Playing to the Crowd

Too much to catch up with... again...

Planning C last night, and in contrast to the last agenda we had (with only 2 items, both nice and simple), this one was hard-going, with a full house in the public seats.

Most people had come to object to a seemingly innoccuous, if ugly, rear extension on a pair of houses in Lee Green. Having listened, carefully to their spokesman (who started off behaving quite reasonably), it became clear (to me anyway) that it was one of those developments that we (the Council) would probably have to approve - or the developer would very likely win on appeal, and build it anyway. It was disappointing that Cllr Chris Maines decided to play the crowd-pleaser and vote against (followed microseconds later, and of course entirely coincidentally by his LibDem colleague) with no apparent valid reasons to do so. That left me to carry the can, so I predict something slagging me off in the letters page of next week's Mercury. I remarked that the conditions we'd imposed would at least slightly fetter the rampant capitalism evident from the developer, so at least the worthy people of Lee Green might 'insult' me with some compliments about my futile yearnings for a totalitarian socialist command-economy. What a damn good thing Maines came a poor second in the election for Mayor, or he'd be so busy trying to be popular that meltdown would be imminent already!

After the grumbling mob had left, muttering darkly, there were about 5 more fairly long cases (and a couple of those nice easy, obvious ones) and we weren't finished until after 10pm. Luckily I'd biked to the town hall, didn't have to pick Sarah up from swimming afterwards, and fitted in a (now rare) visit to The Ram and a couple of pints with Alan Hall and Ami Ibitson... and even got home on the bike unscathed!

There are a couple of other planning applications I need to get involved in, quite close to home in Perry Vale, which I can't blog about whilst they're sub-judice as it were.