Shock - High Peak Planning Officer rejects crackpot scheme

You may remember our post some time back about local impresario Trevor Mooney's plan to build a golf driving range on Dinting. Well, he's been re-treading the boards with his 'Del Boy spurned by local authority' act once again, in both of last week's local papers (Glossop Chronicle & Glossop Advertiser).

In a bizarre change to High Peak Borough Council's usual policy of carving up the landscape through the area, his plan has been rejected by an officer. What is of interest is that both articles suggest that this is only because they'd want him to have floodlighting and buildings, and he makes it clear that - luckily - he isn't prepared to pay for that.

Another interesting point is Mooney's clear ignorance about what an understanding & care for the environment entails in this quote:

"They (HPBC) also say the area is a wildlife site and needs protecting yet the field next to us is mown every week. Our field is full of knotweed and we are prepared to eradicate that for the golf range"

In Mooney's world, a Golf Course is good because it's a green space. Anyone who knows more about the environment than this pleb is aware that they are entirely artificial and highly environmentally damaging. Since they consist largely of huge sections of turf they are ecological 'desert' requiring huge amounts of water to keep them alive.

Mooney also rather childishly seems to think that mowing grass will kill all the little insects and mice who live there, and that has to be bad for the environment.

In Mooney's world, there are good plants and bad plants. For him, the environment is something to be tamed and controlled (which may go someway to explaining his semi-conscious analogy of his being a stranger in the 'Wild West' that the Chronicle article suggests). Of course, this could well be because he's a keen gardener, a leisure activity originally promoted in the nineteenth century by a ruling class very keen on social control in a time of huge social upheavals and class conflict. The Bourgeoisie do so like their little boxes with labels where everything will fit neatly, and the world can simply be divided into good and bad, and knotweed is clearly bad (despite being an important food source for butterflies and moths).

So it's golf or moths. I know which I prefer.

But Mooney does ask an important question which requires an answer:

"if is open countryside and designated, then why did they let me turn the field right next to it into a car park?"

Indeed, why did they?

Forewarned is forearmed

Are our suspicions about Trevor Mooney's plans for Dinting Road being confirmed? A visitor to the blog today is worth taking notice of.

Regus provide 'commercial real estate' for companies. In other words, if you're a business and want to rent an office and facilities, they provide it. Let their own words tell you a bit more of what they're about:

Companies of all sizes use Regus solutions to reduce costs and remove the burden of property ownership and management and to have a workplace to suit however they want to work.

Today, more than half of the Fortune 500, along with thousands of small- and medium-sized companies, are outsourcing some part of their office requirements to Regus.

Regus office space, meeting rooms, training rooms and conference rooms are located at premier addresses in city centers, central business districts or business parks with convenient access to major airports or public transportation.

Regus...maintains an aggressive growth strategy.

Regus Group plc is registered in England with company number 4868977 and its registered office is at 3000 Hillswood Drive, Chertsey, Surrey KT16 0RS, UK.

And the latter address confirms it's our visitor, if you look at the detailed search engine results. Their search term in Google? - "brownfield site in Dinting". Trevor Mooney must be licking his lips.

With all this local hostility to SCC, Rossington Park and the Bypass, we wonder if they know what they're letting themselves in for?

The dangers of Dinting Road

Over the past few weeks, the Glossop Chronicle featured several articles by the pro-bypass journalist David Jones, both focusing on Dinting Road, between Glossop and Hadfield.

The first article was a feature about the latest instalment in the saga that is the 'Park & Ride' next to Dinting Railway Station. A businessman, Trevor Mooney, has blighted the area with this useless lump of tarmac and was moaning in the article that High Peak Borough Council have withdrawn permission to use it for Car Boot sales on Sundays. Apparently, he has had a premonition that the car park is doomed. There have been a succession of similar articles like this over the past few months - Mooney is eager to portray himself as an honest-to-goodness businessman (there's an oxymoron - as well as a moron - in there somewhere) hamstrung by bureaucracy. But the truth is more complex than that.

Firstly, prior to the construction of this park and ride, no one parked their cars halfway down Dinting Road. The mere fact that it was free to park on it for the first few weeks meant that the selfish idiots that now leave their vehicles down the road knew about it in the first place because of the car park (that they no longer use). Where do these people live? If it's near to Glossop - walk to the Railway station there and use it. The same for Hadfield. Surely if you live within 15 minutes of Dinting Station, you can walk? Is it really too much trouble?

That aside, these individuals are creating a very dangerous situation on Dinting Road. The vehicles are parked on one side of the road, from the top of a blind summit which snakes round a bend to nearly halfway down the road. If you're using the road in either direction, you have to hope that no-one is travelling at more than 40 mph (the speed limit on the road) and is paying a lot of attention to the route - it's even more precarious at night and in bad weather. With lorries from the nearby quarry travelling hell-for-leather (time is money) down the hill leaving mud all over the road surface, it is a dangerous route: and all the more so now for Mooney's useless car park.

But the fact his car park is not used suits his plans. Why? Well because after his development, it's now a brownfield site, so he can build on it. If his little venture fails, he'll move on to something else - either 'developing ' it himself or selling it on to someone else who will. As local people know, one of the great things about the Hadfield side of Dinting Road is the view from the Station across land which is unfarmed and uncultivated - and therefore very ecologically diverse. Mooney has done his bit to ruin it.

And over the last two weeks, we've seen Mooney in the Chronicle and the Glossop Advertiser again. His latest wheeze is to promote an idea to build a Golf Driving Range adjoining his car park. Jesus Christ! But hang on - didn't he once have the same wheeze about Wimberry Hill, above Hadfield? And there are rumours flying that there's a link up between Mooney and another businessman who made a Cemetery Road in Glossop a muddy deathtrap for weeks owing to earthworks they created for some ill-fated project a few years back.

Reading these articles, you could almost close your eyes and remember the time when Chris Woodward used to occupy the Chronicle virtually every other week. At one point, that charming individual plumbed the depths by using racism - he threatening to allow Gypsies to park on land he owned that HPBC had refused planning permission for. In a similar way, clad in his undertaker's jacket, Mooney is prone to portraying himself as the victim and using the local press at every opportunity. Who knows what depths he'll eventually plumb to keep his Slobodan Milošević-like fizzog in the local rag.

If anything, High Peak BC have not hindered this moron - they have in fact helped him to create this situation in the first place. Why did they allow his car park to be developed? This crew are continually making idiotic decisions about the environment in the area. Where will it end?

Another recent feature penned by David Jones highlights the hazardous nature of Dinting Road to schoolchildren who have to cross it to get to Hadfield School. They have for years - but now the road is recognised as being far more dangerous. All owing to Mooney - and High Peak BC.

But wait - one of those moaning about the road is Andrew Byford. Remember him? Is this the same guy that had his (best left in the loft) ideas for a Glossop Bypass and plugged them in the local papers earlier this year. So he wants less traffic now?

That's the trouble with the 'leading advocates' of this road, like Jones and to a much-lesser Byford (who is also a Neighbourhood Watch coordinator - thank god!) is that they live in a world full of contradictions. They want less traffic and less congestion, but more roads (is there such a thing as a new road that remains unused by traffic?). They want to shout about the special place that Glossop and the High Peak are (or increasingly were), but froth at the mouth with excitement about the plans of developers whose business plans bring nothing to the area that enhances the environment - and on the contrary makes it worse to inhabit.