LETTER: Farewell to the ugly bamboo

It’s quite right that deputy leader and cabinet member for Horsham Town Cllr Helena Croft (Roffey North) has performed a U-turn and provided a Christmas tree for the Carfax unlike last year (Horsham ed., 13.11.14, p20). Has she chosen to provide a tree this year because there’s an election in May?

The ‘tree’ that she’s arranged is, however, artificial. Yet in previous years the public always enjoyed a beautiful spruce in the Carfax. So we have a fake tree much like the fake consultation that she and Cllr Vickers undertook of residents over North Horsham (one option, no public meetings, punishment of critical councillors in her party).

No wonder former chief executive Martin Pearson felt compelled to give evidence against the council of Cllr Vickers’ ‘political’ housing plan.

And on Friday November 21 workmen removed the bamboo planters from West Street

that cost the taxpayer £40,000. The varnish had come off the boxes after just a matter of months and the bamboo wasn’t just ugly but kept blowing down and hitting shoppers’ faces.

Cllr Helena Croft personally oversaw the ‘revamp’ of West Street and cut the ribbon last year with her own photographer paid for by the taxpayer to capture the moment (Question to Council, December 2013) before a party was held where Bucks Fizz was served up to celebrate her West Street achievement (Editorial, November 2013).

The election in May 2015 cannot come soon enough.

GWEN TAYLOR

Havengate, Horsham