Bungalows: the people have spoken

In a packed meeting of over 100 people at Velmore Chapel, organised by the Residents Association, the people of Velmore gave a resounding “NO” to the plans of Atlantic Housing Association.

AHA wish to demolish all 123 bungalows on the estate and build 120 flats, 78 houses and just 37 two bedroom bungalows. Where do they expect bungalow dwellers to go? Into flats like the ones shown on this page? We support the Residents Association in their endeavours to stop these plans and say “Think again, AHA.”

Bungalows give more domestic contentment than any other type of home, more than penthouse flats and even country mansions in the nation’s affections, according to a survey by Halifax.
Atlantic Housing is a “not for profit” company who should be seeking the wellbeing of residents and the whole community, not making money out of cramming as many homes into the area as possible.


What is our council doing to Eastleigh?

Local Liberal democrat councillors may say it is a disgrace to rip the heart out of Velmore in newsletters. Yet some of these councillors will sit on the very local area committee that will consider and eventually determine these applications.

Eastleigh Borough Council’s Liberal Democrats hold 34 out of 44 seats on the council. They are committed to granting planning permission for between 615 and 720 houses on brownfield sites in the Borough this year, next year and right up to 2011 and then building similar numbers of dwellings on greenfield sites.


What is wrong with the plan?

• It fails to take into account the needs and desires of local residents.


• It does not offer existing bungalow dwellers a chance to continue living on the estate in a bungalow.


• It seeks to move people (such as a blind 94 year old) from their homes.


• Overdevelopment. In Kent Road 6 bungalows will be demolished and 32 two bedroom flats will be constructed.


• Lack of car parking facilities. In Westfield Crescent there are plans for 24 new dwellings but only 18 car parking places, including 8 for registered disabled. Where will the remainder of cars be parked and where will visitors park?


• More parking problems. The bungalows on Belmont Road will be demolished and be replaced by houses. Car parking places will be behind thehouses on the service roads. Experience elsewhere in the Borough suggeststhat they are often not used as home owners and visitors park on the road. So there is likely to be double parking on Belmont road, which is already heavily used at rush hours.


• Worsening traffic flow around the borough at rush hour. Firms are moving out of Eastleigh because it can take an hour to travel a couple of miles.


• Overloading of Eastleigh’s Sewers. In the Autumn of 2006 the Eastleigh sewers overflowed 3 times in certain roads discharging untreated sewage into the road. With another 120 dwellings coming on stream the situation is likely to get worse.

What the Conservatives propose

• Preparation of an overall plan for the estate.


• A phased development over 7-10 years.


• No-one over 75 should be expected to move unless they wish.


• Start with an area where most properties are vacant building 2 bedroom bungalows. Tese would be offered exclusively to existing bungalow dwellers who are prepared to move.


• Slowly replace all the bungalows with new bungalows. Make most two bedroom.


• Build some bungalows with small private back gardens and some with communal gardens. Build bungalows around courtyards with central parking to maintain a sense of community.


• Build at least as many bungalows as are currently on the estate. Only then consider building houses or flats.


• If demand is proven, sheltered housing similar to Surrey Court should be built.


• Provide abundant off road parking in front of the houses, not behind.


• All social facilities to be provided by AHA as the redevelopment takes place.


• Improve the sewage system and the road system before these or any more house are built in Chandlers Ford and Eastleigh.

Is Politics dead?

By Mark Greene Christianity p 56-58, December 2005

For far too long programmes like Question time and Any Questions have been treated by politicians as opportunities to take pot shots at the opposition: ”When you were in power”, “When we were in power”, “Not our fault, it was you.” All this sounds like a pair of ten year olds squabbling round the dinner table over who was to blame for spilling the milk. I’m all for snap crackle and pop in debate, but what we have is nit, pick and squabble. And “squabbletics” is simply wearisome.

Similarly, the political interview, a genre whose tone is increasingly infected by Paxman’s reductive gladiatorial style has, as I have written before in Christianity, been reduced to a verbal fight

In which the politician’s chief aim seems to be to avoid getting bludgeoned by the interviewer. Paxo is all onion and no sage and has poisoned all political conversation with the sulphur of suspicion.

………………………………………………………………..

How on earth, for example, can a Labour party apparently concerned for the poor countenance the further development of a gambling culture which has already been shown, like the lottery, to aggravate the plight of the poor in every country that has a lottery?

How can the party that cries “Education, education, education” possibly pursue its policy of closing grammar schools in Northern Ireland when their results at GCSE and A level continue to outperform the rest of the country and when the comprehensive system has signally failed to produce the social mobility that it was designed to deliver?

Kind Words won’t fix a terminally ill NHS

By Liz Hunt, Daily Telegraph 30 Dec 2006

Ten years after Tony Blair claimed there were only 24 hours to save it, and following billions of extra investment (from £34 billion in 1997 to £81 billion this year), the system that we see lurching from crisis to crisis is surely teetering on the brink.

Across England and Wales, hospitals are struggling to balance budgets by shedding jobs and shutting wards. At the same time, morale among staff, the health service's most precious resource, is rock bottom. Restructuring of training – Modernising of Medical Careers – was initially welcomed, but has been badly implemented. It could result in as many as 11,500 junior doctors being out of work or in dead-end jobs. Despite a national shortage of physiotherapists, 90 per cent of graduates couldn't get a post this year. Half of the newly qualified nurses, four out of 10 radiographers, eight out of 10 new speech and language therapists and two thirds of midwifery graduates are in the same boat. And all this after the Government invested heavily in training and increased recruitment.

Then again, the hallmark of New Labour is incompetence, waste and short-termism, and nowhere is that more evident at the end of 2006 than in the NHS.