Your Letters - February 1

Trolley answer

Re: Trolley park incident

IF Tesco and Sainsbury trolleys were coin operated, the sad incident that occurred in Ravenside car park might not have happened.

I have frequently asked the managers of both stores why their companies did not have coin operated trolleys and the answer from each of them was that they would like to see this implemented, but it was felt that customers would not accept the change. I cannot believe this as the coin is returned on completion of the shopping and there would be no more abandoned trolleys as someone would return them to claim the reward! Also, I have a special disc purchased from a charity for this purpose that I keep in my purse, so I always have the wherewithal to release a trolley.

Both managers said that all new supermarkets now have to have coin operated trolleys, but until locals councils insist that existing stores and express units follow suit, there is nothing they can do.

So, Rother District Council the buck stops with you - you can end the annoyance of abandoned trolleys and possibly save another employee from attack whilst retrieving trolleys from the car park areas. Can you not manufacture a by-law requiring all large supermarkets to change to coin operated trolleys forthwith?

V ZEBEDEE (Mrs)

Eastwood Road

Janice treat

YESTERDAY (Saturday, January 26) was one of the highlights of my calendar ... the Janice Blake Dance Studio's biannual show, Entertainment 2008, held at the White Rock Theatre.

As ever it was a magical evening full of beautiful dance routines performed by our local and very talented youngsters.

However, this year was different. This was the last ever show to be performed by the Dance Studio as Janice has announced she is to retire at Easter and subsequently the Studio will be no more.

Included in this year's show was a number ,"Mamma, I'm a big girl now" ( from the musical Hairspray ) performed by 30 ex-pupils of the Studio!

The girls contacted each other on the internet via 'facebook' and I think it says a lot for both the high esteem and affection that these girls hold Janice in that they wanted to do this. It also says a great deal for the quality of their training that they could still dance to this very high standard after, in many cases, over ten years away from dancing and after only three rehearsals, only one of which had all 30 girls together at the same time! They were brilliant!

Janice's retirement will be a great loss to the town. Over the years she has brought an enormous amount of pleasure to a great number of people both young and old. Her ex-pupils, whether they have gone on to make dance their career or not, have learnt poise, confidence, and how to work as a team under her tutelage ..... all essential life skills. Many have formed life-long friendships at the Studio and we all a owe a great debt of thanks to you Janice in so many ways.

I am very pleased to learn that Amanda Lacey, who trained under Janice and choreographed a lot of the show, will continue Janice's work with her own school up at St. Peter's when Janice finally shuts the door in Buckhurst Road.

It just remains for me to wish Janice a very happy retirement; you've earned it!

Christine Hamilton

(an ex-pupil's mother )

Village hall

I THINK it was W. C. Fields who said that when he heard the word culture he reached for his gun. I feel the same way about the De La Warr.

The De La Warr Charitable Trust came into being some five years ago with a great fanfare but during the intervening years not only failed to arrange programmes that suit the majority of residents but also to accumulate a debt they say will take four years to clear.

Notwithstanding the De La Warr Working Group now propose to throw more money at the problem albeit with some strings attached.

The Working Party obviously has doubts about the priorities of the Trust because they propose to ring fence some 50,000 for maintenance. The Trust will also be set targets to be monitored by the council (more hidden costs!) and to cap it all, a separate fund to bribe organisations to use the facilities at the De La Warr.

All this against a background of the Arts Council England withdrawing grants from organisations they perceive not to be performing well. What is their view of the De La Warr? And do not the Charity Commission have any worries?

Rother's head of resources thinks the biggest worry is that the De La Warr will be handed back to the council. I suggest she prepares a contingency plan because the De La Warr is Bexhill's Northern Rock and it will all end in tears for the ratepayer.

If that does happen I suggest we recognise the De La Warr for what it is - Bexhill's Village Hall. A management committee could rent out the restaurant/caf bar and provide a booking service for groups wishing to use the pavilion.

Any deficit to be a charge on Bexhill's Special Expenses.

J. E. Goldsworthy (Mrs)

Glengorse

Battle

Waste display

IN this age of conspicuous over-consumption, the DLWP is to be greatly commended for devoting an entire exhibition to the art of re-cycled household waste.

Most of the crassly discarded debris of modern life is to be found at this exhibition - polystyrene off-cuts, old cereal packaging, sticky-back plastic, binding wire etc. But what really impresses me is the way the artists have avoided the obvious intellectual trap of re-ordering these components too carefully.

How easy it would have been to surrender to the naive temptation of recrafting these quintessentially surplus elements as immaculate and seamless surfaces! But by leaving in plain sight the obvious crudity of reconstructive method and finish, the artists (a collective known as The Martins - the allegorical resonances are rich indeed!) transcend the over-arching sense of futility that pervades their work (and, of course, our lives as well).

As I allowed myself to luxuriate in this, visually, incredibly sensuous exhibition, I found myself repeatedly drawn back to the words of one of the unsung heroes of the South Indian urban renewal movement, Father F X Jaya-Sekera SJ, 'Truly are building blocks of tomorrow found in the middens of today'.

ROY SMITH

Ninfield Road

Unstandard lamp

OUR council says that it is endeavouring to preserve the look of the town centre by giving an incentive to shop owners to conform to an Edwardian design for their shop fronts, as and when they are being refitted. Now take a look along Cooden Drive as a fine example of how to destroy the aesthetic appearance of one of Bexhill's most important approach roads and at one time its most prestigious.

Over the last two or three years there has been a systematic programme for replacing the concrete lamp standards with ones of more a modern design.

Very commendable you may think, however the replacement lamp standards are not of uniform design. We are now faced with a total hotchpotch with six differing designs, which include a number of the old concrete pattern, all of which are randomly positioned along the entire length of Cooden Drive.

Little or no thought has gone into this replacement programme, which could have been an enhancement rather than quite the reverse.

I suggest the next time you drive along Cooden Drive just take note of this gross lack of forethought and planning, let alone the total waste of our money.

Regarding my last letter you published on January 4, which highlights the unacceptable speed of a large number of drivers who constantly travel along Cooden Drive.

I am very surprised that none of the other residents along Cooden Drive reacted to my comments. There are over 200 properties along my road and I find it strange that I am the only person to speak out about dangers of speeding vehicles?

GRUMPY OLD MAN

Cooden Drive

Name and address supplied

Beach huts

BEING a beach hut owner, I read with interest the article "Council accused over beach hut rent hike" (Observer, January 18) and the comments made by Madeleine Gorman, Rother head of amenities, where she suggests that there was no increase in rent for 2007.

Rent for beach huts is due on January 1 each year. Early January 2006 I paid a rent of 100.

In January 2007 I received a demand for 200, an increase of 100%.

Like many other hut owners, I enquired about this increase and found that the decision was made during 2006 to increase the rent but not implement it until 2007.

Together with these years increase means that rents have risen by 120% in two years, an unjustifiable increase, without any obvious increase in services, and then to try to justify it by comparing it with that neighbouring authorities charge is a lamentable excuse.

If these neighbouring authorities' tax was much less than ours would we see a reduction!

J.R. Anderson

Clavering Walk

Station pharmacy

GREAT to see, tucked away in a recent "In the pipeline" column, an application for a pharmacy on Bexhill station.

Is there really a demand for this? The station still has no lavatory facilities and I would also have thought that the council and rail operator could have worked together with a view to siting some form of tourist / visitor information office within the booking hall area.

I do wonder how accommodating the station operators are in attracting businesses to open on their premises; the two 'large' units have lain dormant for a considerable time now, although the one nearest to the platform entrance has seen a taxi and florist business briefly occupy its space.

If the station owners really do want to attract other businesses to open up why don't they provide some form of incentive to do so?

Also, does anyone know what lurks behind the various closed doors on both platforms? Why hasn't the train company used some of this space (surely it's not ALL utilised?) to provide sheltered waiting areas '¦ and lavatories?

M Christie

Reginald Road

Loud mouths

I WISH to bring to public notice a gang of workmen, some four or five, working at the junction of Sackville Road and Parkhurst Road at about 10.30 to 11am who shouted abuse at me, calling me a pikey and making remarks re my long hair.

First it is not my hair, it's a wig, and second, I have had to wear one since a very bad motor accident some years back.

Is it not possible for loud mouth jobs working in the public eye to keep their traps shut? Nobody expects to be shouted at when going about their business.

ROY BOND

Cooden Drive

Life affirming

I WOULD like to thank everyone who helped to make my Celebration of Life on January 18 such a success.

It was a wonderful evening and nearly 3,000 was raised for the Sara Lee Trust. All the donations and the work contributed was greatly appreciated.

Bunny Mitchell

De La Warr Road

BALI fight

REFERENCE to your article 'Cemetery plan heads for the High Court' on page 10 of the Bexhill Observer (January 25).

I have some knowledge of what has gone on before but wouldn't like to say I know everything, but I do understand that our council does not always give more than lip service to BALI's fight against the proposed landfill at the Ashdown Brickworks. However, they do know that Ibstock have wanted use of the mention fields to stockpile clay.

The mere fact that the council wish to use these fields to extend the cemetery seem to me not only to be necessary but if this is agreed will act as a deterrent to Ibstock's plans, so good for the council!

That Ibstock are anxious to acquire the use of the fields means that they feel they are on the way to having their holes turned into landfill, and just as likely in the future, to land raise for further rubbish. It is interesting that their legal eagle comments that if the fields are used for cemetery use it will hinder the 'degree of tranquillity' for mourners. This might be true, but I would have thought a little noise would be preferable to the smell of rotting rubbish and screeching seagulls only yards away, plus the constant noise of trucks, dustcarts and bulldozers grinding away as well.

Do they also ignore burrowing rats that will be attracted to landfill rubbish. These disgusting creatures may also turn their attention to graves?

Even the judge, in saying that the council had failed to consider the noise issue when extending the cemetery, equally ignores the noise, smell and general ugliness of having a landfill site so close to mourners.

This same legal man also says that Ibstock will require the fields for its clay "... once the quarrying is complete." My understanding is that there is many years of clay extraction from the site, so the fields, in theory, will not be required for at least 30-40 years.

The real reason they need the fields, as I understand it, is to stockpile the clay so that the holes in the ground can be used for landfill, while further quarrying continues over this long period. One should remember, too, that clay is not the wet, soggy mess that might be imagined. Stockpiling this stuff will create much dust once it dries out . Nearby residents already suffer some degree of clay dust from the quarry itself and it will only worsen from the proposed mountain heaped on the fields.

I hope that the council's legal team make sure the judge knows that the Ashdown site is not in the middle of nowhere but right in the middle of a number of roads and houses, whose owners will have to live with this landfill if it ever comes to pass.

Ibstock do not own the said fields, so that the council has just as much right to request their use for a cemetery extension, as anyone else, and I am certain Bexhill residents will prefer a larger cemetery area to a landfill site.

NORMAN FRANKS

The Ridings

Waste care

I TAKE great exception at the tone of Cheryl Carter's remarks in your edition of January 25. Her implication that if you have excess rubbish you are not bothering to recycle is simply untrue.

I don't know how many people live in her household but in our household of four adults a lot of non-recyclable rubbish is created, particularly over Christmas. We recycle all our 1, 2 and 3 type plastics, glass, aerosols, beverage cartons, tins/cans, newspapers/magazines and other acceptable paper. In addition to this we have a compost heap and put all our vegetable peelings and teabags and so on on that. We recycle everything that we can but over Christmas our non-recyclable rubbish was too much for our bin. I am very much in favour of recycling and have always done so, even before the new scheme came in. That doesn't mean that we don't need sufficient space for rubbish - we do. Many people don't have a car and cannot therefore use the tip directly even if they wished to put extra CO2 into the atmosphere by making an additional car journey. Until more things are recyclable this will be a continuing problem. Do not assume that if a household has too much rubbish for their bin they are not bothering to recycle. This may be the explanation but equally it may not.

KAREN SMITH

School Place

Waste care

Re: ESCC Planning meeting at Lewes re waste transfer site at Pebsham

ON January 23 I decided to attend the meeting to observe true British democracy at work. Unfortunately when it came to Mr Worssam's application it was more like a parish meeting from 'The Vicar of Dibley'. Our Cllr Forster to his credit, gave a first class speech on the affects to his constituents on this issue. Looking at the expression on the members faces I knew that the vote would only go one way. One councillor said we will all eventually have to have a waste facility in our towns, he obviously did not have a transfer site at the bottom of his garden.

The vote was taken and all delegates voted unanimously for acceptance of the plan. What I could not understand was that most of the councillors had not visited the site and therefore could not give a fair judgement on the issue. The Hastings councillor gave us the usual support and voted with the majority another member of the PIAA Pebsham brigade. Our Rother District Council voted for rejection of the plan which they should be commended.

The environment have imposed quite a few conditions to be imposed to safeguard the amenities of the occupiers of local properties. There is no way that all these conditions can be kept. The day that the site opens they will be contravening the conditions. This facility is on land allocated for our country park and is only 60 metres from residents gardens and should never have been passed by ESCC. If this is democracy then bring back Stalin.

R SANDERSON

Top Cross Road

School rules

SO, according to the chair of governors, the yearly intake at St Richard's are not picked on ability. This would clearly be discrimination.

They are picked though based on the Catholicity or other denominational commitment of the candidate. Well that's alright then! Clearly no discrimination!

St Richard's rightly should be proud of recent league results and staff effort. However wouldn't it be fairer if every local child regardless of religious belief or otherwise had a chance of getting a place at this thriving educational establishment? Surely it should be equally as proud that every one has an equal chance to attend?

In Observer Comment (January 18) it was stated that "everyone" has benefited from Mr Campbell's time at St Richard's.

Surely not everyone? Just those who fit the strict entry criteria.

When it comes down to it Bexhill has only two secondary schools. With the majority of local children unlikely to be admitted to the higher achiever, parents are left with no choice of school.

This cannot be right and this discriminatory policy should be abandoned as soon as possible.

A Bromley

Peartree Lane

Housing policy

ACCORDING to the Rye Observer (January 25) the development of land north of Bexhill earmarked for housing has been held up because of delays to the new Bexhill link road, which would provide access to the site.

Your article implies that it is this delay which has put pressure on Rother District Council to allow controversial development at Udimore Road, Rye on land not designated for housing.

If this is the case then this is a very big story not just for Rye, but for the whole of the Rother and Hastings districts.

Why is the building of the link road held up? Is this putting Rother under pressure to build houses where it had not previously meant to build them? What pressure will there be on Rother to build in other places not previously set aside for housing?

An earlier edition of the Observer suggested that the cost of the link road had risen dramatically, and this could have been due to the demands of Natural England (formerly English Nature). Is this so and is the link road project now dead in consequence?

Everyone has an interest in wildlife and nature, but this is a human concern which needs to be weighed against the crucial human interest in good housing in good locations, not a trump card.

Through your columns I invite everyone concerned in this issue - the Highways Agency, district and county councils, Natural England and our MPs - to explain to the electors exactly what is going on and why we cannot build a link road quickly and at an affordable cost.

It is a disgrace that so little has been achieved and that the project appears in peril.

It is a greater disgrace this could lead to housing development on unsuitable or second-choice sites.

This is urgent as on March 3 Rother's cabinet makes its decision about the Udimore Road site.

Show us what the press is made for!

Andrew Mier

Shepherds Way

Fairlight

Past mistakes

STEPHANIE Webb, per her latest piece of puffery for the DLWP, is (sadly) proving to be as stale and repetitive in her cultural opinions as she is in her use of adverbs.

People of Ms Webb's modish, modernist stamp - and this of course includes the pampered, subsidised elite at the DLWP - tend to hold anything that is not new and 'challenging' in blind and visceral contempt.

This abhorrence of the past causes such people to be incapable of learning from even their own histories - never mind others - and their tragedy is to go on blindly repeating past mistakes ad infinitum.

Our tragedy, given the dominant modernist position in the contemporary culture industry, is that we have to go on suffering the consequences.

JOHN WILLIAMS

Cooden Sea Road

Animal home

Re: Barby Keel's plea for adoptees for her animals (Observer, January 18).

SEVERAL years ago we lost a beloved cat of 17 years. After mourning our loss we decided to find another pet.

Hotfooting up to Freezeland Lane, we were greeted by chickens, geese and a very hard working young man who led us to the cat department.

If you love Harry Potter and the Owlery, this was it, only with cats! We were met by a lovely black cat who shot indoors as if to say, "punters on site".

To cut a long story short, we saw and fell in love with a beautiful black and white cat, our eyes locked and we have all been very happy since.

Please, if you can give a home to a lonely animal, speak to Barby and her team.

Finally does anyone agree Barby should receive an honour?

Well done all.

ANDREW AND SARAH COOK

Cranfield Road

Such kindness

ON Friday, January 25 our cousin who is elderly left her handbag at the bus stop in Devonshire Road, Bexhill. Some very kind person took it into Edinburgh Wool shop.

The staff dealt with the matter most efficiently and after checking the contents telephoned our cousin and even delivered the handbag to her house.

I have, of course, written to them with a big thank you but I do not know the name of the person who took it into the shop.

Through your paper we would like to thank that person by perhaps a letter in the messages column.

MR & MRS FULLER

Birkdale

Oil duty

THE price of oil on the world market is going up and down like a yo-yo. Mostly up.

In January 2007 a barrel of oil cost $54 - by the end of December it was up to $100.

Not surprisingly the impact of this increase has been felt by all car drivers and by the UK transport industry, which delivers the goods which sustain all of us every day of the year.

UK road users pay the highest rates of fuel duty in Europe - 50p per litre in fuel duty and then VAT on top of the whole price. So for a pump price of 1.05 for petrol or diesel, the breakdown is 39p for the fuel, 50p for the duty and 16p for the VAT - the Chancellor gets 66p tax out of 1.05.

Clearly the Chancellor can have little influence on the world price of oil. But, equally clearly, he can do something about the tax take - a massive 63 per cent.

Sadly, he presently plans to increase his take by adding a further 2p per litre to the duty level on April 1.

With the economy in some difficulty and inflation threatening, the prospect of higher fuel prices in the spring should worry us all. Given that everything needs to be delivered and that diesel fuels those deliveries, then a fuel duty rise is itself adding to the inflationary problem.

The Freight Transport Association says that the Chancellor should scrap his proposed 2p fuel duty increase. Perhaps you do, too?

GORDON TELLING

Head of Policy - London, South East and

East of England Freight Transport Association

Tunbridge Wells

Meningitis Trust

I AM writing on behalf of the Meningitis Trust to thank local Halfords store staff and customers for supporting the charity by participating in our Action Man pin badge campaign.

Since April 2007, over 75,000 has been raised from Halfords 'Charity of the Year' partnership with the Trust through stores across the UK.

With no government funding, the Meningitis Trust is reliant on donations from individuals and companies like Halfords to continue our vital work in rebuilding lives shattered by meningitis.

Money raised will help fund the Trust's services, including professional counselling, a financial grants scheme and our freephone 24-hour nurse-led helpline 0800 0281828.

There are still 4,000 cases of meningitis a year, with many survivors being left with devastating after-effects - the Meningitis Trust's work is a vital lifeline for these people.

Readers can show support of the Meningitis Trust by popping in to their local Halfords store, where for a suggested donation of 1, they can obtain an Action Man pin badge. There are five different designs to collect.

KELLY ARCHER - COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

The Meningitis Trust