Your letters - June 4

Democracy is flawed

NO doubt about it, the Next Wave plan to develop Bexhill's seafront is one of the most controversial issues since... I don't when.

So you'd think Rother District Council - being a democratic body elected by the taxpayers - would do its best to encourage and listen to all shades of opinion. Regrettably, it has not done that throughout the history of this project and now the chairman of the steering group overseeing the project, Cllr Christopher Starnes, apparently unilaterally, has sacked the only questioning voice on the committee, Liberal Democrat Cllr Sue Prochak.

Cllr Starnes said she had "negative views". Wow, poor little politician. He clearly shouldn't be in the political game if he can't take the rough and tumble of debate.

Why doesn't he go the whole hog and shut down the committee altogether? Then he could run the show without having to debate with anybody.

In fact, why doesn't he and the other bigshots at the Town Hall shut down the whole council for all the good it does?

The Conservatives are so entrenched in this area, they know they could put up chimpanzees as candidates for the district council and they'd get elected.

Most of the councillors are simply voting fodder led by the nose by a few group of Tory activists with grandiose ideas (at our expense) and advised by council officers who want a quiet life.

The voters - yes, that's us, the people who pay for all this - are treated with contempt. They want your money, your votes but not your voice.

Even council meetings - where you would hope you would have open, serious and genuine debate - are undermined by secret meetings of Conservative councillors beforehand where matters are sorted out so they don't have any messy squabbles in public.

Any argumentative Tory types are soon told to button it. Democracy in Rother is seriously flawed. Isn't there any Conservative on the council with enough courage and a conscience to speak up for democracy? I'm listening...

Roy Haynes

The Sackville

De La Warr Parade

Bexhill

Amazed by lead story

LIKE all right-minded citizens I was amazed to read your lead story last week.

What on earth is happening in the Rother Council meetings?

Does Councillor Starnes understand how a steering commitee is expected to function with mutual respect for the views of others? Your article seems to present him as someone who believes he is in the driving seat and he is entitled to steer everyone in his direction. Anyone who objects to him being in the driving seat it seems, is likely to find themselves in the ejector seat! So how many are now left on this committee which is making so many important decisions on our behalf?

The residents of Bexhill have a right to know.

Carole Woodland

Cooden Drive

Bexhill

How shameful

HOW shameful that Rother District Council will not listen to people who do not agree with them.

Their attempts at public consultation with people throughout Rother who do not want 4million of their council tax squandered on the seafront renovation have been laughable. It is appalling that they have now been able to get rid of an elected member of their committee because her views are in opposition to what they want- despite them being more reflective of the electorate than their own. How can Rother District Councillors get away this? Democracy, but not as we know it!

Toby Cook

Holliers Hill

Bexhill

Awful situation

As one of the older citizens of Bexhill and who was actually born here, I feel especially qualified to comment in this letter about the vastly unsatisfactory state of affairs in the running of Bexhill by Rother District Council which has culminated in the extraordinary and shameful piece of behaviour which is featured so prominently on the front page of this week's Observer (Booted Out! May 28).

This has been about the so-called Next Wave scheme which has been rumbling on for several years now, as evidenced by the pages and pages of critical correspondence in your paper.

Indeed, its only rivals have been correspondence on "Gubby's Balls" in ruined Devonshire Square and Bexhill's new desert, the now mainly empty shell of the De La Warr Pavilion.

These matters have come about by the grossly unsatisfactory arrangement whereby the presentation of Bexhill's best features is in the hands of people who have absolutely no feel for the place, usually don't live in the town and can go home after they've done their worst, secure in the knowledge that they won't have to see the mess day after day that they've made here and can run away from.

Into this awful situation I must now place the Bexhill-on-Sea Observer. It is the duty of a local paper to reflect the views of its readership and the carefully thought views of Bexhill residents have been made abundantly clear to the paper and very eloquently. Alas, there has been no editorial response or action, apparently until this week, when in a small half page "Comment", someone in Sackville Road has finally woken up and realised that democracy is

being grossly abused. I suggest that this dilatory behaviour has proved absolutely fatal.

Your paper should have been onto this straight away. The lack of any editorial criticism until far too late, ensures that the perpetrators of what is unquestionably an environmental disaster in very many senses, can comfortably be assured that "they have got away with it!"

Although, you have published many readers' letters on the subject, many other points of what is going to be done on Bexhill seafront have not been published and the complete mis-match and grossly insensitive treatment have not been covered and will I hope be given full prominence in the weeks to come.

It would be appropriate to see an official "Stone of Desecration" be placed on the re-vamped promenade with the names of the guilty parties officially inscribed.

AP HAMILTON

Southcourt Avenue

Bexhill-on-Sea

EDITOR'S NOTE: Next Wave has always figured very prominently in this newspaper - not only information on the latest from Rother such as the seafront shelter designs shortlist - but also debate and news stories focussing on controversial issues, such as the boulevard, the seafront shelters and the (now defunct) cupola idea for the Colonnade.

Many of the more controversial topics have made the front page.

In January/February of this year, we ran a series of debate articles, where Ron Storkey of Save Our Seafront went into the scheme in great detail and project sponsor Cllr Christopher Starnes gave his reply.

One editorial last year criticised the council for not providing a large enough venue for the architect's exhibition and suggested the De La Warr Pavilion might have been more appropriate for the masses of people interested.

Last week's front page story was a clear-cut issue on a highly emotive subject and there the point needed to be made.

Go and read report

I URGE all current and future Bexhill High students and their parents to go to the Ofsted website and read for themselves the damning report of the recent monitoring visit. It clearly demonstrates what many of us have known for months; under Mike Conn's leadership, Bexhill children are receiving an inadequate education. This is a disgrace, especially as most local families have no choice of secondary schools.

The principal has continually brushed concerns under the carpet, applied spin along the lines of "It'll all be fine once we move into the new building." Not all of us were conned by this magical thinking, and now even he has to concede it is just not feasible. With the best will in the world, shiny new surroundings cannot outweigh inconsistent quality of teaching, poor leadership and declining achievement.

Mr Conn may feel sad that some children have not done as well as they might have, but I and others are disgusted and angry that this appalling situation has been allowed to continue for so long. He has, in the past, appeared affronted by criticism from parents, but perhaps it is time he truly woke up, and realised that many of us doubt his ability to lead the school into its much-heralded "new dawn".

Without radical reform the new school will simply continue to fail our children and damage their future opportunities. I will be taking up Mr Conn's invitation to meet with him this week to hear how he plans to put things right. I hope others will do the same. We need real answers'¦ and sir, they had better be good - your "career dream" might just depend upon it.

L Wilkinson

Dallington Close

Bexhill

Let's have a vote

WHEN will Mike Conn get the message? He's beginning to look and sound more like Gordon Brown every day. Consultation without a democratic outcome is just window-dressing. To claim an overwhelming majority in favour of a longer day with out a real vote is an insult to our intellect. This from a man who claimed it's dark at 3.10pm in winter in his interview last year in support the longer day. Wrong!

The school is not exactly doing very well hence the need to bring in Ninestiles. The fact that Mike Conn has no part in this has not gone unnoticed. I have no confidence in Mike Conn or the governors, and the shabby way in which this whole issue has been treated. Parents' views have been ignored and overlooked and for to long. The school needs parents on side; this is not the way to do it.

So let's have a vote. What have you got to lose, Mr Conn? Nothing if its as you claim. How difficult can it be? Every child affected by your proposed change has parents or guardians known to the school. Each should have a vote, including the new intake. Oh and make it independent...

High-tech school buildings alone won't turn this school around; it needs a positive partnership of everyone involved in our children's education. If you can't listen to people's views and take them on board you will fail.

M P SPIERS

Sedgewick road

Bexhill-on-sea

Priorities need change

WHAT a shameful admission on the part of Mike Conn (Bexhill Observer, May 28) "I took my eye off the ball a little bit"! It seems to me he has taken his eye off the ball a lot.

Mr Conn needs to get his priorities right - is he a teacher or a buildings overseer? It seems to be all about empire building and not the pupils' education.

B G Stutely

Cowdray Park Road

Bexhill on Sea

Thanks to BALI for explaining logic behind landfill campaign

MANY thanks to chairman Nick Hollington for his good-humoured explanation of the long0term BALI strategy re the Brickworks site (Defeat Landfill First, letters May 28).

I suppose there might be even be an eco-argument for local clay extraction (depending on transport factors) but I do see the long-term logic behind the group's Country Park "holding" application.

Whether, ultimately, this will lead to a solution that goes further than the status quo may be open to question though. Good luck with it all.

Just for clarification, I'd never assumed that BALI has a closed uncreative mindset (quite the opposite) but I am certainly led to this view about the "powers that be". That's why my letter closed with a reference to the sea front "improvements".

It's central and local government that should be more innovative not just "following the money" themselves (to repeat a well-used phrase) and then cynically leaving it to unfunded locals to protest.

Twelve years on in Bexhill, I've noticed that the Brickworks matter is unresolved, it's still not possible to cycle off road to Hastings or Eastbourne, (I don't cycle) the DLWP (I'm a supporter) can't open in the evening, there's no station at Glyne Gap when one was built in a weekend at Pevensey during the First World War, the "bypass" remains a nonsense, there is still a burnt-out hotel site etc, etc.

Meanwhile ill-advised or even fatuous schemes are repeatedly ploughed ahead with, regardless of commonsense reservations/objections expressed by reasonable people. It all seems a bit ironic at this time when we remember Dunkirk.

Then a seemingly all- powerful, tyrannical and implacable force was thwarted by a combination of determination and lateral thinking!

Dave Walsh

Rotherfield Avenue

Bexhill-on-Sea

The heart of the matter

I SHOULD like to congratulate the Bexhill Observer for its particularly apposite "Comment" last week on the ejection of Councillor Prochak and her colleague Councillor Forster from the Next Wave Steering Group (Cllr Forster deputised for her at meetings she was unable to attend).

I should also say at this point that I am not a Liberal Democrat supporter and write this letter from no party political standpoint.

This disgraceful episode totally eclipses the Next Wave project and goes straight to the heart of concerns expressed by many in Bexhill that local party political squabbles do residents no service. I have used the word "arrogance" in the past regarding many of our local councillors and their determination to ignore residents' views. The events reported in the Bexhill Observer last week substantiate this.

Is Councillor Starnes so insecure that he cannot cope with what he describes as "negative" opinions but others would regard as reasoned comment? He and his fellow councillors need to understand that many of us do not share his view that the "Next Wave" project will add to the gaiety of nations here in Bexhill.

He says he became a councillor because he was "so enthused for the seafront" and that the project was "part of why I stood". Where did representing the views of his electors fit into this? As one of his constituents I recall no such personal manifesto from him, nor indeed from his party, at the last council election.

The CABE grant imposed no contractual obligation on the council to commission any of the shelter competition designs.Had councillors wanted to listen to residents they could have done so. Any delay is of their own making. Does it really take a whole year to design four shelters? And this is surely what the ejection of Councillors Prochak and Forster is really about.

Bexhill is not North Korea and the residents I know do not defer compliantly to the concept of the "Dear Leader"!

At the national level there are promising signs that the case for localism and greater citizen participation is to be preferred. Provisions for local referendums for example were contained in the Queen's Speech. This won't happen next week of course but councillors would do well to reflect seriously on how they are representing the opinions of local residents.

This is the real message of the recent events you reported last week.

John Lee

Chairman, Bexhill Alliance

Shelters deferred... again

The decision on the proposed seafront shelters has been deferred yet again. The steering committee still could not accept the amended designs.

The supposedly final designs should appear in about three weeks.

The kiosk designs will be submitted for planning permission today (June 1). The pictures should be available soon on the internet and be discussed at the next planning meeting. Let's hope it's not still a metal shed.

Jackie Bialeska

Chairman, Vox Pop

Missed the point of coalition

MR Pinter (letters May 21) says that votes for Liberal Democrats, in particular Mary Varrall, have been "thrown away". With the First Past the Post system that is sadly true of all the candidates who don't win in a constituency.

He has missed the point of a coalition though, taking a far too simplistic view of how it works. The Liberal Democrats did not give power to the Conservatives, they have negotiated a raft of policies that try to reflect what the parties stood and received votes for.

It should, to reflect their larger share of votes and seats, be predominantly Conservative but with an influence of the Liberal Democrats. For anyone working; the lifting of the tax threshold to 10,000 instead of the change to inheritance tax is a victory. It also reflects that millions didn't agree with the Conservatives.

I voted for Mr Wheeler to get Mr Barker out, alas I made a mistake in thinking Mr Wheeler would be popular enough. My vote is wasted if we only look to the winners of each constituency - instead we should look to the issues and policies that parties wish to introduce and that people agree or disagree with. That is real democracy.

R Tete

Address supplied

Pressure group is apolitical

I did indeed, as you recently reported, attend a protest meeting outside the Town Hall regarding Next Wave. However I did not attend it, as was inferred, as chairman of BALI but purely as an ordinary member of the public.

It was quite wrong of you to, as it were, implicate BALI in this protest. BALI has no view on Next Wave. In fact it has no view on any other local issue except that of the proposed landfill at Ashdown Brickworks. This is because it is a non-political association of people of all political parties or none with widely varying views on local issues in their private lives.

It was thus not helpful to our cause to in any way associate BALI with this protest as it may offend many of our members and supporters, including councillors, on whom we rely. I thus would be grateful if you would retract any suggestion of such an association.

BALI is non-political, full stop.

Nick Hollington

Whydown Farm

Tories haven't changed minds

TO the surprise of no-one, the Tories have made it abundantly clear that their coalition government partners, the Liberal Democrats, count for nothing (Booted Out! May 28).

So, it's business as usual. But for how long?

Will all this change when the 2 billion of local authority cuts sanctioned by the coalition come winging their way down here and everywhere else? I have my doubts.

The Tories don't believe in democracy - hence their implacable opposition to proportional representation - and have never governed in the national interest.

And nothing that has come out of the coalition so far indicates that the Tories have changed their mind about local government. They tried to finish it off last time they were in power. This time they might just succeed.

STEPHEN JACKSON

Second Avenue, Bexhill

The spirit of Dunkirk

The poem a little late for the fateful day, but I am nearly 90 now and not very well - sorry.

Three score and ten years ago

A British army beseiged, seemingly out of reach,

Wounded, lost and nowhere to go,

Stranded on a foreign beach:

In rain called for aid

But there was not to come

The French their final effort made,

Only the sea could bring them home;

Ah the ships, those little ships!

Shepherded by the Navy then

Made numerous perilous trips

To save hundreds of heroic men;

The British are an island race,

Its Navy supreme, second to none,

Dressed overall set out to face

The triumphant Hun;

They saved an Army, now seasoned in War,

Licked its wounds to rejoin the fight,

More determined than before

And supported by the Empire's might;

Victory came after long and tortuous war

For Germany was strong and well prepared,

And with Japan withstood three great Nations before

Yielding, and peace was won everywhere.

Dr Whitlock

Knole Road

Bexhill

Constabulary reunion event

Might it be possible for you to give a mention in your columns on occasions to our eighth reunion of former members of the East Sussex Constabulary?

It is scheduled for Saturday, September 4 from 12noon to 4pm at Barnsgate Manor, Herons Ghyll, East Sussex, which is on the west side of the A26, a little over halfway from Uckfield to Crowborough.

There is ample parking space.

The cost will be 18.50 per person, which includes a substantial buffet and the bar will be open throughout.

Cheques payable to East Sussex Reunion may be sent to me, care of Battle Police Station.

All former members of the East Sussex Constabulary, whatever their function, including widows and close relatives, are welcome.

Frank Perchard

London Road

Battle