Terrington St Clement house-building, Charles King's Lynn statue, budget & cost of living crisis – Lynn News letters September 27
PLANNING
A little over the top with houses
When I was a small lad the road junction about two hundred yards from my home in Terrington St Clement had a small triangle of grass delineating the corner. Today it has two metal signs and a concrete kerb and just around the corner where the Co-op now stands was a field where I worked growing crops for food.
Now sadly all filled with dwellings. I can cite several other fields in our village where I once worked producing crops for food totalling over 40 acres. Another 12 to 14 acres recently received planning permission for another 120 houses on agricultural land where I once worked, all this in my lifetime. This to my mind suggests over development.
In this village in the late 18th century, there were 90 houses recorded and 1,932 people recorded living in those houses. At the beginning of World War II, the population was 2,800 and now it stands at around the 5,000 plus. Just about every new dwelling has been built on top grade agricultural land. Planners hardly ever mention any regard for the quality of land being developed.
This once rural village has been turned into an urban one. The way this country’s central planning has been, and still is governed, is a top-down process completely the wrong way round. Little regard has been taken of where those who will live in the new houses, will work or receive services. Our hospital is in urgent need of rebuild yet our planning system supports building even more houses adding to demand which at present seems to be somewhat skewed in the wrong direction.
Our village has radically changed in my lifetime from a completely rural one to something one might call urban subtopia. It is so sad to see so much of our top-grade agricultural land covered with housing for people who will just live here in a village that is now just a dormitory.
We should be using planning to provide workplaces in communities to obviate the need for long distance travel. However, we seem to have got into a mindset of building houses ad infinitum. Local authorities at government’s bidding continue to follow the mantra from to year by year to build, build and build more houses. This cannot go on indefinitely, sometime sensibility must bring us to reality that we need in many instances to suggest that enough is really enough. When looking at our world today it is a frightening sight to see cities like giant ant hills with millions of people living cheek by jowl and it should act as warning.
I would invite everyone who has a computer to look at the world’s largest cities on the maps provided and contemplate the problems that are being stacked up by this relentless expansion and the problem legacies which will surely follow. Man has never developed to live in such appalling development that we see in today’s world yet there is no worldwide education to point out the errors of our lifestyle. I feel that there should be a concerted effort by governments the world over to bring these problems to the fore.
Our climate problems are man-made and everyone in the world should be apprised of the fact that the reason is over population. When the question of population is raised many countries are too worried about keeping their population numbers up to, as they say, have enough of the young to look after the elderly.
Somewhere along the line the nettle must be grasped and that this attitude is foolhardy, and the problem must be resolved and with sensible planning population balance can be resolved without increasing our numbers. The whole world must take action to reduce their populations accordingly if we are to tackle the climate problem effectively.
Bryan Howling
Terrington St Clement
ROYALTY
Give Charles a statue in Lynn
Like many others, I imagine, I have been wondering whether our current system of government is the best one for our times, or whether it would be advisable to switch to something more democratic.
Unfortunately there is no guarantee that such a move would be any more successful.
However, a new sovereign does bring Lynn an opportunity available to few if any other English towns.
We have statues around the Purfleet to King Charles I and King Charles II.
Adding a statue of King Charles III to the centre of King’s Staithe Square would make it a royal flush?
It’s not only the dead who are remembered with statues. Frederick Savage was very much alive when his statue went up near the South Gate.
Ken Hill
King’s Lynn
BUDGET
Country’s finances had to be tackled
The Labour Party has reacted with its rhetorical diatribe to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s mini budget with its historical politics of envy.
The country’s finances had to be tackled, especially in the aftermath of Covid-19, and one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to envisage what would happen if Sir Keir Starmer wins the next general election. Jeremy Corbyn MP sanctimoniously criticised the budget from his armchair comfort zone in an affluent part of North London, where metropolitanism and metrosexualisation run what was once a working man’s party.
This from a man who acclaimed the leftist policies of the Government in Venezuela with empty supermarket shelves and impoverishment, despite having plentiful oil reserves.
Labour predictably said that the rich would be the beneficiaries of the mini budget and that those at the other end of the socio economic mix would suffer.
It gets back to the old adage that under this party, if elected by default, the rich will get poor and the poor poorer. The poorest countries globally have mainly got Socialist Governments.
David Fleming
Downham
Can’t believe it happened
The mini budget was bad, I can’t believe it just happened. With this level of reckless borrowing, it is actually a very dangerous moment for the country. The main question I have however is why more is not being done to help struggling families and pensioners. This was a mini-budget for the super-rich.
The bankers will be rubbing their hands with delight over winter, whilst those struggling in West Norfolk will be rubbing their hands to keep warm. It really feels like the cost-of-living crisis is not a problem to the Conservatives, who just seem so hopelessly out of touch.
Food and fuel prices remain high and the new energy cap is still double what people paid this time last year. How do they think people will manage?
We have all heard how social care in Norfolk is in crisis. We were told only a few months ago the National Insurance rise was to solve the problem. Now what? Vulnerable will continue to struggle in Norfolk with inadequate care and no sight of much needed funds.
People still struggle to get doctor appointments and an NHS dentist in Norfolk is like finding hen’s teeth, regardless of James Wild’s broken promise three years ago. Tories and Brexit have broken Britain.
Regarding ‘Investment Zones’ I will wait to see the detail and locations.
However, we were told that ‘levelling-up’ would help deprived areas like West Norfolk, yet nothing here to truly level-up an area of the country so badly failed after years of Conservative rule.
Cllr Rob Colwell
Gaywood South, Norfolk County Council
Chair & Parliamentary Spokesperson for North West Norfolk Liberal Democrats
