BY APPRECIATING his potential as an everlasting source of tortured merriment, we can perhaps all find some relief from Councillor Crockford-Hawley's continuing assault upon our lives, however, the latest display of his value judgements is deeply worrying.
BY APPRECIATING his potential as an everlasting source of tortured merriment, we can perhaps all find some relief from Councillor Crockford-Hawley's continuing assault upon our lives, however, the latest display of his value judgements is deeply worrying. He is not content with praising his silly carrot as 'art' when it is clearly an incomplete and inelegant extravagance. He also tells us that he has no money with which to repair our streets, instead he wants to save money by switching out our streetlights. He tells us all of this just as he fails to find the money required to protect the seafront hotels, and possibly the whole town as well, from a one in 200 year storm. Meanwhile, the owners of those same hotels have made it abundantly clear that his cheapskate 1.5 metre high splash wall will kill off what little is left of their businesses before the sea ever reaches them. That means it will kill off what little is left of our seafront economy at the same time as it fails to protect the town properly.Taken together all these statements reveal a startling and dark political truth. North Somerset is taking a journey, back in time, down a road that leads towards the dark ages. If we look at the dereliction of the seafront assets, (that John Crockford-Hawley et. al. have wrought in recent times) we can perhaps gauge just how far we have already travelled. The sadness is that every day he and his friends remain in office, our journey becomes ever faster. It comes as no surprise to learn that whilst Weston was in the top 10 of council rankings across Britain in the 1960s, today it is the seventeenth poorest in Europe. We live in a deprived area. The evidence of decay and social corruption is all around us. We desperately need revival and renewal not ruinous policies and developments that enrich only the favoured few. Our only real hope is that we will see new and more intelligent faces on the council next May.JULIAN PARRYVictoria Park, Weston
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