SOS - The fight goes on

The Guardian blogged the meeting. Start from ca 1/6th of the way down. The rest are comments added to the blog
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/9692808.LIVE__Decision_day_for_Walthamstow_Stadium/

This is worth a read, particularly Barrie's reply!
Letter from Councillor Wheeler and SOS response back
http://saveourstow.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/letter-from-councillor-wheeler-and-sos-response-back/

Stella Creasy MP
"The Fight for the Future of Walthamstow Dogtrack continues- Please email the Mayor of London!"
http://www.workingforwalthamstow.org.uk/?p=1689

Had our Members of Parliament attended the Town Hall this evening they would have been greeted by the not particularly remarkable sight of four Labour politicians voting to allow what one speaker described as 'the mob' (he was refering to London and Quadrant and their exempliarily useless architects, Conran and Partners) to destroy Walthamstow dogtrack.

The word had however come through loud and clear on the local political grapevine that the fix was already in, [I was warned of the likely result by a source close to the Labour Party earlier today]. So, like professional politicians the world over, our members of Parliament chose not to attend the scene of a defeat by siding with their electorate in person. Instead they both found they had 'subsequent engagements'. I did not catch what Iain Duncan Smith's excuse was. Stella Creasy was having a drinks reception at Parliament. This was not actually open today however, as Her Majesty will not be able to do the honours and open the place for democracy until tomorrow.

There was no democracy in Walthamstow Town Hall either. Yes, there was a vote, actually several. All of the outcomes of these were based on the premise that every single speaker (other than the Chairman, Councillor Barnett and a couple of people from London and Quadrant) was wrong in opposing the development, as was the huge crowd of local people who turned up to witness the farce.

I took lots of notes of what was said against the scheme. Most of it was cogent and coherent. The speakers took very great care to say what they wanted to, even though the chairmen restricted the opponents of the plan to three minutes each. London and Quadrant were afforded far longer, and of course, they had the council's officers also rooting for them without any time limits. All this was in the interests of 'fairness', according to the Chairman.

So the opponents went through the details, pointing out how every planning rule in the book was being broken, how no-one locally supported the application, how the population density for the scheme is too high, the design will create a slum, the buildings too close together, it will drive a coach and horses though local and national planning policy, ruin a heritage site, be unsustainable, not viable, amount to overdevelopment, turn into a crime-ridden killing ground ona par with Broadwater Farm, was not properly consulted over, has not been properly considered by English Heritage etc etc etc.

None of what was said made a blind bit of difference. The vote was passed by the four councillors on party lines. Their stunning levels of stubborn stupidity was a wonder to behold, though Ebony Vincent did have the good grace to look embarrassed and avoid eye contact with anyone for most of the evening.

The councillors' stupidity was matched by that of the council officers. They were led by David Scourfield in recommending this scheme despite it fitting none of the council's own rules. Mr Scourfield, by the way, does an interesting line in cuff-link preening and biro flicking. He was described by one speaker as biased as he has allegedly been favouring London and Quadrant during the process and was seen to be very pally with them before the meeting. He was accused of much more than that by several members of the public sitting near me. A number of calls were made for him and the four Labour councillors to resign at various points in the evening.

The meeting was long. The public heard from many people, some technically qualified, some emotional, many fearful of flooding and for their existing property rights near the development, some witty, others angry. Not a single genuine local resident spoke in favour of the scheme, a fact reinforced by a number of councillors who also attended to speak against it.

(Someone who no-one has ever heard of did speak in favour, a man called Gary Ince. He is chief executive, according to the local paper, of the North London Business Board and the Waltham Forest Business Partnership. These latter bodies did not seem to exist when I got home and googled them.

There is a body called the Waltham Forest Business Board, however. This does employ a person called Gary Ince as the Chief Executive. Its own website says it is a 'strategic body to work in partnership with the London Borough of Waltham Forest'. It does not publish much of any use about its governance, constitution or its accounts on its website. It looks suspiciously like one of those 'business' schemes that are totally dependent on the local Labour controlled council's patronage for its funding. With all due respect to Mr Ince, unless he shows otherwise by being far more transparent on his website, he looks less of the eminent unbiased authority on business he was introduced as and more like just another part of the local authority in another guise, hiding behind a few logos and a website.)

After the vote, a number of residents - a fairly large number actually, given the lateness of the hour - gave the four councillors concerned a piece of their minds. The local paper described the public as 'furious'. I think they were. However, in a spirit of democracy and civilisation which the councillors themselves had not shown, (Jenny Gray at one point tried to justify ignoring the public's views by stupidly saying she thought the audience were not locals), the councillors were left physically unscathed. The same will not be sayable about the dogtrack and Walthamstow if London and Quadrant have their way. Boris Johnson may be able to put a stop to that yet, if the lawyers also don't get their teeth stuck into this travesty of a meeting before then.

The archipelago-of-truth site is a good source and unlike greyhound scene doesn't tolerate anti nutcases like sudburyblu

and as for that **** boris hes more bothered slagging off "lefties" in the daoly  torygraph which hes paid  a 4tr of a million sovs to write for