OTTERPOOL IN PRIVATE EYE / MONK, MASTER OF THE GREAT UNTRUTH AND NOW THE INSULTER-IN-CHIEF

Dear Residents, 

It appears that opposition to the proposed 12,000 dwelling housing estate that Shepway DC are calling Otterpool Park New Town has attracted the attention of a journal that pulls no punches: PRIVATE EYE. Regular readers of Private Eye will be familiar with the Rotten Boroughs section, so will come as no surprise that Shepway DC are appropriately placed.

Shepwayvox has just issued the 'post' below:

Delusional Tories in a Rotten Borough, you decide.

Posted on December 21, 2016 // 0 Comments

Recently, at a meeting of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee, Cllr Mary Lawes (UKIP) (pictured) called the Tory led chamber 'Delusional' on three occasions.  This week in the Folkestone & Hythe Express (Pages 6&7) there is an interview with Cllr David Drury Monk, a former failed double glazing salesman. Nowhere in that interview (by Sue Mott) does it bother to challenge Cllr Monk. Nowhere does it ask critical or penetrating questions. What was the purpose of the piece? To be balanced, or just to give air to the fact that Cllr Monk called Princes Parade 'a Dog's Toilet' and that Hythe is 'full of retired army personnel… who need something to do.'. Is this Journalism or the trashing of the local people?

On Otterpool Park, SDC have failed to inform the public that the third party in SDC's initial collaboration agreement is Investors in Private Capital Ltd  (who have donated nearly half a million to the Conservatives), who are the guarantors, but who are owned by Wellington Estates Ltd a company registered in the low tax jurisdiction of the British Virgin Islands. It must have slipped their mind. Why didn't the Folkestone & Hythe Express bother to ask any questions about this?

In stark contrast in this edition of Private Eye, Rotten Boroughs section (pg 18) (see below) we note that they raise the issue of concreting over Otterpool Park and how both parties will make an 'astronomical windfall', once SDC have granted themselves planning permission.

There is no conspiracy as Cllr Monk claims. Dr Priest's expenses make it abundantly clear that the idea of a garden town was on SDC's mind. Also Mr Lainton's article on his blog states:

"I welcome that Shepway Council has accepted my proposal from March of last year (2015) that around Sellinge in Kent was an excellent location for a Garden City"

He states in an earlier post entitled:

'The Spill' – London Needs Some Large #GardenCities to Meet its Booming Need – and Heres Where they Could Go

"On the section of the HS1 track around Westernhanger there is a large area of countryside outside the AONB where the A20 has lots of spare capacity after the construction of the M20. The countryside is below the usual exceptional quality for Kent and development here could serve as overspill for the otherwise highly constrained Kent Coast towns and AONB/Greensand Ridge (considered rightly by locals as just as important – I declare an interest I grew up along it) towns and villages."

So, are the Conservative led SDC administration delusional as Cllr Lawes said. Or, as Cllr Susie Govett (UKIP) (pictured) mentioned last night at Planning & Licensing Committee, over half that committee belonged in a residential home for the elderly; Possibly, but we'll leave you to decide that.

And do we think there is a conspiracy? Certainly not. We just want the former double glazing salesman to put all the facts on the table, then people can make more informed decisions.

Shepwayvox