY</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>by David Bangs<br />Naturalist and author (bangs682@btinternet.com)</i></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyKH2eYdESR8Zt-9FXN7VxrOoRxT06AV2f-ObI4cJ4GXq8AUzAtYQNzIK44p9vc5m8-C01AtuDl8OOjRSWh_8IaEkF8U-HJI-pGGUflDTnFWTF84oiP8soSZloMtbz6nHJyb5WN_SiZOLf/s1600/rush+meadow.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyKH2eYdESR8Zt-9FXN7VxrOoRxT06AV2f-ObI4cJ4GXq8AUzAtYQNzIK44p9vc5m8-C01AtuDl8OOjRSWh_8IaEkF8U-HJI-pGGUflDTnFWTF84oiP8soSZloMtbz6nHJyb5WN_SiZOLf/s1600/rush+meadow.png" height="175" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rush meadow, Willoughby Fields</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">The countryside directly threatened by the proposal for a
Gatwick second runway is a patchwork of loved urban fringe green spaces,
ancient landscape features, and wildlife sites with huge ecological continuity
and cultural importance.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The countryside of the upper River Mole is a flat land, a
landscape of horizontals. This is the source of its tranquillity, its
restfulness. At its core it is punctuated only by curtains of tall trees (</span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Italic","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Italic;">shaws</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">) and their verticality brings a
feeling of dignity to the land, like the dignity of a civic hall, or an ancient
church, mosque, or temple.</span> <i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Italic","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Italic;">Calm restfulness and dignity</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">...
these are the feelings which this Low Wealden countryside especially brings to
us. And in this vale of the Mole these landscape features – flatness, the
freely wandering river, the curtains of tall trees – are at their very best.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Nowhere else in the central Low Weald combines this
thoroughgoing flatness with this heavy timbering of ancient shaws to the degree
found in Langley Green and Charlwood’s countryside – not in the upper waters of
the Arun, the Adur, the Medway or the Ouse.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxwTHKxwYPwXqd6pfwUuAxHVpp47aWSkOBrHYcG_FDP9Dw_gkaQKfCejoAUc0RJ-hqicGj87fzBL4a_e3s7mH5sZ3RiMaUOkH0kR5ehCvjNLMpsn8otRlnlHygLfy4bzgLZx1WS-OGFMsr/s1600/wildwood+relic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxwTHKxwYPwXqd6pfwUuAxHVpp47aWSkOBrHYcG_FDP9Dw_gkaQKfCejoAUc0RJ-hqicGj87fzBL4a_e3s7mH5sZ3RiMaUOkH0kR5ehCvjNLMpsn8otRlnlHygLfy4bzgLZx1WS-OGFMsr/s1600/wildwood+relic.png" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wildwood relic – Small Leaved Lime on the Mole bank</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
2. LANGLEY GREEN AND THE RIVER MOLE’S COUNTRY<br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The jewel in the crown of this countryside is the wooded River Mole
and the farming and recreational landscape of meadow and shaw that surrounds it,
north of Langley Green at Willoughby Fields, Amberley Farm, Bonnet’s Lane, and
Lowfield Heath.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">2a. AN EXTRAORDINARY SURVIVAL: THE MOLE BANKS LINEAR WOOD</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">THE MOLE RIVER WOOD. Both banks of the river Mole between Ifield Avenue
Bridge and the Airport
perimeter road are graced by an archaic linear wood – over a mile long – which
supports many ancient woodland herbs and woody species. In our partial surveys
we have counted 23 such species of high indicative value, and this figure rises
to 26 with the inclusion of species growing in adjacent shaws. This linear
river wood has a scatter of Small Leaved Limes, a rare species of exceptional
indicative value.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">ANCIENT WOODLAND PLANTS. Here is
the list of special ancient woodland species... <i>Black Bryony, Bluebell, Bush
Vetch, Cherry (Gean), Crab Apple, Field Rose, Guelder Rose, Hart’s Tongue Fern,
Holly, Hornbeam, Maple, Midland Thorn, Moschatel (Dutchman’s Clock), Pendulous
Sedge, Pignut, Primrose, Ramsons (Wild Garlic), Remote Sedge, Soft Shield Fern,
Small Leaved Lime, Wood Anemone </i></span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Italic","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Italic;">(Windflower),
Wood Club Rush, Yellow Archangel</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">. Adjacent
shaws additionally have... </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Italic","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Italic;">Three Veined Sandwort, Wild Service
Tree, Wood Melick</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">. There will be more we have missed...</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">‘FOSSIL MEANDERS’. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">This
stretch of the Mole retains many of its </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">ancient
meanders</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">, and others are </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">‘fossilised’ </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">within
adjacent fields. The little ‘Oxbow Wood’ west of Amberley Farmstead, TQ 258/9
390, preserves such a ‘cut-off’ or ‘oxbow’ meander. There is Ramsons (Wild
Garlic) and Midland Thorn on the old banks, and Gipsywort in the mud of the
lost meander. The meadow next to (northeast of) the Oxbow Wood also has a
‘fossil’ meander preserved as a marshy depression. There is part of a ‘fossil’
meander within the Willoughby Field Nature Reserve, TQ 255 386. Mind the thorns
getting there! There are others both north and south of the river.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">A NEW ‘COUNTY
OAK’. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Part of the Mole bank at Amberley Farm, and the shaw that
runs from the bank behind the farmhouse, mark the historic county boundary. In
the shaw is a fine veteran Oak pollard on that boundary that passes muster as a
</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">new</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">‘County
Oak’. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Near to it is on the County boundary is the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">‘Woodpecker Oak’</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">, a fine
standard with a stack of at least four nest holes, noisily inhabited this year
by a Green Woodpecker family. The part of the Mole bank which lies on the
historic county boundary has a Small Leaved Lime maiden which could grow into a
</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">‘County Lime’</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">WALKING THE RIVER BED. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">It
is a magic place. The river-bed runs in a tunnel of trees between lush green
banks, hidden from view. Pools and shafts of sunlight make the lush greenery
glow and the rippling water twinkle. Beautiful Demoiselles (sort of Dragonflies
with blue/violet males and bronze females) flit across these watery glades. You
could be in the primeval wildwood, or the jungle. In the summer, when water levels
are low, it is possible to walk along large parts of the river bed. If you are
lucky a patrolling Kingfisher may flash by – a blue streak of light. You hear
the clatter of alarmed ducks starting away round the next bend. Parts of the
river bed are made of hard plates of rock which make sills over which the water
trickles in tiny <span style="color: black;">waterfalls. Where the wet rocks are
exposed tribes of iridescent green White Tipped Signal Wing Flies hop about,
the males waving their wings frantically to attract the females... you’ve gotta
laugh. Elsewhere there is gravel, and you may find an old Duck Mussel shell. In
some spots there are ‘felt’ mats of the red rootlets of Willow and Sallow. On the damp, shaded banks
are primitive plants scarce changed from before the age of the dinosaurs:
Greasewort, Great Scented Liverwort, Dotted Thyme Moss, Harts Tongue Thyme
Moss.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">2b. TOP ARCHAIC MEADOWS</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiboA7m9jO0PBeFx5K60CvGJ_RGdoLxESDMcgTu2lztslj8qkgPh6yt0CC16BF5Z5UPZAft7ERLLX-lQnz0Gs1D4_QRZGwxfv-A_dXq07QuqZLbABQS0LHGedIXkI9Ul3k8_dkyXjmu12-c/s1600/gatwick2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiboA7m9jO0PBeFx5K60CvGJ_RGdoLxESDMcgTu2lztslj8qkgPh6yt0CC16BF5Z5UPZAft7ERLLX-lQnz0Gs1D4_QRZGwxfv-A_dXq07QuqZLbABQS0LHGedIXkI9Ul3k8_dkyXjmu12-c/s1600/gatwick2.jpg" height="320" width="278" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Southern Marsh Orchid. Photo by Crystal Ray</span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The cluster of unimproved and part-improved
meadows north of Langley Green is an extraordinary survival. Judged
conservatively, some 11 meadows survive in an archaic state and at least four
others have areas of archaic meadow vegetation. (The only archaic meadow
clusters on the Wealden Clay of the central Weald which approach that number of
fields are Burstow Meadows, NNW of Burstow church, e.g. TQ 308 418, and
Bedelands Farm Meadows, Burgess Hill, e.g. TQ 319 206, with 8 and 9 fields respectively.
The Burstow cluster is also at risk from the thrust of development of the
Gatwick corridor, and the Bedelands Farm LNR may well be surrounded by new
built development, if current plans come to fruition.)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The extant meadows of Amberley Farm tend to a
different character from those around Willoughby Fields. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Amberley Farm meadows </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">are traditional hay meadows, some with great colour and
diversity of wild flowers. The rare Southern Marsh Orchis – glowing carmine red
– was present this year, with Spotted Orchis, Grass Vetchling (also carmine
red) and much colour from Vetches, Trefoils, Clovers, Knapweed and Buttercups.
There are many kinds of grasses, too. Sweet Vernal Grass dominates in springtime,
and Yorkshire Fog and Bent Grass in high summer.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Willoughby Fields meadows </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">are largely wet rush pastures, with much Soft Rush and
Compact Rush, Yorkshire Fog, and Creeping Buttercup, as well as Ladies Smock
(Milkmaids), Common Spotted Orchis and Oval Sedge. The colours modulate though
yellow and coppery greens, browns, dark, almost Prussian greens, fawns and leaf
greens, splashed white from Dropwort umbels and yellow from Trefoils and
Buttercups. There is a small and jewel-like fragment of old flower meadow in
the crook of a Mole meander at TQ 255 388, with Yellow Rattle, Crosswort and
much Bird’s Foot Trefoil. Several riverside meadows are succeeding to woodland,
though archaic grassland survives within one of them.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">There are Green Veined White butterflies in spring and
Common Blues, Browns and Skippers in summer. In the damp winter you may see a
ghostly white Egret on watch. Several of the Willoughby Fields meadows have a pattern
of parallel gullies, perhaps from past drainage attempts, or past cultivation.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Some of the fields are corrugated by irregular depressions,
perhaps from lost ponds, drainage channels or even diggings. There are old farm
ponds in several field corners, now vegetating up, but with Flote Grass, tadpoles,
Water Crowfoot and Marsh Bedstraw still present. Two of the Willoughby Fields
Nature Reserve meadows are managed as rugby pitches (as are two more outside
the reserve), but their boundary shaws are respected, and one has old meadow
along its margin with special wildflowers, like Pignut.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">2c. SHAWS AND THE ANCIENT FIELD PATTERN</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The ancient field pattern of outgrown hedges and shaws
around the Mole and the Langley Green Brook has been preserved intact to a very
high degree. In the areas of Willoughby Fields and Amberley Farm this field
pattern is almost wholly intact, ‘preserved in aspic’ despite the passing of at
least 140 years (in this area a copy of the circa 1870 First Edition Ordance
Survey map, six inch to one mile, could be laid over the current Ordnance Survey
map and the two would match exactly over large parts. and probably much longer.)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">These shaws support stands of the handsomest maiden Oaks,
and much Ash and Maple. Their understory is of Hazel, Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Holly
and Sallow. They support, too, scarce Wild Service Tree, Midland Thorn, Crab
Apple, Hornbeam, Guelder Rose and Field Rose. The scarce Brown Hairstreak,
whose caterpillars live on the abundant Blackthorn, and Speckled Wood, are their
special butterflies. In springtime they have abundant Bluebells and are
daisy-white with Greater Stitchwort. Then they are full of the music of Song Thrush
and Warblers, Nightingale, too, occasionally. Yellowhammers breed there.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIdb7C73SivI2xdZnXVEuLgTIKv5H5hENyrFK1_ub8U1RzWg7I6rhN-ywbN7EVVIzEsbkRATY1nipFrWTqJn_eEpLmkclmGtVyd_JjEEhd1rSdn-T4uzv3pieVAjRzrz3fdCp5fAo7ieDX/s1600/gatwickmap2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIdb7C73SivI2xdZnXVEuLgTIKv5H5hENyrFK1_ub8U1RzWg7I6rhN-ywbN7EVVIzEsbkRATY1nipFrWTqJn_eEpLmkclmGtVyd_JjEEhd1rSdn-T4uzv3pieVAjRzrz3fdCp5fAo7ieDX/s1600/gatwickmap2.jpg" height="452" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">3. LOWFIELD HEATH: AN INTACT ENCLOSURE</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">LANDSCAPE</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Lowfield Heath largely preserves the pattern of field,
hedge and shaw laid down at enclosure of the common in 1846. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The sub-landscape has escaped all the stripping out of these
features which most large scale enclosure landscapes (as in eastern England)
have catastrophically suffered. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The field edge trees commonly date from the post-enclosure
decades, and strips of post-enclosure mixed woodland have grown up to enrich
this picture. Much of the footprint of the old common is tilled productively.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Just beyond the south end of Poles Lane, TQ 265 391, is an area of
much older tiny fields </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">(crofts). They were probably enclosed
from Lowfield Heath Common circa 1700 or earlier – some 150 years before its
main enclosure, for </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">County Oak Cottage</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">, there, is dated 1705, and its barn may be even older.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Wild Service Tree and Hornbeam are present in the hedgerows
and shaws, with fine Oaks. The fields are largely managed for hay and for horse
grazing. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">The boundaries of the old common can
be traced in part from the location of the pre-enclosure farms and cottages</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">, once located on the common’s edge, but now set back from
the ruler-straight surveyor’s roads: – </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Italic","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Italic;">Charlwood
House (17th century), Spikemead Farmhouse (1604), Poles Acre Barn (17th
century), County Oak Cottage (1705 or before), Gatwick Manor (15th century).</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">At least one field gives us a flavour of the vegetation of
Lowfield Heath common before its 1846 enclosure. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Lowfield
Heath Rush Pasture, TQ 269 392, lies just west of the A23 and northeast of
Little Dell. It has a Sallow fringe, with large patches of Tufted Hair Grass,
Soft Rush, and Sweet Grass within a matrix of shorter sward, with Creeping
Buttercup and Cinquefoil. It is flat, but with shallow corrugations, and very
wet in winter.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">4. ROWLEY FARM AND CRAWTER’S BROOK’S COUNTRY</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLFkgNwhan2YB8-TfpDQeQUIHPQUNt0_ToBd0Op4aVNEaHmoRJqU1lnS7GIPbKivsXPigxawf-5gcfcMtxKAfexRPwfs8atPHDswlek-akKc7iNbkVwyTUm4cb0KrdXJttBPzZHSGxyyhb/s1600/gatwick3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLFkgNwhan2YB8-TfpDQeQUIHPQUNt0_ToBd0Op4aVNEaHmoRJqU1lnS7GIPbKivsXPigxawf-5gcfcMtxKAfexRPwfs8atPHDswlek-akKc7iNbkVwyTUm4cb0KrdXJttBPzZHSGxyyhb/s1600/gatwick3.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;"> Pollard oak, Rowley Green</span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Rowley Farm, TQ 279 396, sits on a mountain, for that is how its low
hill, 77m/252ft high, feels in all the placid horizontality of the Vale of the
Mole.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Though it is only some 17m/56ft above the level of the airport
runway its winding ascent opens up fine views beyond the Airport to the wooded
Weald as far as the scarp of the North Downs...
and to nearby Lowfield church spire, otherwise hidden from nearer view by tall
airport clutter.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Rowley Hill is a viewpoint that re-connects the viewer to the wider
and older landscape... to the earlier and more profound geographies of river floodplain,
wooded Weald and the embrace of the chalk downs. This is a viewpoint to be
celebrated, not further eroded or destroyed.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Much that is ancient survives at this place. Both north and east of
the Farm the ancient boundaries of Rowley Green can still be traced by fences
and trees, and a paddock east of the Lodge, TQ 278 399, retains a smidgeon of
the Green’s archaic vegetation.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">In front of the hovel opposite the Lodge are two fine veteran Oak
pollards, both hollow and spilt, but in rude health. There is a further pollard
Oak of great character – burry and gnarled – on the hilltop where the farmhouse
north drive splits from the bridleway. The timber framed Farmhouse, TQ 279 396,
is Elizabethan – perhaps 450 years old – and the weatherboarded Great Barn is
even older – late medieval. The Row‘<i>ley</i>’ (woodland glade) place name (in
the countryside at risk from a second runway are a cluster of ancient ‘<i>ley</i>’
place names, which have this meaning of an <i>‘open space within extensive
woodland’</i>: – Lang<i>ley</i>, Amber<i>ley</i>, Tins<i>ley</i>, Row<i>ley</i>,
Hor<i>ley</i>. They demonstrate that large scale ancient woodland survived very
late in this area.) indicates the erstwhile presence of tracts of ancient
woodland, from which, perhaps, first the Green and then the tilled fields were
carved.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The field pattern is mostly intact to the east, but has been lost on
the west slope of the hill. Huntsgreen Wood, to the northeast, TQ 283 399 is
ancient, with fine Oak standards. It is a classic wet Wealden Clay wood, with
much Bramble and Nettle, perhaps because of previous grazing. Rowley Wood, to
the south, TQ 279 392, is also ancient. It is a Bluebell wood of Oak, Ash, and
Birch, over Hazel coppice, and with some Sweet Chestnut. It is an SNCI (Site of
Nature Conservation Importance).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">West of Crawter’s Brook, e.g, TQ 274 394, the old pattern of hedges
and shaws is almost intact, with views north across the Oaks and Ashes to the
spire of Lowfield
Church. It is a
delightful place. Part of the land is cattle grazed (from Rowley), part is
horse pasture and hay meadow, part is mixed woodland, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">part
is the lovely grounds of Gatwick Manor, and part is business parking. At least
one </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Rushy Pasture</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">,
TQ 273/4 395/6, has a high level of naturalness, with Cutleaf Evergreen
Blackberry (big, juicy, extratasty berries), Male Fern, Fleabane, St John’s
Wort, and Bird’s Foot Trefoil. The shaw along its eastern boundary has Crab
Apple, Midland Thorn, Maple and Sloe. At its north end, abutting the Airport Perimeter Road,
a fossil meander of the straightened Crawter’s Brook is visible, with Spotted
Orchis and other old meadow species.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">5. CHARLWOOD ROAD</span><span lang="EN-GB"> AND BONNETS LANE’S</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB">COUNTRY</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">5a. BONNETS
LANE’S COUNTRY</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Though </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Bonnet’s Lane </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">can be busy with traffic it
still retains the character of a winding Low Wealden lane, shaded by shaws, an
ancient wood, hedgerows and trees.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">At the Lane’s southern junction with Charlwood Road is </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Stafford Green</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">, TQ 250 384/5, which still, in part, retains its archaic wet
pasture vegetation. It is a remarkable survival of the once-continuous roadside
‘waste’ between the two linked commons of Ifield Wood and Ifield Green. In
spring it is decorated with Ladies Smock/Milkmaids (and Garden Daffodils!) and
in early summer its western side has a lovely display of Marsh Woundwort and Meadowsweet,
Codlins and Cream and Water Dropwort, with much Spiked Sedge. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">To the east of Bonnet’s Lane are sheep and horse
pastures dropping gently down to the Mole. Many of the fine old hedges survive.
Many of the fields are Buttercup meadows, and, near to the Mole and the scrambler
bike trail, the meadows have much Grass Vetchling.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">At the south end of the Lane, just east of
Stafford House, is a brook meadow, TQ 252 384, with old anthills and fine
150-200 year old Oaks on its northern boundary. Just to the north, between the Bonnet’s
Lane houses and the river is a wooded-over brook meadow and cut-off meander, TQ
254 387, a fine bird refuge, sheltering an especially secluded length of the
Mole.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Bonnets Copse, TQ 253 390, is an ancient Bluebell
wood, with many shallow pits, making a wet, irregular surface. There are many
young Oak standards and scattered Hornbeam stools, a peppering of Scot’s Pine,
and a good sub-shrub layer of Bramble, with abundant Blackthorn and Broad Buckler
Fern.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">At the north end of Bonnet’s Lane, just over the
old county boundary into Surrey, is an archaic Rushand-Tufted Hair Grass
pasture, TQ 253 395. Once probably part of the old Westfield Common, it gives
some indication of that common’s historic </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">vegetation.
Wet and tussocky, it has big Tufted Hair Grass swarms, Spiked Sedge, Compact
and Soft Rush, Tall Fescue and Water Dropwort. Water Mint is fragrant
underfoot... A lovely wild place.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">5b. CHARLWOOD ROAD’S
COUNTRY</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi4HzxjJCTIMQHPNfnWcYxEkjZ9HG7k63p6uFAhb71RII8klTBQFt0ATAntE-XU22XBZWnNr_z-LebccoCGRpurQDCmu78nIpGxHXh2uCGsE9styEylhfRLfeZh1C6JndA5to7O2VJwB08/s1600/gatwick4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi4HzxjJCTIMQHPNfnWcYxEkjZ9HG7k63p6uFAhb71RII8klTBQFt0ATAntE-XU22XBZWnNr_z-LebccoCGRpurQDCmu78nIpGxHXh2uCGsE9styEylhfRLfeZh1C6JndA5to7O2VJwB08/s1600/gatwick4.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">North of Charlwood Road: swallows,
rooks, martins, skylarks</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span lang="EN-GB">North of the Charlwood Road, between Bonnet’s Lane and the Ifield
Road, is the site of the late medieval Ifield Deer Park, commemorated by the Little
<i>Park </i>Farm place name. Enclosed by the late 17th century, its site has
since been an area of small fields, wooded shaws and hedges, with secondary woods
now of a good age. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">West of the airport runway many of these old landscape features have
been lost to modern agribusiness in recent decades, but to the south the
majority are still intact.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The mansion of Ifield Hall is now demolished, but its parkland and
outbuildings are partly intact, with some archaic grassland south of the drive,
TQ 250 387, and a fine three span girth veteran Oak to its north, as well as
mature shaws along the Charlwood Road and Bonnet’s Lane. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Just north west
of the old Hall is Ifield Hall Wood, TQ 248 390. Perhaps a century old, this
wood has mature mixed plantings of Oak, Lime, Horse Chestnut, Beech, Sycamore and
Maple, with small numbers of other species. Plainly much loved, it is used for
woodcraft activities.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Bluebells are ingressing from the western footpath, thus showing
that that path may once have been linear old woodland. Furze Field, TQ 246/7
391, is a low wood, thus demonstrating its scrubby origins. It had small Oaks,
Ash, Spindle, and Blackthorn, and its boundary ditches have Yellow Flag, Marsh
Thistle and Marsh Bedstraw.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The enclosed fields along the Charlwood Road are horse pastures, and
the fields to the north are part sheep pastures, part tilled land, surrounded
by well-vegetated ditches with stands of tall herbs and bushes.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Despite the roar of aircraft taking off, this is a place where
Skylarks sing, Swallows sweep low over the fields, Martins flock high above our
heads, and Rooks rise from the woods in companionable hubbub.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">6. EAST OF THE LONDON-BRIGHTON RAILWAY</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">East of the London-Brighton Railway as far as the M23 </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">the landscape’s finest features are its lattice of
woodlands, both ancient and secondary</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">.
Horleyland Wood and Picketts Wood are ancient, and Picketts Wood is
close-linked with adjoining secondary woods, such as Upper Pickett’s Wood, and
old shaws and species-rich hedgerows.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Horleyland Wood</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">, TQ 289
405, is a lovely old Hazel-Oak-Birch wood, carpetted with Bluebells in spring
and Bracken in the summer. The golden apples of its Crab tree grove decorate
the ground through winter. Its Oaks are fine standards. It is an SNCI. Yet it
is surrounded on all sides by airport car parks, balancing ponds, the railway,
and the giant sewage works, whose stench hangs in the air through the western
wood. It is a ‘precious fragment’ surrounded by hostile land uses, and its
plight only emphasises how unsatisfactory such site preservation is when the
supporting landscape context is ripped out.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Fish in the newly constructed pond there swim away to cover
whenever loud aircraft thunder overhead... Is that the way to live for fish or
people?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Picketts Wood </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">on Picketts Lane, TQ
295 407, is a lovely open, Brackeny wood, with Gean (Cherry), Hazel, Hornbeam
and Bluebells. To its south, TQ 295 402, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Upper
Pickett’s Wood’s </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">proximity to these ancient woods has
enabled it to acquire a rich old woodland flora with orchids, Wood Sedge,
Primroses and Bluebells.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Thanks to conservation efforts, some archaic meadow
fragments survive, such as the attractive </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">wet
rush meadow east of Rolls Farm
Lane</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">, TQ 294
398, and the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">meadow adjoining Upper Picketts</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">, TQ 295/6 403/4, where succession to woodland is partly
halted by lopping.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">The </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">ancient field pattern </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">is no longer readily visible, and there have been large
recent losses, for instance north of Oldlands Farm, e.g. TQ 288 399, but more
survives than meets the eye, subsumed as boundaries of the fragments of
Picketts Woods, the backs of the Balcombe Road house plots, along the surviving
green lanes, such as Picketts Lane, and left tokenistically within the sprawl of
Airport car parks.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">There are </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">fine old Oaks </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">on
the lane to Horleyland Wood and the site of Old Rolls Farm, TQ 293/4 404. There
are two good veteran Oak pollards, both with Beefsteak Fungus, on Picketts Lane where
it bounds Picketts Wood, TQ 296 406, and another fine hollow Oak pollard on the
green lane to the north, TQ 293 409.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">To the east of the Balcombe
Road the post-enclosure field boundaries of old
Horley Common are largely intact around </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Semibold","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Semibold;">Fern
Hill and Peeks Brook Lane</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">. Gorse and Sallow in the hedgelines, and the tiny squatters
and post-enclosure cottages of Donkey
Lane, TQ 299 412, remind us of the area’s past as heathy
common (as does its original name: </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Italic","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Italic;">Fern </span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Hill). Indeed, this sub-landscape, divided now by the M23
slip road, is the only part of the footprint of the once-gigantic Horley Common
to remain as open land. This common was, till the eighteenth century, by far
the largest of the Commons of the upper Mole vale... larger by far than the Redhill-Earlswood Commons, Holmwood, or Copthorne Common.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqbWbd14EWuVvXQlBh5Yd5EzBiwl6i8xiDVtCjDd2PcUYKPs060NJKlTAv8aNwSR7N0RJvvm6RA16412uK6M_3chYMeFj4x7htGTihfJmeK7Or2GaH4gD_5uoyCNxnOqFw57_jYIDOG1_F/s1600/gatwick5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqbWbd14EWuVvXQlBh5Yd5EzBiwl6i8xiDVtCjDd2PcUYKPs060NJKlTAv8aNwSR7N0RJvvm6RA16412uK6M_3chYMeFj4x7htGTihfJmeK7Or2GaH4gD_5uoyCNxnOqFw57_jYIDOG1_F/s1600/gatwick5.jpg" height="400" width="221" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">Pollard oak, Picketts Lane</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB">7. DIRECT AND INDIRECT IMPACTS OF A SECOND</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB">RUNWAY</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB">7a. DIRECT EFFECTS</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Gatwick</span><span lang="EN-GB"> Airport’s Options Two and Three will wholly eliminate
the high value landscape between the current airport and the northern edge of Crawley’s built-up area. Only a thin strip of urban fringe
open space will survive (chiefly, the Cherry Lane Recreation Ground and perhaps
5 horse pasture fields).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Option One will, instead, split these high value landscapes in two,
destroying the northern half of the Langley Green, Lowfield Heath and Rowley
Farm countryside, and eliminating the tranquillity of the remaining half. The
integrity of the key landscape features (the course of the River Mole, the
historic field pattern, Rowley Hill) will be destroyed.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">All three Options will eliminate the post-enclosure landscape of
Fernhill and what remains of the Horleyland and Picketts Lane landscape. Only ‘precious
fragments’, such as Horleyland Wood and Picketts Wood, will remain.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB">7b. INDIRECT EFFECTS</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB">All three options will massively ratchet up the process of
destruction of the Low Wealden countryside, not just in the northern section
(in south east Surrey and north Sussex)
but in the southern (Sussex)
section. Thus, all three options will bring a huge new housing requirement
equivalent to a major new town, and greatly intensified pressures on the
existing transport network, water requirements, et al.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">All three options will massively erode the tranquillity and
integrity of surviving countryside, with increased noise pollution and
fragmentation of remaining rural sub-landscapes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "AGaramond-Regular","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: AGaramond-Regular;">In closest proximity, such wonderful sites as Ifield Wood
Common, the Burstow Meadows, the Burstow church hamlet, and the Copthorne
Common Meadows will be at greatly added risk. At a wider distance, the
outstanding Rusper Ridgelands (the parallel ridges along the Sussex county
border) with their dense cover of woodlands, gills, shaws and ancient fields)
will lose much of their conservation value under the pressure of noise
pollution and development. Development pressure will redouble on the lower vale
of the Mole, and the upper vale of the River Arun (including Billingshurst).</span></div>
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<![endif]-->Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-59451404435295824712013-07-15T05:46:00.001-07:002013-07-15T05:46:47.637-07:00Will we let Sussex be fracked by the system?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIoPbZ1ptSoliwLZ5dISDkhV5B7bqFfUOt3ROD0oqFFksBMHreP73r1TkcQshyNNqdvy7BtknEyPKAeQm5Nq8fvC1B9pqTXz47vIEH5G3MGgtVtqq0pRvvgPRiWR4PortWFDa3gYwN1BVt/s1600/post-fracking+landscape1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIoPbZ1ptSoliwLZ5dISDkhV5B7bqFfUOt3ROD0oqFFksBMHreP73r1TkcQshyNNqdvy7BtknEyPKAeQm5Nq8fvC1B9pqTXz47vIEH5G3MGgtVtqq0pRvvgPRiWR4PortWFDa3gYwN1BVt/s640/post-fracking+landscape1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Will
there one day be “no spot of English ground left, on which it shall be
possible to stand, without a definite and calculable chance of being
blown off it, at any moment, into small pieces”?<br />
<br />
The quotation comes from a speech made by John Ruskin to the Mechanics’ Institute in Bradford on March 1, 1859.* <br />
<br />
Despite
all the industrial devastation we have seen since – much of it, of
course, outsourced to other parts of the world – this specific warning
still sounds like an exaggeration.<br />
<br />
However, a century
and a half later England is facing a threat on that sort of scale.
Explosions, earthquakes, poisoned air, chemical pollution and tap water
that bursts into flames – these are all side-effects of fracking, the
nightmarish form of gas extraction being imposed on this country.<br />
<br />
The
scale of what is likely to be unleashed doesn’t seem to have percolated
through to the general public yet. It’s not just a well here and there
across the countryside we’re talking about, but a saturation level of
environmental exploitation.<br />
<br />
Campaign group Frack Off <a href="http://frack-off.org.uk/fracking-sussex-the-threat-of-shale-oil-gas/">reports</a>
that in Balcombe, West Sussex “at a spacing of 4 wells per square mile,
full scale development could mean 32 wells within the parish and over
300 within 5 miles of the village. Cuadrilla have produced no estimates,
but at a spacing of 4 wells per square mile development could mean up
to 1,200 wells in Cuadrilla’s licence blocks in Sussex. Possibly more
for shale gas development. A vast network of pipelines, compressor
stations and processing plants would be needed to support such a
development”.<br />
<br />
And they add that another fracking firm,
Celtique Energy, “have been bragging extensively about the shale oil and
gas they hope to be able to extract. The volume of oil and gas they are
promising to shareholders would require over 6,000 shale gas wells and
800 shale oil wells in West Sussex”.<br />
<br />
And that’s just
one corner. A staggering 64% of England is considered suitable for
fracking. Imagine the scale of extraction proposed for a few small areas
of West Sussex, but replicated across the country! Take a look of
aerial photos of parts of the USA or Australia where the frackers have
been at work (<i>see top image</i>). That’s what England could be reduced to in a few decades’ time.<br />
<br />
And how about those of us who live here? Maybe our homes will have collapsed in a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-15550458">fracking-induced earthquake</a> like the ones in Blackpool. <br />
<br />
Maybe we will be suffering from early-onset dementia caused by the poisoning of <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-03/hazardous-air-pollutants-detected-near-fracking-sites.html">our air</a> or <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57590888/methane-found-in-pa-drinking-water-near-fracked-wells/">our drinking water.</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5X9rfVSJzu8R9S0GiGnnHEx-qFSSCB1b0jasOinPuWLpeY7uVHtpSvtx_YNkHhl8vNHh9O170iCJUo4tJn5AE8YxWZfr8Tsn1PJcPrbEzlUW4qswy0zirWG2fSEXD1kBUJT5y3yfWDoMa/s1600/fracking_vargson_tap_fire4.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5X9rfVSJzu8R9S0GiGnnHEx-qFSSCB1b0jasOinPuWLpeY7uVHtpSvtx_YNkHhl8vNHh9O170iCJUo4tJn5AE8YxWZfr8Tsn1PJcPrbEzlUW4qswy0zirWG2fSEXD1kBUJT5y3yfWDoMa/s320/fracking_vargson_tap_fire4.png" width="320" /></a>Maybe we’ll even have been burnt to death after the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBjSXWQRV8">water from our taps caught fire</a>. Nothing is too outlandish to come true in the fracked-up world of shale energy.<br />
<br />
The
whole thing goes a lot further than this, of course. Think of all the
tankers and works traffic constantly using these thousands of sites.
Think of the new access roads that will have to be built over our
countryside, all the rest of the infrastructure.<br />
<br />
And
when we’re always being encouraged to save water, how are the millions
of gallons needed for fracking going to suddenly become available for
the industry to poison and squander?<br />
<br />
The threat of
fracking is clearly so huge and so horrific that a massive uprising of
pubic anger and opposition is needed to defeat it.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://ianrcrane.com/">Various attempts</a>
are underway. But the trouble is that, as ever, opponents are not just
up against a few energy companies pushing specific projects. They are up
against the whole of the corporate system, the global capitalist
system, which is promoting fracking and hell-bent on imposing it on
England and anywhere else they can.<br />
<br />
The links between
the fracking industry and the government (or, if you prefer, between
capitalism and the state which it uses to enforce and legitimise its
monopoly of wealth) are not even very well hidden.<br />
<br />
Lord Browne, a director of fracking firm Cuadrilla, was <a href="http://gasdrillinginbalcombe.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/balcombe-mp-appointed-cuadrilla-director-to-government/">appointed to the Cabinet Office</a> in June 2010 by Francis Maude, who happens to be MP for Cuadrilla's first Sussex fracking-target, Balcombe.<br />
<br />
Fracking is <a href="http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2012/05/21/G8-warms-to-fracking-deep-water-drilling/UPI-82701337603041/">specifically supported</a> by the G8 group of “world leaders” and was rumoured to have been on the agenda at the secretive <a href="http://www.thedailysheeple.com/official-bilderberg-2013-attendee-list-revealed_062013">Bilderberg</a> meeting in the UK earlier this summer.<br />
<br />
This
official pro-fracking line (which does not stem in any way from the
“democracy” in which we are always told we are lucky to be basking) has
been reflected in a series of pro-fracking stories planted in the press,
with arch-capitalist and climate change denier <a href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/southcoast/2009/07/433836.html">Lord Lawson</a> warning solemnly of the dangers of being “held to ransom by green fanaticism”.<br />
<br />
As
Britain’s most-read newspaper (and draw your own conclusions as to what
that says about this country and its residents), it was clearly
important that The Sun was involved and it has been spewing forth a
seemingly endless deluge of pro-fracking propaganda, full of talk of a “<a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/5005708/Fracking-sparks-new-Gold-Rush-in-US.html">fracking goldmine</a>” which offers the “<a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4987760/UK-is-sitting-on-enough-gas-to-supply-whole-country-for-40yrs-double-previous-estimates.html#ixzz2Z72Q3Dbr">hope of solving future energy problems and giving a £4billion-a-year boost to the economy</a>”.<br />
<br />
Combining
its pro-fracking stance with its anti-EU one, The Sun also accused the
European Parliament’s environment committee of trying to “<a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/5009162/Anger-at-Brussels-attacking-fracking-as-Brits-back-shale-gas-exploration-in-Sun-poll.html#ixzz2Z71GhvPW">strangle shale gas exploration with red tape</a>”.<br />
<br />
The Mail on Sunday weighed in with its own <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2351759/Dirty-tricks-the-fracking-deniers-How-Green-zealots-peddle-cynical-propaganda-stop-Britain-mining-3trillion-shale-gas--lights-141-YEARS.html#ixzz2Z72ka212">rabidly pro-fracking piece</a>:
“Dirty tricks of the fracking deniers: How Green zealots peddle cynical
propaganda to stop Britain mining £3trillion of shale gas...enough to
keep the lights on for 141 YEARS”<br />
<br />
It’s unlikely that
the capitalist system will stop at media mind-manipulation to force
through fracking. No doubt even now, special units of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/09/undercover-office-green-activists">political police</a> are being set up to infiltrate, monitor, control, undermine and destroy the opposition to fracking.<br />
<br />
If the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/9943652/After-bribes-for-wind-farms-communities-are-offered-money-for-fracking.html">bribes </a>don’t
work and resistance steps up to the level of direct action, the Mail’s
“green zealots” will become “eco-terrorists” and new laws will have to
passed to put down the revolt.<br />
<br />
This is the reality
faced by all “single-issue” campaigns, such as that against fracking –
ultimately it’s the whole system you’re up against.<br />
<br />
That’s
obviously why so many people who start fighting one particular threat
to our lives and happiness end up with a wider perspective that enables
them to see the bigger picture.<br />
<br />
The bigger picture here
is that the capitalist-industrialist system will never voluntarily give
up destroying the planet for its own gain and ruthlessly using all its
considerable power to ensure nobody gets in its way.<br />
<br />
The
bigger picture is that in fighting fracking, or road-building, or new
airports, or nuclear power, we are fighting the system.<br />
<br />
And
the biggest picture is that we can’t permanently win any of those
battles until we have confronted the monster itself, until we have stood
up together and said there is more that we value than its obscene
obsession with profit, its deadly addiction to “growth” and its
poisonous path of “progress”.<br />
<br />
Only once we have driven a
stake through the heart of this planetary parasite can we recover the
life and the future that it has so cruelly stolen from us all.<br />
<br />
<b>By Paul Cudenec. Reposted from <a href="http://paulcudenec.blogspot.co.uk/">paulcudenec.blogspot.co.uk </a></b><br />
<br />
* <i>There’s a longer section of Ruskin’s speech in <a href="http://winteroakpress.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-anarchist-revelation-by-paul-cudenec.html">The Anarchist Revelation</a>.</i><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoEoCCYs4SqXuVmFAmKc5BEPYqV7JamAK8iawoJrLuWa7at_2_-q3WADRy7VZyoiz47uZT9FqleGgK-kl52PTLizvFhAVeDeH8PMiTG-oj02vJlb9jl1loCjfEctv1cfM35IlYlcgDOxND/s1600/fracking_map_ready_energydesk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoEoCCYs4SqXuVmFAmKc5BEPYqV7JamAK8iawoJrLuWa7at_2_-q3WADRy7VZyoiz47uZT9FqleGgK-kl52PTLizvFhAVeDeH8PMiTG-oj02vJlb9jl1loCjfEctv1cfM35IlYlcgDOxND/s640/fracking_map_ready_energydesk.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-12650928398600480662013-06-15T15:19:00.000-07:002013-06-15T15:19:05.592-07:00Protest against roadbuilding on July 13!<img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1yXinx7jTrJ87Ql-MzoKBzXjdYVhM0fOGxT3uLsxn-zMqNz6byytDqhcCsDHf45j6HgeOPldgKNuF0Hqd0TwNWpXSUG3AgvEygUw8FrEFyXZfvky_BGGzfNi1hSYfOTcCqFwkmJTed_93/s640/roads+to+nowhere.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />A national rally against roadbuilding is to be held in East Sussex on Saturday July 13.<br /><br />Nationally, there are plans afoot to build hundreds of miles of new roads, at a cost of at least £30bn. Catastrophic climate change, devastating species loss and huge cuts in public spending notwithstanding, George Osborne is determined that these roads must be built.<br /><br />Come to the beautiful Combe Valley in East Sussex on Saturday July 13, site of the proposed Bexhill Hastings Link Road - the 'first and worst' of the new roads - to say NO to this destruction.<br /><br />Rally, route walks and a chance to meet others who are determined to stop this madness. Organised by Campaign for Better Transport, Combe Haven Defenders and Hastings Alliance, supported by Greenpeace, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), CPRE Sussex, RSPB, Wildlife Trusts and Bexhill Link Road Resistance (Blinkrr).<br />
<br />
Come to this unique event and: <br /><br />* take a guided walk through the historic Combe Haven – a chance to see a beautiful valley targeted for destruction <br /> * learn more about the campaign to save the valley, and about plans for more than 200 new roads around the country <br /> * meet campaigners and speakers from national and local groups <br /> * get information about how you can take action to help stop a new roads programme becoming a national disaster. <br />* enjoy music and poetry, food and drink and activities for all ages <br /><br /><img border="0" src="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/img/extlink.gif" /> <a href="http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/roadsrally2013">http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/roadsrally2013</a> <br /> Facebook event page: <img border="0" src="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/img/extlink.gif" /> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/346797765449467">https://www.facebook.com/events/346797765449467</a> <br /><br />Times and places: <br /><br />Rally: Sat July 13, 2pm to 5pm, Crowhurst Recreation Ground, East Sussex (speakers from 3pm) <br /><br />Chapel Hill, Crowhurst, East Sussex (15 mins walk from Crowhurst railway station, near the Plough Inn). <br /><br />Route
walk A: Meet at 11.45am, Bexhill railway station (trains arrive from
London at 11.39, Brighton at 11.24 and Ashford/Hastings at 11.23). A
five-mile guided walk closely following the route of the new road. <br /><br />Route
walk B: Meet at 12pm, West St Leonards railway station (trains arrive
from London at 11.51 and from Hastings at 11.56). A six-mile guided walk
through the eastern parts of the Combe Haven valley. <br /><br />Route walk C: Meet at 12pm Crowhurst recreation ground. A guided five mile circular walk with good views of the valley. <br /><br />Short walks from the rally site: <br />Shorter
walks from the recreation ground along the 1066 Bexhill Walk route into
the valley will also be conducted during the afternoon.<br />
<br />
<div class="creator">
<strong>combe haven defenders</strong>
<br />
<img alt="-" class="artimg" src="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/img/mail_small.gif" />
<strong>e-mail:</strong>
<a href="mailto:combhavendefenders@gmail.com">combhavendefenders@gmail.com</a>
<br />
<img alt="-" class="artimg" src="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/img/link_small.gif" />
<strong>Homepage:</strong>
<a href="http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/">http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/</a>
</div>
Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-91333671517753495642013-03-26T08:20:00.000-07:002013-03-26T08:20:26.057-07:00The Reign of Corruption<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTVp2RBGIh3JEHQ_kLaBUNx0r161hyphenhyphenhHX3qhKGFZtBj8ZV42SBG6WeQQOENxHMTyAa7pRYAeyoh3gjf90R3x3WHaJCwm0YEFGIV3DIWBr5o8gCUoSOeDYsl6ETU-v3ep62OkwYD2VrjY0M/s1600/environmental+destruction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTVp2RBGIh3JEHQ_kLaBUNx0r161hyphenhyphenhHX3qhKGFZtBj8ZV42SBG6WeQQOENxHMTyAa7pRYAeyoh3gjf90R3x3WHaJCwm0YEFGIV3DIWBr5o8gCUoSOeDYsl6ETU-v3ep62OkwYD2VrjY0M/s320/environmental+destruction.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
WAS anyone really surprised when the Conservative Party
declared what The Daily Telegraph referred to as a "<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/hands-off-our-land/9947318/Planning-ministers-war-on-the-countryside.html">war on the countryside</a>" in
which property developers will be given pretty much free rein and effectively
be subsidised by the state?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Did anyone really believe that this political party is
steered by a set of values, amongst which is the protection of the environment?
Did anyone believe, for that matter, that when the Labour Party came to power six
years before the invasion of Iraq
it was really committed to pursuing an “ethical foreign policy”?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyone who has paying the slightest bit of attention can see
that the “principles” which these parties flaunt when they are fighting
election campaigns are nothing but empty lies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And yet the media, and therefore a certain part of the
population, continue to treat their representatives as they are genuinely
involved in some great battle of ideas, as if they are truly motivated by the slick
reasons and excuses they present to the public.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The BBC for instance, will often say that the government
“believes” such and such to be the correct solution, or that the prime minister
“believes” he was right to act in a certain way. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What they are really reporting is that the government or
prime minister <b>says </b>they believe something, but by missing out that
all-important division between the politician’s statement and the BBC’s
reporting of it, they are endorsing that statement and telling us that our
authority figures can always be assumed to be telling the truth. The trust that
the public (for some reason!) has in the BBC is therefore projected, subtly,
on to the government or minister.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, politicians are rarely truthful about their actual
beliefs, if indeed they have any. Naked greed, self-interest and power-lust,
bolstered by bribery, flattery and blackmail, are their only values and
principles. We are living under a reign of corruption, where the most venal and
ruthless hold all the wealth and the power that it commands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We do not live in a democracy. We live in a plutocracy which
disguises itself as a democracy in order to keep the population pacified.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The disease which we term capitalism has only one aim, and
that is to continue to grow and spread. It is not based on principles or values
or judgements, and neither are the politicians, journalists and cops who serve
it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It does not care about the countryside or the environment,
or the future of life on the planet. It does not care about people’s health or
wellbeing. It is happy to preside over war, torture, slavery, pollution –
anything that is necessary to maintain its own cancerous growth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><div class="MsoNormal">
<b>It cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be reformed. It has to
be destroyed.</b></div>
Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-20754007268320688182013-03-14T02:29:00.001-07:002013-03-14T02:29:30.358-07:00Combe Haven Rising!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM0vs2QkyP-goz0jJhJmfRGqn354lcNDihRXEq3C9JfiqvchWkKx2w86sGiLOqfwoIjg3ryvkz9xNMDVYPZbT-nHoQikM4SGRxgpVt4VCmE2UvbRhK5N7L6jcYLrTEgXOFJENt1jj7i0KU/s1600/combe-haven-rising-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM0vs2QkyP-goz0jJhJmfRGqn354lcNDihRXEq3C9JfiqvchWkKx2w86sGiLOqfwoIjg3ryvkz9xNMDVYPZbT-nHoQikM4SGRxgpVt4VCmE2UvbRhK5N7L6jcYLrTEgXOFJENt1jj7i0KU/s320/combe-haven-rising-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<strong>Combe Haven Rising: A Week of Activities, Exhibitions, Valley Walks and Workshops Against the Link Road!</strong><br />
Spring is coming, birds are nesting, the sap is rising and so rises
the NO LINK ROAD CAMPAIGN. Combe Haven Rising is a week of events
co-hosted by The Combe Haven Defenders, Artists and Combe Valley,
Crowhurst Villagers and Hastings Arts Forum.<br />
Here’s what’s in store:<br />
<span style="line-height: 1.625;"><br /></span>
<a href="http://combehavendefenders.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/adrian-arbib_scaled.jpg"></a>Fri 15th March:<br />
<strong>Adrian Arbib: Solsbury Hill, a road protest in AF2</strong><br />
Private View, 6.30- 8.30pm Arts Forum, 36 Marina St. Leonards, TN38 0BU<br />
Web: <a href="https://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/adrian-arbib-road-protest-photo-exhibition-14-26-mar-talk-18-mar/" rel="nofollow">https://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/adrian-arbib-road-protest-photo-exhibition-14-26-mar-talk-18-mar/</a><br />
Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/463646063689882/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/events/463646063689882/</a><br />
<a href="http://combehavendefenders.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/rebelliousmedia.jpg"><img alt="rebelliousmedia" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1733" height="126" src="http://combehavendefenders.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/rebelliousmedia.jpg?w=150&h=126" width="150" /></a>Sat 16th March:<br />
<strong>Activist Media Training</strong>, 2-5.30pm, Quaker Meeting House, 5 South Terrace, Hastings,TN34 1SA<br />
Web: <a href="https://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/activist-media-training-sat-16-march/" rel="nofollow">https://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/activist-media-training-sat-16-march/</a><br />
Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/523915960986167/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/events/523915960986167/</a><br />
Sun 17th March:<br />
<strong>Eyes in the Valley Walk</strong>. Walking the route of the road.
Meet at West St Leonards train station at 11.30 am. Walk ends at the
Plough pub, Crowhurst. Approximately 6 miles long, rail replacement
buses or taxi’s (£12) available for return.<br />
<strong><a href="http://combehavendefenders.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/angry-tree.jpg"><img alt="angry tree" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1530" height="150" src="http://combehavendefenders.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/angry-tree.jpg?w=106&h=150" width="106" /></a>Artists & Combe Valley Open Event</strong> 6-8 p.m. The Memorial Art Gallery, 7 Cambridge Road, Hastings TN34 1DG<br />
Web: <a href="http://artistsandcombevalley.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">http://artistsandcombevalley.wordpress.com/</a><br />
Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/446077792132182/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/events/446077792132182/</a><br />
<a href="http://combehavendefenders.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/rebelliousmedia.jpg"><img alt="rebelliousmedia" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1733" height="126" src="http://combehavendefenders.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/rebelliousmedia.jpg?w=150&h=126" width="150" /></a>Mon 18th March:<br />
<strong>Adrian Arbib</strong> talking about the 1990s roads protests and their legacy.<br />
Arts Forum, 6.30 – 8pm<br />
Web: <a href="https://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/adrian-arbib-road-protest-photo-exhibition-14-26-mar-talk-18-mar/" rel="nofollow">https://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/adrian-arbib-road-protest-photo-exhibition-14-26-mar-talk-18-mar/</a><br />
Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/293582364101856/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/events/293582364101856/</a><br />
Events put on and supported by:<br />
Combe Haven Defenders, Artists and Combe Haven, The Arts Forum, Crowhurst Villagers, BLINKRR and Hastings AlliancePaul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-4158375444539984882013-01-15T11:08:00.001-08:002013-01-15T11:08:34.763-08:00Combe Haven - camp evictions begin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqOK8t-EJantUsrWrlDk9CQBCXFltr0BQzslA332z_MDv6Idtq62zOViTkSvVTTKIu2lmswnA5sDNRL7EODmE7w5v6ygNVjhXSmKrMA8vG9rky77tmRVJpzXwj5MfHkjeg9QfHYe9tp3nf/s1600/combe+haven+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqOK8t-EJantUsrWrlDk9CQBCXFltr0BQzslA332z_MDv6Idtq62zOViTkSvVTTKIu2lmswnA5sDNRL7EODmE7w5v6ygNVjhXSmKrMA8vG9rky77tmRVJpzXwj5MfHkjeg9QfHYe9tp3nf/s320/combe+haven+photo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
COURAGEOUS countryside defenders have set up a camp at Combe Haven in East Sussex, but now the authorities are threatening to use force on them to impose the demands of capitalist 'growth' on the Sussex countryside.<br />
<br />
There was a time when the authorities pretended that new roads were needed to "prevent congestion" on existing routes, but now they seem to be much more blatant about the business agenda behind this destruction of our natural environment, with the county council saying the Bexhill link road is essential to "regenerate" the economy. <br />
<br />
Note how natural and organic-sounding words like "growth", "regenerate" and, indeed, "development" are used to mean the exact opposite of what is really involved - in this case chopping down ancient trees and putting Tarmac all over our green fields in the name of profit.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/">Combe Haven Defenders </a>site said on January 14 that contractors had moved in in force that day to evict the “Three
Oaks” camp near the railway line opposite. Upper Wilting Farm in Crowhurst
(see press release below), and that police had told activists that
they plan to evict the remaining two camps (“Decoy Pond Wood” and “Base
Camp” – see map below) this week.<br />
<br />
Supporters are being urged to get down there fast! <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXarmaWoYLlJ0lVDK4de679XDVBebgQi5PH21a6T9J6y2_jxrZhVO1-ooJFdzOWOOfto_TuV6H_nqlqx9lkVmlDK_dLzxbBVoPpMPPAcCi89wvnRmjCVvqY46sS4iOWcmRIy_dbbli7WMZ/s1600/combe+haven+camp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXarmaWoYLlJ0lVDK4de679XDVBebgQi5PH21a6T9J6y2_jxrZhVO1-ooJFdzOWOOfto_TuV6H_nqlqx9lkVmlDK_dLzxbBVoPpMPPAcCi89wvnRmjCVvqY46sS4iOWcmRIy_dbbli7WMZ/s320/combe+haven+camp.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-22762585747368899232012-10-03T10:50:00.000-07:002012-10-03T10:50:47.650-07:00The road to resistance in Sussex<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZHoyuFksj9XLThKjzRQJNH_qwbanDu2DAmqyLmcd6CI5FwdJIQBUrW3c0WAmbfGn9w-BmilS74Q6o1_xynGuMS50rR3wQ_glf1fO3WfPfk8JyD_MRMwOfDh47S4A6pG31DVHIZgqAHzJa/s1600/chd-camp-banner-people.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZHoyuFksj9XLThKjzRQJNH_qwbanDu2DAmqyLmcd6CI5FwdJIQBUrW3c0WAmbfGn9w-BmilS74Q6o1_xynGuMS50rR3wQ_glf1fO3WfPfk8JyD_MRMwOfDh47S4A6pG31DVHIZgqAHzJa/s640/chd-camp-banner-people.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />
NOT just housing developments but new roads are once again threatening the beauty of Sussex's countryside.<br />
<br />
The photo above and <a href="http://vimeo.com/50487204">this video</a> show an event staged in East Sussex by local campaigners the <a href="http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/">Combe Haven Defenders</a>, who are determined to prevent the environmentally disastrous white-elephant that
is the “Bexhill-Hastings Link Road” from devastating one of Hastings’
and Bexhill’s most amazing natural treasures.<br />
<br />
Some 200 people attended the “Stop the Road” Camp & Rally in Combe
Haven on 29/30 September, celebrating the beauty of the valley and
enjoying an amazing weekend of speeches, workshops, shadow puppetry,
children’s theatre, story-telling, campfires, local music and great
food. <br />
<br />
The Camp saw the launch of the “Stop the Road – Save Our Valley” pledge. You can download a copy of the Pledge <a href="http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/sign-the-save-our-valley-stop-the-road-pledge/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Media coverage extended to the national press, with the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210738/Plans-200-new-roads-threaten-Britains-precious-countryside.html?ito=feeds-newsxml">Daily Mail</a>
and the Sunday Times (see below) both running articles linking the
Camp’s preparations for future direct action with George Osborne’s plans
to build hundreds of new roads around the UK.<br />
<br />
The Camp was also <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/28/twyford-down-20years-m3-protest?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter">name-checked</a> in the Guardian, where a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/28/roads-protest-twyford-down?newsfeed=true">letter</a> from the Defenders also appeared.<br />
<br />
Other coverage included <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-19771966">BBC Sussex</a>, <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2012-09-30/direct-action-against-road/">ITV Meridian</a>, and local coverage on the Hastings <a href="http://www.hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/local-news/anti-link-road-protest-camp-attracts-nearly-100-people-1-4318701">[1]</a> and Bexhill Observer web-sites <a href="http://www.bexhillobserver.net/news/bexhill-news/anti-link-road-protest-camp-attracts-nearly-100-people-1-4318701">[1]</a> <a href="http://www.bexhillobserver.net/news/bexhill-news/150-people-at-protest-camp-against-link-road-1-4319548">[2]</a><br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the machineries of capitalism are threatening our wildlife and environment near Henfield in West Sussex, with plans being mooted for 10,000 homes on green land, creating a <a href="http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/local/plan-for-new-milton-keynes-near-henfield-1-4284924">"new Milton Keynes"</a>, according to the local CPRE. <br />
<br />
And Arun District Council's plans to concrete over their remaining countryside have gone so far that they have even incurred the wrath of Tory MP <a href="http://www.nickherbert.com/news.php/413/Higher%20housing%20numbers%20are%20%22unwise,%20unnecessary%20and%20unwelcome.%22">Nick Herbert</a>.<br />
<br />
Other ecocidal schemes in the pipeline are for <a href="http://www.stopthehousebuilding.co.uk/#/horsham-page-2/4536862314">4,500 homes north of Horsham</a>, West Sussex, up to 3,500 <a href="http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/local/homes-essential-to-avoid-crawley-overspill-in-other-parts-of-district-1-4317005">west of Ifield</a>, West Sussex, and thousands more between <a href="http://keepsouthwatergreen.co.uk/">Southwater</a> and Christ's Hospital School.<br />
<br />
With the prospect of a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gatwick-may-need-second-runway-7959065.html">second runway at Gatwick Airport</a> creeping back on to the agenda in recent months, it looks like a full-scale Sussex revolt will be needed to keep the money men and their bulldozers at bay! Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-23325927738311160812012-04-08T07:03:00.000-07:002012-04-08T07:03:45.507-07:00Protest planned after oaks chopped down<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSm1T0NSap86SSY-rQsXSBLokAaYZlL_6-1frbNtGObb6SubMeZr4aZaJl4z6LNd0gm944REtz_pfLOrSHPWqiizFmtWNwLkw_dwGL8ELE3l1_VVs2GJzvCbm3-6Ujl365r7yBYaa7ZnVe/s1600/Developers+destroy+beautiful+oaks+Newbridge+9+Feb+12+%281%29.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSm1T0NSap86SSY-rQsXSBLokAaYZlL_6-1frbNtGObb6SubMeZr4aZaJl4z6LNd0gm944REtz_pfLOrSHPWqiizFmtWNwLkw_dwGL8ELE3l1_VVs2GJzvCbm3-6Ujl365r7yBYaa7ZnVe/s320/Developers+destroy+beautiful+oaks+Newbridge+9+Feb+12+%281%29.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
THE FELLING of some mighty Sussex oaks in the Horsham area has caused some outrage locally.<br />
<br />
The huge greenfield development at Broadbridge Heath had already got permission to go ahead, so it was perhaps to be expected.<br />
<br />
But a few dry paragraphs in the local paper and the reality of what is actually involved are a long way apart and the destruction has woken a few people up in the area, it would seem.<br />
<br />
With more massive development schemes planned for that area, and all across Sussex, more and more of us are saying we are not prepared to stand back and watch it happen.<br />
<br />
With this in mind, <a href="http://www.saveoursussex.com/Save_Our_Sussex_Alliance/Get_Involved.html">Save Our Sussex Alliance</a> is holding a protest at the site where the trees were taken down.<br />
<br />
This is on Saturday April 28, at 2pm, next to Newbridge Nurseries on the A264 at Broadbridge Heath - not far from the A24 underpass and on the road leading from Horsham towards Billingshurst. <br />
<br />
<b>Be there and be heard!</b>Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-39354329598176533282012-02-24T01:51:00.000-08:002012-02-24T01:51:24.988-08:00Civilisation just can't go on like this<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8bUCwi6Qey0iyXtdEsFCgZXcSGd7AOhM_00sg__u8bhDHl-hrLfeo_0D-2KOOTAmNgiYPdCHMHpqtqnaz02wfZDmLo2V30rSaQ-J-ayyRm5qCZ9JsQ6T5V9Y5D4jdW29MsFOrv3phHT5x/s1600/burning+trees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" lda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8bUCwi6Qey0iyXtdEsFCgZXcSGd7AOhM_00sg__u8bhDHl-hrLfeo_0D-2KOOTAmNgiYPdCHMHpqtqnaz02wfZDmLo2V30rSaQ-J-ayyRm5qCZ9JsQ6T5V9Y5D4jdW29MsFOrv3phHT5x/s320/burning+trees.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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SOMETIMES an apparent coincidence is in fact telling us something rather important.<br />
<br />
No sooner had we heard the shocking news of <a href="http://www.midsussextimes.co.uk/news/sussex_new_town_for_25_000_people_1_3522624">plans for a 11,500-home new town</a> in the heart of our Sussex countryside, at Sayers Common, than a major report came out warning us that we just can't go on like this.<br />
<br />
Here is part of an article from <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/20/climate-change-overconsumption">The Guardian</a>: <br />
<br />
<em>Celebrated scientists and development thinkers today warn that civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, </em><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/overconsumption" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Overconsumption"><em>overconsumption</em></a><em> and environmentally malign technologies.</em><br />
<br />
<div sizcache="0" sizset="68">
<em>In the face of an "absolutely unprecedented emergency", say the 18 past winners of the </em><a href="http://www.af-info.or.jp/blog/b-info_en/" title=""><em>Blue Planet prize</em></a><em> – the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has "no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us".</em></div>
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<div sizcache="0" sizset="69">
<em>Apart from dire warnings about biodiversity loss and </em><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Climate change"><em>climate change</em></a><em>, the group challenges governments to think differently about economic 'progress'.</em></div>
<div sizcache="0" sizset="71">
<br /></div>
<em>"The rapidly deteriorating biophysical situation is more than bad enough, but it is barely recognised by a global society infected by the irrational belief that physical economies can grow forever and disregarding the facts that the rich in developed and developing countries get richer and the poor are left behind.</em><br />
<br />
<em>"The perpetual growth myth ... promotes the impossible idea that indiscriminate economic growth is the cure for all the world's problems, while it is actually the disease that is at the root cause of our unsustainable global practices", they say.</em><br />
<br />
Meanwhile, here in Sussex more and more voices are being raised against the insanity of endless 'development' destroying our natural heritage.<br />
<br />
Below is a section from <a href="http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/local/comment_plans_fill_me_with_nausea_1_3419822">one recent comment piece in a local paper</a>.<br />
<br />
<em>We are supposed to sit back and simply watch as meadows, trees, footpaths and breathing space are stolen away from us by the men from the City.</em><br />
<br />
<em>I for one find it impossible to sign up to the consensus that allows this to happen.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Where will it all end? The logic of this mindset is that more and more land must be destroyed (the polite term is ‘developed’) on a permanently ongoing basis.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Logically, the brakes can never go on, otherwise the ‘economy’ suffers. Logically, every last blade of grass will have to be ripped up to feed this cancerous expansion.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Logically, all life on the planet will be sacrificed to the gods of profit and ‘progress’.</em>Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-5457228949706563102012-01-14T11:23:00.000-08:002012-01-14T11:23:59.423-08:00Protest in Hove on January 28<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVUy12dh5-tGdtbVtcZ242ADjzOwNhpDbd2AMN26834wrtFgIfq-1dv8zernDmjkqWcba8N98a9SpIjktP6_hcL3WxNZkxYQK9PCynVWJJ71KNgH6gd77xQwM7Dz5tr0Cz19jwcq_Of6j4/s1600/Hove+Tories.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="521" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVUy12dh5-tGdtbVtcZ242ADjzOwNhpDbd2AMN26834wrtFgIfq-1dv8zernDmjkqWcba8N98a9SpIjktP6_hcL3WxNZkxYQK9PCynVWJJ71KNgH6gd77xQwM7Dz5tr0Cz19jwcq_Of6j4/s640/Hove+Tories.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div class="paragraph_style_4">
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<div class="paragraph_style_4">
<br /></div>
<div class="paragraph_style_4">
SAVE Our Sussex Alliance is holding another protest - this time outside the Tory party offices in Hove.</div>
<div class="paragraph_style_4">
<br /></div>
<div class="paragraph_style_4">
</div>
<div class="paragraph_style_4">
<b>Saturday 28 January 2012 @ 2pm</b></div>
<b>
</b><div class="paragraph_style_4">
<b>outside Brighton & Hove Conservative Party HQ</b></div>
<b>
</b><div class="paragraph_style_4">
<b>109 Church Road, Hove, BN3 2AF</b></div>
<b>
</b><div class="paragraph_style_4">
<b>with guest speaker Keith Taylor, </b></div>
<b>
</b><div class="paragraph_style_4">
<b>Green MEP for South East England</b></div>
<div class="paragraph_style_4">
<span class="style_1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="paragraph_style_5">
<span class="style_1">Says the<a href="http://www.saveoursussex.com/Save_Our_Sussex_Alliance/Get_Involved.html"> SOSA website</a>: "</span>SOSA wishes to make it
clear that, while the current round of SOSA protests is taking place
outside Conservative Party HQs across both East and West Sussex, our
opposition is based on principles, not on party politics. <span class="style_2"><br /></span></div>
<div class="paragraph_style_6">
<span class="style_2"><br /></span></div>
<span class="style_2">"We would take the </span>same<span class="style_2"> stand against </span>any<span class="style_2">
political party which was seeking to introduce such damaging planning
reforms, or was willing to sacrifice such huge swathes of the
countryside to large-scale development, all in the misguided belief that
these actions will somehow boost the UK economy. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="style_2">"It is the
Conservative Party which is spearheading and defending the ‘National
Planning Policy Framework’, and it is this Party which is now advocating
the removal or weakening of crucial EU legislation which protects
biodiversity, on the grounds that this vital protection of the UK’s
flora and fauna involves ‘ridiculous cost’. It is therefore the
Conservative Party which must be the focus of SOSA’s protests at the
present time."</span>Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-46902833278944414372011-11-07T05:30:00.000-08:002011-11-07T05:30:55.453-08:00Protest in Horsham on December 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlFHIERJTOoogrgeSeB-EnHSJn4-6x99r05rE90wE0-8zPJasCn3av6ItPeK_ZaTISBXGzE2POmAeL25mecUfVOAbPu0tv8AvjgYfggny9Cn1ehyphenhyphenoyIVx3tKB2UgzhKk4zcYrIDHUxK5MC/s1600/Gough+House.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlFHIERJTOoogrgeSeB-EnHSJn4-6x99r05rE90wE0-8zPJasCn3av6ItPeK_ZaTISBXGzE2POmAeL25mecUfVOAbPu0tv8AvjgYfggny9Cn1ehyphenhyphenoyIVx3tKB2UgzhKk4zcYrIDHUxK5MC/s320/Gough+House.jpg" width="299" /></a></div>
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<br />
FOLLOWING the success of our Worthing protest on October 15, we are delighted to hear that <a href="http://www.saveoursussex.com/">Save Our Sussex Alliance</a> have called for a demonstration in Horsham on Saturday December 3.<br />
<br />
The protest is again against the free rein to property developers that will be given by the government's proposed National Planning Policy Framework.<br />
<br />
As many organisations and individuals are pointing out, its presumption in favour of 'sustainable development' is meaningless when it does not define 'sustainable'. Or rather, its meaning is simply a presumption in favour of development, full stop!<br />
<br />
We urge anyone who opposes this assault on our county to gather at 2pm on Saturday December 3 outside the Conservative Party HQ, Gough House, in Madeira Avenue, Horsham (near the town entrance to Horsham Park). <br />Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-34453026011584768802011-11-07T05:20:00.000-08:002011-11-07T05:20:23.139-08:00Can Sussex endure?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<i>This lament to the destruction of our county was written by that great lover of the Sussex countryside, Hilaire Belloc, back in 1936. But it very much reflects what many of us feel today.</i><br />
<br />
Can Sussex endure? No man knows the answer to that question, but in measuring the chances we of the county must admit that they are heavily against our survival. It would seem that the forces making for the destruction of this county, its traditions, its personality, are too powerful to be withstood.<br />
<br />
Moreover, they are working at such speed that our own generation may well see the end of the land we knew.<br />
<br />
It is, in a sense, the coming of a new mode of transport which thus threatens us. The internal combustion engine, which has revolutionised the world, strikes with peculiar force at the ancient spirit of this county, on account of its situation between London and the sea.<br />
<br />
The internal combustion engine has done many other things upon a larger scale. It has destroyed the military security of England, it has made wholesale death and mutilation upon the roads familiar to the modern mind; it has killed quiet and with quiet all dignity: there is peace nowhere.<br />
<br />
Side by side with all this mechanical change has gone a spiritual change which destroys our powers of resistance.<br />
<br />
Men have lost their doctrines, and therefore their manners and morals, and the passing of all the ideas that made our civilisation is due more to this loss of standards than to any material causes.<br />
<br />
In the midst of so much evil the passing of Sussex would seem a small thing, but to us it is a great one.<br />
<br />
Which of us could have thought, when we wandered, years ago, in the full peace of the summer Weald, or through the sublime void of the high Downs, that the things upon which we had been nourished since first we could take joy in the world would be thus rapidly destroyed in our own time, dying even before we ourselves should die?<br />
<br />
Yet apparently it has come. In the old days when the huge amorphous mass of London, more numerous than many a state, was only linked with the sea-coast by the railway, we feared for the future, but did not despair of it.<br />
<br />
The coast might become a line of alien building, and here and there upon the main arteries across the Weald some suburban thing having no fellowship with the county at all would grow up round a station; but Sussex as a whole remained untainted by the intrusion.<br />
<br />
The contrast between the meaningless new watering places, the suburban blotches and the ancient plough land, woodland, downland, was only the stronger.<br />
<br />
Then came the change: London broke out like a bursting reservoir, flooding all the ways to the sea, swamping our history and our past, so that already we are hardly ourselves.<br />
<br />
Of a week-end the roads from north to south are like a city street. The new engines climb the Downs; they invade every corner. You may hear the machine-gun fire of a motor bicycle on the greensward of Chanctonbury Ring. There is no retreat wherein you can escape the blind inhuman mechanic clatter. How could any organism survive this ubiquitous thrusting into its substance of alien things?<br />
<br />
There is much more than this mechanical cause at work. There is the pressing down of individuality by modern monopoly in every shape: uniformity which is the death of character.<br />
<br />
<br />
The schools and wireless between them should kill all local speech. All our press is now a town press, and in every activity the slow rhythm which is native to mankind has been shattered. It cannot be recovered.<br />
<br />
More than any other district of England, this belt between London and the sea must be harried and broken up by the new machines. Worse than this, the sky itself must be troubled with a perpetual noise, for Sussex faces the peril from air in war as traffic through the air in peace.<br />
<br />
How long will it be before there shall be no man left alive who can remember the old affair? It was ancient and rooted beyond all others in England, it was a kingdom under its own king when Claudius came, it remained one separate unit through the centuries of the Dark Ages, the latest to receive religion from overseas, the latest to receive any change at all.<br />
<br />
We boasted that it would resist for ever. We cannot so boast to-day. Rather are we on the point of surrender and of admitting that the effort of resistance must now be abandoned.<br />
<br />
There is only one consideraation which may lighten somewhat the burden of what seems inevitable. It is this: that, just as we could not foresee the sudden tidal wave which has swept over us, so the future, even the immediate future, may check the ruin of our home, of our most ancient life.<br />
<br />
Some incalculable further change may stop the further process of disintegration. It is not conceivable - but often enough the inconceivable happens. Disaster and decline might destroy machines and so save, before they had disappeared, the last stocks and found some new repose wherein they might strike root again.<br />
<br />
But as things now stand there would seem to be no prospect of survival through the coming years; nor will there be any Sussex any more: <i>Ubi Troja fuit</i>.Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-80454715123289205192011-10-09T10:44:00.000-07:002011-10-09T10:44:35.248-07:00How to get there on October 15<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Z_t581_peZBHcYL09ZvvwLIXSWk8l3tTbzZTZtUAR1FS3qyBOmquiVJmDuiO6oQnrIEg3jm3RErazwI15xdVI0W4Let7BmnA-b06jZ4BEWA3RVeBkC6xoJ2xctyUOldE7mP07SUuu_pX/s1600/Oct+15+map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="193" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Z_t581_peZBHcYL09ZvvwLIXSWk8l3tTbzZTZtUAR1FS3qyBOmquiVJmDuiO6oQnrIEg3jm3RErazwI15xdVI0W4Let7BmnA-b06jZ4BEWA3RVeBkC6xoJ2xctyUOldE7mP07SUuu_pX/s320/Oct+15+map.jpg" /></a></div>
LESS than a week to go before the protest in Worthing and here is a map to help you find your way there.
<P>Click <a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=East+worthing+and+shoreham+conservative+association&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wl">here </a>to see it on the Google Map site.Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-54040240068791713892011-10-02T02:59:00.000-07:002011-10-02T03:00:23.961-07:00Poster for October 15<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj6gkfF-e7RJ4n5lOUC728N2LDRi4Zx996XuapTM7jiWC676vtbF0nTcVAo18m5SS8Inbhc6eDLMaEQjoS81CeJLmQIrjN5MWisQyv2B8L6YZTAj_qpJRveBCMf8GnXXrchQyaUOzTd7rr/s1600/oct+15+final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj6gkfF-e7RJ4n5lOUC728N2LDRi4Zx996XuapTM7jiWC676vtbF0nTcVAo18m5SS8Inbhc6eDLMaEQjoS81CeJLmQIrjN5MWisQyv2B8L6YZTAj_qpJRveBCMf8GnXXrchQyaUOzTd7rr/s320/oct+15+final.jpg" /></a></div>
HERE is a poster for the October 15 protest, thanks to one of our Worthing supporters.<P>
Click on it to blow it up.<P>
Feel free to print it out and get it displayed in your local shop, community centre etc.Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-31847765723048336592011-09-17T03:49:00.000-07:002011-10-02T03:08:57.544-07:00Get organising for October 15 protest!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirRvdUY889zBX4CTALmL_42XacpbL8axDl4VxdV4qzY2Z54oW3T1Z1gTEIf6FYCU0rcfv6JE9q7i48NvWn9Z9DwmgLJt0mjGwranZ30XEVIEo9PN3MYMQQ1r4cDIXLpedDVazhs3RrxsIU/s1600/Conservative+Party+HQ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="233" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirRvdUY889zBX4CTALmL_42XacpbL8axDl4VxdV4qzY2Z54oW3T1Z1gTEIf6FYCU0rcfv6JE9q7i48NvWn9Z9DwmgLJt0mjGwranZ30XEVIEo9PN3MYMQQ1r4cDIXLpedDVazhs3RrxsIU/s320/Conservative+Party+HQ.jpg" /></a></div>
IT IS now less than a month to our protest outside the Conservative Party HQ in Worthing - so get organising and make sure we get a good turn-out!
<P>
Throughout its time in opposition, the Conservative Party gave the impression of opposing the tide of tarmac threatening our natural heritage and even won votes on the basis that it would be giving local communities the right to reject unwanted development.
<P>
Now, however, it is aiming to introduce a presumption in favour of development, making it virtually impossible for local councils, let alone local people, to have any chance of halting unwanted sprawl.
<P>
This is nothing but a charter for property developers to help themselves to our countryside and makes a mockery of any idea of democracy.
<P>
Our protest outside the Conservative Party offices in Union Place, Worthing (near the Waitrose roundabout) is on<b> Saturday October 15 at 2pm</b>.
<P>
We urge one and all to come and support us - and, of course, to let their friends and family know about the event. Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-23971076139283536252011-09-17T03:44:00.000-07:002011-09-17T03:44:04.246-07:00Sussex paper backs campaigners<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmjxq8xhge6bFDxhWp7bNxWj57TI4BBaazWm9anZHHyDWqzIT4_SfcFQ10PO6rKgPL0wgt7lqeJ8uPjCjCCLUNaNfHGomBNbUiSIcGLQZL5Kvfx6bwJ_hzLfLNfaD5HDn77kQi_oSefNxB/s1600/Saveoursussex.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="140" width="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmjxq8xhge6bFDxhWp7bNxWj57TI4BBaazWm9anZHHyDWqzIT4_SfcFQ10PO6rKgPL0wgt7lqeJ8uPjCjCCLUNaNfHGomBNbUiSIcGLQZL5Kvfx6bwJ_hzLfLNfaD5HDn77kQi_oSefNxB/s320/Saveoursussex.png" /></a></div>
ONE of Sussex's local newspapers has joined the battle against the government planning proposals.
<P>
The West Sussex County Times, based in Horsham, has launched a campaign called It's Just Plan Crazy and praised the formation of a new alliance against housebuilding in that part of the county.
<P>
It says on its website, <a href="http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/save_our_countryside_1_3055596">www.wscountytimes.co.uk</a>, "The County Times has long campaigned for planning decisions to be taken directly by those communities affected by them and we welcome this new alliance.
<P>
"To mark the event we have launched our own campaign, highlighting the contradictions of the Government’s Localism agenda versus its newly proposed planning regime."
<P>
Let's hope more newspapers follow suit and stand up for their readers and their county against the property development mafia!
<P>
The Save Our Sussex Alliance has a website at <a href="http://saveoursussex.com">www.saveoursussex.com</a>.Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-4224041881412732292011-09-17T03:33:00.000-07:002011-09-17T03:33:45.283-07:00New blow for government plans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJusHgytF2PBnpSGI4F-WlapeSGMat7-Orb-Lt7bLpq44-0IDcLhSNgm0ks_PWH5ZGOJMFqajUULhuNQfk5Y4VIkKJFaegP6WTUu4j2sBx2ukeWziqs85a1RfTB5GJE0CCT9W776alnbV4/s1600/countryside+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJusHgytF2PBnpSGI4F-WlapeSGMat7-Orb-Lt7bLpq44-0IDcLhSNgm0ks_PWH5ZGOJMFqajUULhuNQfk5Y4VIkKJFaegP6WTUu4j2sBx2ukeWziqs85a1RfTB5GJE0CCT9W776alnbV4/s320/countryside+pic.jpg" /></a></div>
ONE of the architects of the Government’s controversial new planning rules has turned his back on the policy, claiming it has been wrecked by ministers.
<P>
Simon Marsh, the acting head of sustainable development at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, today disowns the policy he helped devise, saying it is now balanced too much in favour of development. He complains that his original proposals were warped and changed by those in the Government “who don’t place a high value on the environment”.
<P>
The result, he says in an article in The Daily Telegraph, is that the draft National Planning Policy Framework “puts the economy first” and “marks a profound shift in emphasis for planning policy”.
<P>
Read the full article <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/hands-off-our-land/8765316/Hands-off-our-land-This-isnt-the-planning-policy-that-I-drew-up.html">here</a>.Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-31372500603760130722011-09-17T03:26:00.000-07:002011-09-17T03:26:03.087-07:00Bill Bryson is deeply worried<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTWeFehdntvdfBLEioXZknsm1xgb4nYqHTgA5KiZ2Rw_skA9rJ_152AirwwZcfI73PC1zH-I6Bk508nEbs1-vPRv356uiil5uUpE6-1ZS6VAoWUIgCWr7ycWrD7RGwhEqh3Z-nSLENzc9Y/s1600/Bill-Bryson-countryside-c-007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="192" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTWeFehdntvdfBLEioXZknsm1xgb4nYqHTgA5KiZ2Rw_skA9rJ_152AirwwZcfI73PC1zH-I6Bk508nEbs1-vPRv356uiil5uUpE6-1ZS6VAoWUIgCWr7ycWrD7RGwhEqh3Z-nSLENzc9Y/s320/Bill-Bryson-countryside-c-007.jpg" /></a></div>
BRITAIN'S leading countryside campaigner, Bill Bryson, has joined a growing wave of opposition to government moves to shake up planning laws.
<P>
As groups from the National Trust to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds line up against proposals to ease new development across the country, Bryson told the Observer he was deeply concerned by the direction of policy.
<P>
"The government's good intentions risk being undermined by the talk of economic growth at any cost," said the American writer, who champions the English countryside and is president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE). "We are deeply worried to learn that environmental laws are regarded as red tape and that the planning system might be weakened to allow for more development."
<P>
Read the full article <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/03/bill-bryson-countryside-planning-reforms">here</a>.Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-65874882404301571422011-09-17T03:20:00.000-07:002011-09-17T03:21:33.556-07:00'A recipe for civil war'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnoFbUOMzLMF8kCCuxBN8rbsSV-X9vP7r-0KmbXR9djeZaW_7AjYfG5WWM6UAwS0cFwODIgvnsR6BwRRjYEqgrFSxLdqrlD7-mMRhsQin1rgD_iFuc4DuOGJClHfbor4cs0b5RzrS0j8O/s1600/Simon+Jenkins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="192" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnoFbUOMzLMF8kCCuxBN8rbsSV-X9vP7r-0KmbXR9djeZaW_7AjYfG5WWM6UAwS0cFwODIgvnsR6BwRRjYEqgrFSxLdqrlD7-mMRhsQin1rgD_iFuc4DuOGJClHfbor4cs0b5RzrS0j8O/s320/Simon+Jenkins.jpg" /></a></div>
A 'RECIPE for civil war' - that's how Guardian columnist and National Trust chairman Simon Jenkins is describing the Government's planning proposals.
<P>
He writes: "The government's </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/planning" style="font-weight: normal;" title="Guardian: Planning policy">great planning reform</a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> has veered way off course, and needs steering back to sanity.
<P>
"It responds to no national calamity, and there is no public gain to the reform itself. An updating of the system in the local government
department was hijacked by a group of "practitioners", mostly builders and developers, and slid into print.
<P>
"I cannot blame the developers. They cannot believe their luck. They seized a golden
opportunity to tip chunks of countryside into their already bloated land banks.
<P>
"It was naive ministers who missed the boat. Rather than <a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/draftframework" title="Dept Communities and Local Govt: Draft National Planning Policy Framework">retrieve the document</a>
for revision, they resorted to calling protesters – including the Daily
Telegraph, the National Trust (in which I declare an interest as
chairman) and swaths of Tory supporters – "hysterical nihilist lefties"
and enemies of capitalism."
<P>
Read the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/13/planning-reform-recipe-civil-war">full article</a> here. </span><br />
<br />
Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2996001038241734625.post-35101073349664049942011-09-17T03:06:00.000-07:002011-09-17T03:22:24.830-07:00Sign the National Trust petition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwgOYB7KFVhOPB48aeMrGIxva8lop3qbxORI0my5jdy8taU7XQ_PLVzomSF45DAQL8tdZT7fbMRmd8D5S555dHJR8Ke1iRUqy4zEVMLeO8vW75VBh_xseHj4wooHOX63go0JwGCrJXzgeO/s1600/National+Trust.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwgOYB7KFVhOPB48aeMrGIxva8lop3qbxORI0my5jdy8taU7XQ_PLVzomSF45DAQL8tdZT7fbMRmd8D5S555dHJR8Ke1iRUqy4zEVMLeO8vW75VBh_xseHj4wooHOX63go0JwGCrJXzgeO/s320/National+Trust.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
THE NATIONAL Trust is campaigning hard against the changes to planning and has set up an online petition.<br />
<br />
It says: "For decades our planning system has protected much loved places from harmful development. The Government's reforms turn this on its head, using it as a tool primarily to promote economic growth instead.<br />
<br />
"Despite news that the Government has offered to talk through the proposed changes to the planning system, we’re not convinced they’re listening.<br />
<br />
"The Government’s planning reforms could lead to unchecked and damaging development in the undesignated countryside on a scale not seen since the 1930s.<br />
<br />
"New plans published by the Government contain a core presumption that the default answer to development will be ‘yes’.<br />
<br />
"We are deeply concerned that the Government’s proposals allow financial considerations to dominate, which could result in a green-light for poor quality or development in the wrong place, threatening the local places valued by you, while failing to deliver wider benefits to your community. "<br />
<br />
You can sign the petition by going <a href="https://nationaltrust.polldaddy.com/s/developing-for-people-not-profit">here</a>.Paul Cudenechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402964162730880904noreply@blogger.com0