Gap in the market

Where once Britons scoffed at nations which were bound up in pointless red tape and bureaucracy it is us who are now trussed hand and foot.

And who do we have to blame?

Ourselves.

Where are the fearless campaigners who in the past would have cut through the bonds and liberated the community?

The situation at Glyne Gap roundabout is a classic case in point. First impressions count. The visitor approaching Bexhill from the east has every reason to form a dismal image of Bexhill.

Despite all the debate in planning committee about external claddings and other detail, Bexhill was saddled with a cluster of standard-issue industrial buildings when Ravenside was built.

A thing of beauty it is not.

Then, of course, there is the traffic congestion.

Worse, while stuck in the inevitable jam, the visitor is confronted by that weed-strewn monstrosity, Glyne Gap roundabout.

Previous campaigners have succeeded in having it cleared. Nobody achieves a permanent solution.

To every suggestion in today's world there is a fit-all response of one sort or another which bars any progress.

If it's not the Data Protection Act it is the entirely laudable principle of Health and Safety taken to Orwellian extremes.

When Cllr Stuart Wood offered, in frustration, to tend the roundabout himself the retired horticulturalist had "Health and Safety" flung in his face.

Quite how he would be exposed to more danger on the roundabout than attempting to cross the road near the roundabout defies definition.

Now Cllr Martyn Forster, pursuing the oft-chased mirage of commercial sponsorship for the task, has had figures quoted to him by the Highways Agency which beggar belief.

If the short answer is "We don't like commercial sponsors interfering" why not say so?

Meanwhile, Glyne Gap languishes. And the risk that such impressions give is that passing visitors will continue along the wearisome A259 with no inducement to turn off the trunk and down into the town centre to see what Bexhill really has to offer.

The pity of it is that among the plethora of weeds there is no ragwort.

Now if the roundabout risked spreading the seed of that deadly menace to horses and cattle we might see it cleared before anyone could say ... well, "obfuscation."