Longdendale Labour Party member breaks ranks on Mottram Tesco

Today's Tameside Reporter contains a letter from a Mr S Naz, voicing concerns about the proposed new Mottram Tesco store. We'll reproduce the letter in full below:

It'll cause chaos

Disgrace! That is the opinion of 99 per cent of people I have spoken to in regard to the plans that have been put forward for a new Tesco Extra on Stockport Road, Hattersley (at Mottram roundabout opposite the Macdonalds). 

How, after decades of campaigning for a bypass due to severe traffic congestion in our area, can we allow this to happen?

This is one of the THE traffic hotspots in the UK. To build this store in this location would make the traffic situation much worse, leading to misery for thousands of commuters every day.

For the promise of around 200 jobs for local people? How can you balance that equation?

The other thing to consider is that there are small retailers in the Longdendale villages of Hollingworth, Mottram, Broadbottom and Hattersley whose livelihoods will be under severe threat from this development, some of whom will close forever.

Tesco will not hold out the hand of friendship to those local people and offer them compensation for the loss of their income and the goodwill of their businesses. These small business owners have invested their life savings, redundancy money and taken out huge loans to buy their businesses. 

How many people working in these businesses will become unemployed?

Balance that against the number of jobs on offer! When the 80 per cent of local residents in Hattersley said 'yes' to the superstore, were they made aware of the repercussions?

How man residents in Hattersley attended the meetings in Hattersley? And why were the residents of all Longdendale not made fully aware of these meetings and why were they not held at times when a larger representation of residents could attend?

It makes me wonder; how about you?

Now many of the points of concern is Mr Naz's letter are things that we've been pointing out for some time. But what makes this more interesting is Mr Naz's political affiliations: we are reliably informed that he is a member of Longdendale Labour Party. Not only that, he is a delegate to the Constituency Labour Party. Now we can't assume that everyone within Longdendale Labour Party is in favour of the Tesco development, but we can assume that Roy Oldham is, since it was under his administration that the deal was done to bring this Hypermarket to the area, in return for the regeneration that is linked to it. No doubt Roy losing power has made members more confident to speak their minds. Has Mr Naz put his head on the chopping block, or will others now speak out?

Labour, Conservative & Liberal Democrat High Peak candidates declare war on their constituency

Well, we did promise to examine last week's High Peak Radio hustings in more detail, so we're returning to dissect the words of the three main candidates that featured in that debate (the audio is once again at the bottom on the post) - Labour's Caitlin Bisknell, the Liberal Democrat Alistair Stevens and the Tory Andrew Bingham.

47 seconds in, the debate turns to the housing targets imposed by the Government of the East Midlands upon High Peak Borough Council. All three candidates turn this into a call for affordable housing, but readers need to be aware that this is coded language and does not necessarily mean the same thing as Social Housing (which is actually being slowly dismantled), with affordable housing actually meaning affordable to those on an average wage, something which those in most need of housing can only dream about. It also increasingly means that these homes are 'shared ownership' (i.e. mixed mortgage/rent), a sector which is currently somewhat problematic given the complete lack of mortgages available to anyone on a low income (something which is likely to continue long into the future). In addition, readers should know that the housing targets specify that only a small proportion of the planned units must be 'affordable'.

Thus what we're seeing here is an attempt to justify large scale development on Greenbelt land for a 'projected need', and not necessarily current need, which could arguably be accommodated by the occupation of existing empty homes and the use of recognisably brownfield sites.

The contributions can be summarised thus: Bisknell calls for building on the Green Belt (contrary to local development plans), Stevens thinks the targets aren't high enough (but then he's an estate agent!) and calls for a political united front.

At 2:28, the issue of Cowdale Quarry is raised. In essence, this is a crackpot scheme which, on the surface, seeks to turn a long disused Quarry (over 62 years) into a bottled water plant, but is actually an asset-stripping environmental outrage. Both Bingham and Bisknell decline to comment on the basis that a planning decision has yet to be made, and if they are not elected as the High Peak candidate, as members of the Council they have to make a decision about it.

Which is interesting. Because keen readers will also know that the planning permission awarded by HPBC for the High Peak end of the Glossop Spur has now expired and, if Roy Oldham and Co. are serious, will need to be renewed again in future. Since later in the debate, they both declared enthusiasm for Bypass 2.0, we can only assume they have prejudiced this application.

At 3:39, we get a long rant from all three candidates about the need for Bypass 2.0. Bisknell's support seems not exactly unequivocal, but she goes on to mention the need for a Bypass for Fairfield near Buxton, which is a new one on us ('No Fairfield Bypass' anyone?). Bingham refers to Bypass 2.0 as the 'Glossopdale Bypass', and speaks in favour of it, but makes no promises about funding, saying he will 'fight very hard' for it if elected - Game On then Tweedledumber! The Estate Agent agrees.

The final section is the one we mentioned in our last post - yes, it's our question which we emailed in (though High Peak Radio chose not to mention that, or the blog), and it went as follows:

The 3 main candidates go on and on about reducing Carbon emissions, yet they all support the construction of a Bypass, along the lines of the discredited Longdendale Bypass, but now through Mottram and down into Glossop. The old plan would have seen Carbon emissions increase in this area by 15,000 tons each year. Doesn't this make a nonsense of their claims to be 'environmentally friendly'? Surely the best way to be green is not to pollute the area with more traffic and CO2?

And of course we then had Alistair Stevens telling us to 'get real' because the road would be used for 'green cars' (apparently powered by wind turbines). He must know about these things, after all he's an Estate Agent...

That just about wraps up our little contribution to the 2010 General Election. Just remember: whoever you vote for, the government always gets in. Voting for any of this lot ensures business as usual, which also means a war on the local environment, and that's a war that will not go unanswered in the years to come.