Tony Vickers in a letter to the Newbury Weekly News today states that my decision to stand will achieve nothing other than to split the opposition. He could never be more wrong. I am standing on more than just an anti-Sandleford ticket, and my decision to stand is because I can appeal cross party, a concept the Lib Dems will never understand as they squat in their party bunker.
The Sandleford campaign was never a party issue and I probably receive more support from erstwhile Conservative voters than I do from Lib Dems. Many Conservative supporters are deeply unhappy that their two ward councillors, Adrian Edwards and Howard Bairstow voted according to party lines for the development. Indeed it is unfortunate that the Lib Dems decided to put up a couple of paper candidates in the Falkland Ward – because the party has to be seen to have candidates in every ward – a decision that will split the anti-Sandleford ticket.
And I would like to correct a couple of points that Tony makes about The SayNoToSandleford campaign. It is correct that before I got involved this was a LibDem initiative and that in the early days I was reliant on the research that they provided. However I took the campaign forward and when I sat through 5 days of Planning Inspector hearings the case I put forward was based on research from many quarters, my own research, those of the supporters to the campaign who were cross party as well as data from the Lib Dems.
It is a far cry from the claim he makes that “the entire campaign 2010-12 depended on research and documentation by Lib Dem councillors like myself”. The Lib Dems provided nothing on the role NRFC played in providing a vital access route for the approval process or the breach of Sport England’s guidelines in doing so. It was research from the likes of Tony Hammond and Richard Page that provided us ammunition on traffic projections and their continued work is providing further data with which we question the Council’s plans regarding the inadequacy of infrastructure. It was my own research that uncovered early planning documents that argued for access to the A339 that could not be put before the Planning Inspector as it might question the deliverability of the scheme. An issue that is now very current as the landowners fall out with the Council on exactly this point.
It is true Julian Swift-Hook was invaluable in providing the website support behind us (and he still does) but otherwise the LibDems took a back seat and rightly so: as I said right at the outset that if I was to be involved it had to be a non-partisan campaign, and that was also why the LibDems supported my heading up the campaign, because I was and am non partisan.
It is therefore sad that Tony chooses this moment to drag a non-partisan campaign into the maelstrom of party politics and I note that in their Focus “Sandleford Special” the Lib Dems seek to piggy back on our campaign even using one of our protest walks as a photo for their literature. I have been scrupulous in keeping the SayNoToSandleford campaign out of my literature and other than informing supporters of my decision to stand and reasons behind it have kept the two apart. I wish the LibDems could do the same as they are tainting the non-partisan nature of the campaign which is deeply damaging.
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