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I am resident on Western Heights, at the very base of the Heights at any rate, and go up there daily to get to town by way of the Christchurch steps.
My full support for the residents of Bradden, whose village is in danger of mass urbanisation, a selling off of the Heights in order to get some money that supposedly would regenerate the area??? Sorry! No understand! This is ridiculous to say the least.
With hundreds of new houses we'd have hundreds more cars transiting daily along Military Road. I don't know if anyone who says they are competent on the area actually realises how dangerous Military Road would be, with all its curves, for people walking along the Heights.
Try crossing over the road, it's just sheer guess work. All you know is that traffic is not common, so you cross. There would be fatal accidents galore once DDC converted the area into another mad building scheme..
Of-course they won't consult the residents, see Whitfield and Sholden. What DDC calls consultation is just to impose an already made decision!!!
Can someone explain to me how the building of houses there would create funds for the upkeep of the moats and barracks??? This is sheer fantasy! One has NOTHING to do with the other in the most absolute sense.
And does anyone think that by building hundreds of houses there, local residents will go out and guard the lower part of Military Road - Saint John Ambulance - Jehova's Witnesses area - against fly-tippers? Do me a favour! There are houses there, but fly-tipping goes on all the same.
If you want to stop fly tipping, place a warden there, with powers to make fines! Works out much cheaper.
If you want to repair a moat wall, just repair it, don't build hundreds of houses. What reasoning is that, to mass urbanise to keep up a moat wall???
If you want to repair a disused barrack, just repair it! Does anyone in their right mind believe that building hundreds of dwellings will magically regenerate a disused barrack???
Am I missing something?
I know the area off by heart, used to roam around there as a lad, picking black-berries, playing with my mates in abandoned allotments, raiding abandoned apple orchards...but the only vandalism consists in graffiti on metal doors in the moats.
I mean... as a decorator, I say... just give these doors a paint over once in a blue moon!
Doesn't take more than 20 minutes.
As for this war memorial thing, I'd rather see a monument to all British sailors who sailed the seas. To those who sailed to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, the Far East.
I brought this proposal up on the Forum before.
No-one in Britain has ever made a memorial to the centuries of English and British sailors, many of whom suffered terribly too for their work.
In contrast, war memorials to commemorate wars with the Germans are found all over Britain.
We must move on! Are we still at war with Germany or what???