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Letters
What – and when – is Dorset’s development ‘tipping point’?
Scientists tell us the human race cannot continue to allow the natural environment to be covered in bricks and mortar without terminal results for all biological life on Earth – including, of course, ourselves.
Hence two items in your 29 April edition stood out for special mention:
First, on page 5, the lead item ‘Homes green light could see village population increase by 20 per cent’ gave a revealing and disturbing insight into how Dorset Council’s planning system is now operating. The revelation was that, in effect, Dorset’s planning officers are unable to recommend any refusals for even moderate scale housing development because they are under pressure to meet central government housing targets. What was, and is, disturbing is that even those councillors, such as council chairman Val Pothecary, who are ‘not happy’ with this situation feel unable to reject plans if officers tell them they can’t!
The moral of that particular story is not just that officers and not elected members now decide on development in Dorset but that nothing will change until someone decides, as set out plainly by planning officer Hannah Smith in the report, that Dorset has reached a development ‘tipping point’. In her words: “There’s no cap on development numbers... The last inspector said there may well be a tipping point but this is not it” – that is, we’re not there yet.
So now we know a ‘tipping point’ is on the cards, I’d suggest the residents of Dorset now need to get their local politicians to define exactly what that tipping point – that line in the sand if you prefer – is and when it might be reached. This is precisely what we elect politicians to do after all.
Then, on page 40, North Dorset MP Simon Hoare, in his opinion piece bewailing the low moral state of his colleagues in Parliament, lists the cost of living crisis, global economic slowdown and war in Ukraine as issues that make this ‘a deeply unsettling and frightening time’. Indeed, they do – but he makes no mention of the one issue that far and away surpasses all others for being ‘deeply unsettling and frightening’ and that is climate change. Scientists tell us we have only a matter of a few years – until about 2030 – before we reach a climate ‘tipping point’ from which there is no likely return, for the human race at least.
So, the only real question then is which ‘tipping point’ we reach first – the tipping point of destroying so much of the natural world by development for purely financial gain that it becomes uninhabitable or the climate tipping point that will end all human life on Earth anyway.
They may, of course, be the same point but for our children and grandchildren’s sake someone at Dorset Council needs to have the courage and foresight to start telling us – and fast.
Richard Thomas Shaftesbury
What a sensible article by Barbara Cossins (New Blackmore Vale, April 29 – ‘Why are we not supporting home-grown in an unstable world?’).
The aim of a maximum degree of self-sufficiency in food production was being advocated by environment groups 50 years ago. But then, as now, politicians took no notice, going for the ‘economic’ – that is cheapest – strategy rather than the environmentally sensible one.
Two months ago I wrote to my local MP, Simon Hoare, about the latest example of this in the following letter:
“This evening’s ‘Countryfile’ programme (BBC 1, February 20) included a feature on the sugar industry. Farmers of sugar beet are concerned at being priced out of business because of cheap imported sugar cane. One farmer made the point that sugar production from UKproduced sugar beet involves minimal food-miles compared with importing sugar cane from distant countries like Brazil – which is also tariff-free. Are we going to continue allowing economics to overrule environmental criteria, even when we have made a commitment to a carbonneutral economy?
I trust that your support for the National Farmers’ Union will enable you to support their legal challenge to the trade deal that allows this undercutting of UK sugar beet farming.”
As of May 2 I am still awaiting a reply. However, I appreciate that mine was one of several hundred emails Mr Hoare probably received that week and wonder if any of our other regional MPs might find time to comment.
Do they agree that imports from Brazil are the best way forward? And have they calculated the contribution such international trade will make to our carbon output? Or perhaps some ingenious formula will ensure that the carbon output is added to Brazil’s total rather than be the UK’s responsibility?
Colin Marsh Gillingham
We are all getting fed up with the continued closure of A30 at Kitt Hill in Sherborne.
Chris Loder MP has been campaigning for a resolution of this problem. But where are our county councillors?
A recent Liberal Democrat leaflet makes the feeble comment that: “The closure of both Kitt Hill and Corn Hill was a decision by officials, not our councillors…” But we elect our representatives to direct officials in the light of their local knowledge. What have they been doing to help resolve this problem?
The leaflet also suggests that: “The council should consider widening the road there.” It would undoubtedly be a valuable development from the traffic point of view. As a civil engineer, I know it could be done. But with heritage considerations, houses on the south side and rising ground to the north, it would be inordinately expensive, with the need for a massive retaining wall.
It would be interesting to see what they are proposing – or is this just a throwaway remark?
Mike Keatinge Sherborne
Cartoon by Lyndon Wall justsocaricatures.co.uk
Those Brexiteers like Roger White (NBVM, April 29) who seem to believe we can’t benefit from Brexit because the EU is somehow not allowing us to are quite simply absurd.
Come on Roger, when will we see all the benefits of Brexit fall into place? It is a competitive world out there so why wouldn’t the EU seek to protect its integrity?
What was Brexit all about and why are we in this dire situation considering ‘we hold all the cards’? Oh, and I didn’t make that up!
Charles Ellis Blandford Forum
Roger White (NBVM Letters 29 April) can’t see the irony when he blames the EU for post-Brexit problems.
Logically, had Brexit not happened, there wouldn’t have been any post-Brexit problems!
You voted for it, Mr White. If it has caused problems, they are what you voted for and what you caused to happen. Own it – blame yourself!
Barry Freeman Shaftesbury
I agree with Roger White that the Northern Ireland Protocol is problematic (NBVM, 29 April) but the EU is not solely to blame for this.
Why did Boris Johnson agree to it in the first place? Indeed, at the time, he boasted about how good the agreement was, only for months later to threaten to break international law and tear it up. It suits Mr Johnson for people to believe the EU is to blame for this mess to deflect attention from his role in creating it.
It is unreasonable to expect an organisation to give way on one of its cornerstones, namely the integrity of the single market, to dig a former member out of a hole they have dug for themselves.
A good working relationship with the EU will be important for UK prosperity in the future. It will not be helped if we think we have been victimised every time we don’t get exactly what we want.
Gordon Lethbridge Sherborne
Can someone please tell my why, with the energy crisis we have, the builders of all new houses aren’t being made to put solar panels on the roofs?
Allan Robson Sturminster Newton
I was interested in an article I read some time ago about French trains running on the left in The New Blackmore Vale Magazine.
In 2003 I travelled to Berlin by train from Gillingham, Dorset. Gillingham-WaterlooBrussels-Berlin. I made a point of seeing how trains at the Belgium/German border changed from left to right – the left-sided eastbound track went down, under and up on the right hand side while the right-sided westbound track carried on straight through on the level.
I have not made a study of which side other countries’ railways run on but I know Algeria, an old French colony, runs on the left and, on riding a high speed train from Xian to Beijing in China a few years ago, I noticed it ran on the left – the same as us.
And then there is Driving on the Right. It is generally accepted as having been started by Napoleon, un gauché – a left hooker – who marched his armies on the right side of the road. He installed his brother as King of Spain and, in consequence, Napoleon-conquered-Europe and all former French and Spanish colonies drive on the right; former British colonies plus Japan and Thailand on the left.
Not quite true – Portugal changed from left to right in 1920, Czechoslovakia in 1939 when Hitler moved in, Sweden in 1962 and Canada in 1925 to align with the USA. Several old British colonies in West Africa changed from left to right on independence in the 1960s.
And what about the Yanks ¬– when they built their first two-way turnpike soon after independence they sided with the French who had helped them in their fight against the British, said two fingers to the Brits and decided to go on the right.
Another subject I am interested in is old roads, particularly ancient trackways and drovers’ roads. I have cycled the oldest long-distance road, The Great Ridgeway, which runs from Wells-next-the- Sea, Norfolk, to Seaton in Devon; the Hardway from Dover via the North Downs to Farnham- Basingstoke-AndoverStonehenge-Mere (Wilts) – to Sherborne in Dorset where it links with the Great Ridgeway; and various Ox Droves: Wingreen (Shaftesbury) to Staines for London, Old Sarum (Salisbury) to Staines, and several minor droves in Southern England.
