Opinion

Ian Cooling’s claim in his election leaflet

We hadn’t planned to run anything about the Wye election here. This website has never set out to tell anyone how to think let alone vote. All we have tried to do is bring you some truths, often ones which those who supported Imperial College in its effort to destroy the community of Wye last year have fought hard to keep hidden.

However, the statements made by the sitting Wye borough councillor Ian Cooling in his efforts to get re-elected are at such variance with what we believe to be the reality of events it would be remiss of us not to remind you of a few salient and proven facts. Not our facts, but those of the losing parties in last year’s campaign, in their own words.

Councillor Cooling says, in his election literature, that he fought against Wye Park and in the end, ‘My lobbying was successful and the plan was dropped.’ This is news indeed to those of us on the front line last year. Here, from official reports and documents, some gained through lengthy Freedom of Information procedures, others leaked from inside Wye Park, are some things you may wish to raise with Ian Cooling should he turn up on your doorstep.

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The Kentish Express has resolutely refused to cover any of the latest scandalous revelations about how our councils clubbed together with Imperial College to try to destroy Wye. But it can still find time to let people take stupid pops over the biggest environmental victory seen pretty much anywhere in the United Kingdom this year. And this week, I’m proud to say, the target is none other than me!

A few weeks ago a self-publicising academic called Professor Richard Scase was quoted at enormous length over two separate articles in the KE delivering what I and many others thought was an extraordinarily insulting and inaccurate broadside against the people of Wye. In it he decried us all as backward, selfish Nimbies motivated by self interest at the expense of the economic well-being of the county as a whole.

Clearly, then, he didn’t understand the first thing about what had actually happened over Wye Park, or had read any of the documents — Imperial’s own — leaked here which outlined the college’s real intentions. Today I find myself labelled a ‘psychological bully’ and an enemy of a ‘free and democratic’ society in a letter he’s written to the KE replying to my original missive pointing out the hapless chap doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I have written a brief rejoinder to this strange little item but given the paper’s recent record when it comes to things that matter I’ve no idea whether it will appear.

What certainly won’t feature in its pages is a little more background on Richard Scase. For this, please read on, since it’s proof once again that we live in a county where who you know is a lot more important than the hopes and wishes of the electorate.

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With every turn of this astonishing tale, you wonder if it could all get any worse. As the latest round of secret documents to be released, very reluctantly, by our local authorities demonstrate, the story of the failed Wye Park scheme represents a shocking indictment of the state of local government in the county of Kent.

And what does your local newspaper, the Kentish Express, think of these extraordinary revelations? Don’t waste your money buying a copy because we can tell you. They don’t merit a single word.

Why? Because this is a story the power brokers of Kent want to bury for good, and the KE is one of the many jaded baubles they own. They know there is only one word that fits the tawdry tale that has emerged these past nine months as Imperial’s grandiose scheme to turn the village of Wye into a small town has steadily crumbled to dust: corruption. This insane adventure, intended simply to raise £100 million in cash for Imperial while it simultaneously disengaged itself from the now-ruined Wye College it swallowed only six years ago, is the true face of 21st century sleaze. And if you want to do something about it, you’re going to have to start writing a letter or two yourself, since your local papers have been very firmly gagged on the subject.
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Today’s KE rolls into one splash the cut in Eurostar services at Ashford (bad news), the council u-turn on Wye Park (good news), and more delays on the Stour Centre opening (no news at all). Can you see the connection?

What is it with the Kentish Express? Week in, week out it resolutely ignores the biggest scandal in the Ashford borough for years despite save-wye’s publication of plans, minutes, emails and other documents showing the scale of the deceit that lay behind the concordats signed by our glorious leaders last year. Even when the KM Group’s only serious opposition — Kent on Sunday — published a copy of Imperial’s masterplan after it received its first public airing here, the Ashford paper resolutely refused to cover this story. When challenged by readers, its editor, Leo Whitlock, protested that if it hadn’t been for his paper, the signing of the concordat would never have received the publicity that it did on December 8.

Then, when Ashford Borough Council drops Wye Park from the local development framework and its leader distances himself from the project, up pops the Kentish Express’s veteran chief reporter, Mike Bennett, with a whole page on how the project might be in doubt. I don’t go a bomb on secret plots and grassy knolls because I have a thing called a life, but I’m beginning to wonder.
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The village spirit we will not lose. A view of Wye by Steve Bloom

The tanks are still on our lawn, their guns spiked, their turrets empty. The Sykes army has all but departed in silence, knowing the war is lost and wondering what to do next. Imperial College’s grandiose and extraordinary ambitions for the green fields of Wye now lie in tatters, waiting only for someone to come along and sweep away the torn remains of the so-called Concordats. And then?

If there is a shred of decency remaining in this aloof London university, a recognition somewhere that communities and indeed Imperial’s own employees in the village deserve, finally, consideration and respect then, surely, this: Imperial must face reality and start to tell us the truth.

In spite of the spin that has been reeled off to local authorities and gullible politicians, Imperial has been planning its exit from Wye for some time, since it long ago decided it would not provide what we wanted most of all: an active university college in the village. What we know now is that this departure will largely be on our terms, not its. Instead of leaving with £100 million in its pockets, it will scuttle back to London with its tail between its legs and whatever quick profits it can glean from selling off easily disposable assets. Today, for the first time, we can reveal this retreat has been under consideration from Imperial for some time.

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With Ashford Borough Council’s about turn on the LDF wording, Imperial’s buccaneering boat has been holed beneath the water-line and its plans to loot a large chunk of cash by despoiling our beloved countryside through covering it with millions of tons of steel and concrete, manufacturing resources and a plethora of housing, have been well and truly scuppered. As with all sinking vessels its rodent hoi polloi have a connate tendency to save their furry skins by abandoning ship — not unlike the recent flight from the concordat of a certain local politician — expect a rush of others shortly. Read the rest of this entry »

Imperial never understood this… but it’s the countryside that matters. So why can’t a deal be cut that preserves Wye’s green heart, and allows some modest development in the village itself?

What a difference nine months make. At the turn of this year most of us in Wye assumed that Imperial and its council backers would get their way. The only question was how badly the reality would be and how quickly the bulldozers would turn up.

Today, the battle for Wye is scarcely over, but the massed ranks of the Sykes army are in disarray and retreat. The rank duplicity of their manipulation of the public planning process is now out in the open for all to see. Potential backers in national government are standing back and distancing themselves from the entire affair. And today Wye’s borough councillor, Ian Cooling, became the first local Tory politician to back publicly the growing calls for an independent inquiry into what has gone over Wye Park.

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Many years ago I possessed a rubber brick for throwing at the telly when it annoyed me. Somehow it got lost which is a shame because fifteen minutes into the programme on Wye, in the Perfect Village series, I was screaming for something, anything to lob across the room.

Not that this was the fault of Ptolemy Dean, the nice sounding conservation architect chap who fronted the series. He apparently grew up in Wye, loves the place, and, reading between the lines, hates what Imperial wish to do with it. Quite why he never actually said as much baffles me, and I suspect many viewers who watch him drooling over the beautiful interiors of the college itself ought to have been told, also, that these days, under the Imperial regime, the uniformed security people will stop them being enjoyed by the general public.

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One of the great myths of the Wye Park saga is the idea that the opinions of ordinary people don’t matter, that the question of whether a content rural community should be destroyed forever is to be decided by the experts on both sides of the argument.

We have long argued here at save-wye that this is a grave mistake, and pretty downright insulting for those who don’t have time to take part in long meetings and campaign groups. The power of public opinion is real, provided the public can be bothered to express it. Well, now is your chance. For the time it takes to write a letter and the cost of a postage stamp you just might help bury Imperial’s monstrous masterplan to destroy the Wye we know forever.

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One thing at least is clear from the continuing farrago of Wye Park: the reputation of Ashford Borough Council as an independent arbiter in development matters is in tatters. The signing of the secret Concordat backing Imperial’s ambitions, the revelation here that the college was actively shaping the wording of the Local Development Framework before it had gone in front of councillors and Paul Clokie’s consistent haranguing of all opposition and blind support for Imperial have all destroyed any illusion that this local authority could make an impartial judgement on an application for a road sign from Imperial, let alone a £1.5 billion development.

The consequences of this are no longer simply a question for Wye but affect the borough as a whole. If a local authority is seen to be visibly biased in a project that could affect the lives of thousands of its residents — and it is hard to view Wye Park in any other light — local democracy ceases to exist. That is a plain fact and one which is surely recognised by all councillors — whatever their political persuasion — apart from the handful, perhaps just Cllr Clokie himself, who seem determined to back Imperial whatever the circumstances, however vague and contradictory the noises the college makes about its grandiose intentions.

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Alan Paterson writes…

It’s worth reminding ourselves of some of the main points of the Concordat Paul Carter as Leader of KCC, and Paul Clokie as Leader of ABC signed with Imperial last 6th December.

Amongst the ‘Collective Goals’ are the creation of world-class facilities for scientific research, administrative facilities, social and leisure facilities and housing of an appropriate range to cater for a broad spectrum of householders. The project is referred to as ‘Wye Park’ and has the potential to deliver at least 12,500 high quality jobs in the wider Ashford area. Under ‘Funding’ there is the statement that ‘The local authorities recognise that some of that funding will need to be derived from Imperial College’s landholding at Wye’. All these details are clearly set out in the agreement.

Any number of us from Wye were present on 23rd March when Cllr Clokie declared that at the moment he signed the Concordat he believed Imperial’s intention was merely to develop brownfield land.

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Local resident Rachael Moorhead has just sent this letter to Ashford Borough Council leader Paul Clokie. We will happily carry any reply…

I and many others in the Ashford and Wye areas are dismayed by your comments in the Kentish Express on 27th July begging for ‘a slice of the pie’ in the allocation of new houses despite Sir Terry Farrell’s transparently wise advice to favour developing/regenerating existing brownfield sites around East London where the necessary infrastructure already exists.

You said it was ‘a silly comment’ for Sir Terry to make. I think it is your own stance that is ’silly’ and worrying. Indeed, no ordinary decent folk would believe it preferable to concrete over greenfield sites and open countryside (around Ashford in this instance) when there are ready brownfield sites to be regenerated. It has been suggested that you are motivated by alliance with major developers for whatever reason. Judging by your track record and your present stance on the Wye ‘Science Park’ project, people say there can be no other explanation. I am unwilling to believe this and have therefore taken it upon myself to write to you for clarification. Why they say have you been at the heart of encouraging seas of new houses in Ashford without adequate roads, water and local amenities? Why are you bullying and attacking other councillors who dare question the development plans on the Wye Science Park project? These are just some of the questions commonly asked. I would welcome a full response but I regret to tell you that in the meantime, the community is troubled by many irregularities that involve your good name.

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Arnold the Endangered Newt writes…

As we all sizzle in 90F something degrees, railway lines buckle and tarmac sticks to our shoes, are you tempted to plunge into six feet of refreshing cold water? Or is that a silly question?

As generations of students, staff and Wye families fondly remember, we have traditionally cooled off together in the College’s outdoor pool. Wye in the summer used to be a happy place, but not this year. Though cheap and cheerful this basic 1960s facility enabled college and village to socialise during long hot summers. Instead in 2006 Imperial used its unerring nose for a PR disaster and did not even bother to fill the pool for their students. And we are told, it will stay closed, so there.

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We were pretty rude yesterday about Cllr Paul Clokie, the leader of Ashford Borough Council, for making a series of comments about the stalled Wye Park project that plumbed new depths of inanity even for his office. But you have to say this for the chap: he has at least said something. What about the rest of our public representatives? What do they have to say? Nothing, so far as we can work out. They are, it seems, content to let Imperial College, the organisation that has blighted Wye for the past nine months, decide when and how it will put the village out of its misery officially.

Many of you have asked us when, exactly, we expect to see some confirmation of the fact that the original Concordat is officially in the bin, and a few ideas about what nasties — lesser nasties, no doubt, but nasties all the same — are to take its place. The honest answer is: we don’t know. Imperial’s attitude towards the media — and by implication the public — has been to reiterate the same vacant, largely meaningless statement all along, one that doesn’t deny Wye Park is headed for the rocks, but merely falls back on the position that ‘no decision has been made’.

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The PR business has a lot of honest, hard-working individuals in it, people who are paid to propagate a particular point of view, and do it through persuasion, argument and a bit of old fashioned hoopla from time to time. But there is another side to PR these days, one invented, to a great extent, by an ex-journalist, Alastair Campbell. It is called spin and unless I am sadly mistaken we are about to be engulfed by it as Imperial College becomes ever more desperate to force through its grandiose, ugly ambitions for Wye.

If you want to understand what spin is just think of what happened in the unfortunate aftermath of the David Kelly affair, the sad tale of the government scientist who killed himself after being exposed — by the government — as the source of briefings to the BBC. That began as a story about the misgivings many in power felt about the war in Iraq, and the dreadful suicide of David Kelly himself.
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At the May 23rd lunch held at County Hall, organised by KCC leader Paul Carter, Sir Richard Sykes, Imperial’s rector, was reported as deriding the opposition to Imperial’s aspirations.

He dubbed the Wye Future Group a vocal minority made up of ‘middle class nimbies’ who can safely be ignored and that save-wye, is in the main, riddled with inaccuracies and run by ’a couple of amateurs. As for the Parish Council this was ‘floundering around’ with no clear idea of what it is doing. This invective is a rather feeble attempt by Sir Richard to ’spin ‘Imperial out of what in reality is exactly the opposite of these disingenuous remarks. Read the rest of this entry »

A concerned Wye resident with close associations with the College writes…

Sad to say, Wye villagers have constantly been reassured that, individually, they do not need to respond to the South East Plan (‘RSS’), a vital consultation process which closes at 5 p.m. this Friday, 23 June. The advice has repeatedly been given that the quantity of representations is less important at this stage in the planning process than quality. All that is required, we were told, is ‘a couple of really well-argued responses’, and Wye Parish Council and Wye Future Group will be writing them specifically for us.

It is therefore particularly interesting to see that, in this week’s Kentish Express (15 June, pages 26-27), London Ashford Airport Limited has paid for a complete two-page spread to urge people to “Say YES to Lydd Airport expansion” and one page even provides the form and wording to make such a representation. So why is the company doing this? The answer is that so many local residents of Lydd have responded previously to the South East Plan and have said NO to the expansion. Now the company has had to resort to desperate measures, and an expensive advertising campaign, to defend their commercial interests!

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There seems to be confusion abroad about what exactly this website is. A little local newspaper on the internet? The ramblings of a couple of blokes with nothing better to do? Or something even weirder than that… A conspiracy designed to throw a spanner into the works of the democratic process in Kent (wherever that happens to be lurking)?

No. It’s time to come clean. The horrible, shocking truth is this: save-wye is a blog. Yes, one of those curious things you hear geeky young people discussing sotto voce, without ever quite understanding what they were going on about. But this is important so please bear with me.

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The tree sparrow is now a ‘priority species’ in Kent

There’s a sentiment around in some places that says it’s not worth worrying too much about the wildlife. Newts and nightjars may need protection if Imperial gets its way, but they are not enough to halt the plan, and for that reason we should bury our heads in council papers and seek salvation in the minutiae of red tape.

You can see the argument. While Imperial may be a large organisation, full of decent people, many of whom hate the idea of damaging the countryside, you tend to suspect that, if a colony of albino unicorns were found happily playing away at the foot of the Downs, the regime of Richard Sykes would carry them off for a spot of lab testing then drive the bulldozers in regardless.

All the same endangered species do matter. They need protection; or, more accurately, we need public vigilance to ensure that they receive the protection national and European law gives them already. Just as important, they give people a visible symbol around which they can rally, and in campaigns like these symbols are vitally important.

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Demonise Ruth Kelly at your peril: she will still make the big decision

Wars — and make no mistake, the battle for Wye is a war of a kind — can be fought in several ways. Sometimes big, equally matched armies line up on the battlefield and slug it out face to face. On other occasions, one sizeable foe is attacked by a smaller enemy using guerilla tactics; hit-and-run attacks designed to demoralise, annoy and, in the end, persuade the larger party that the game isn’t worth the effort.

Imperial would love Wye to fight the first kind of battle, because with its seemingly bottomless pockets for property development — though not education — and its weight in governmental circles it will surely walk right over us, painting every protest as one more distant, outraged Nimby trying to avoid the 21st century. The village and its supporters, on the other hand, must surely know that the ways of the guerilla are the only ones to follow, because being small and nimble, vigilant and persistent, is surely the key to wearing down a foe who is already starting to look tired and grouchy and out of its depth.

And here is your guerilla thought for the day: is it possible that Ruth Kelly, the former education secretary who has just taken over responsibility for local government from the shamed John Prescott, might turn out to be the best friend Wye ever had?

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This site began as a place to discuss a curious and troubling development proposal in a small and lovely corner of Kent. Subtly, without our noticing, it has turned into something else, a discussion about the nature of power and politics, and how the relationship between the governors and the governed has become perilously fractured along the way.

When I say politics, I don’t mean, ‘vote this way or that’. This is, as one has to point out regularly, the 21st century. We no longer inhabit an island split down the middle between them and us, Labour and Tories, right and left. Though the parties themselves have yet to appreciate this, most of the electorate think outside the dogmatic boundaries which — on paper anyway — still appear to entrap those in Parliament, and perhaps even county and town halls.

For example, I quite like the idea of grammar schools, but I think the privatisation of British Rail was one of the most stupid government acts of the last twenty years (and that’s saying something). I think the war in Iraq was pretty idiotic too, and very possibly criminal, but I also happen to believe we pay for too much in the way of tax, often invisibly, using sleights of hand designed to disguise the astonishing amount of our earned income finding its way into the pockets of the state.

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A Resident writes…

Only one of the distinguished knights of the realm above seems to have the ability to organise a drinks party in a brewery. Five months on from the Concordat bombshell and the Imperial vision is still an ongoing communications and PR disaster. Even Damian Green MP said on Friday that he was ‘as confused as everyone else’ about Imperial’s plans.

He told a packed CPRE meeting that he did not know whether ‘the land take was 300 or 500 acres of AONB’. He added that ‘nobody knows, but it was clear that the biggest part of [Imperial's proposed] land take was for new houses’. If Imperial had a tight budget we would expect them to cut corners in their dealings with local people. Imperial’s problem is not a lack of money. The problem from the outset has been their arrogance.

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On 8 May, an ABC working group approved the first draft of a policy that will form the bedrock for the consideration of any planning application that Imperial College might be minded to submit for Wye. This draft will feed forward into the Core Strategy of the Local Development Framework (LDF). That document will be debated by ABC in August before going out to full consultation under the auspices of the Secretary of State in September.

This is a very important document for Wye. It is the first draft of the policy framework against which any proposals from Imperial will be tested. That policy is firmly rooted in planning legislation, particularly that which protects the AONB. It has long been my view that this legislation gives us the best foundation for our most effective defence against any extreme depredations by Imperial. In its final form, this policy will give direct local effect to the legislation in the specific context of Wye.

Read the paper here: Core strategy
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Biased, misleading, poorly executed: and you have just two weeks to take part

Dr Dylan Bradley, who has worked on many questionnaires for national governments, the European Union and private companies, makes an independent assessment of Imperial’s new ’survey’… and decides he won’t be taking part.

I am shocked by the poor quality of Imperial’s attempt at consultation on the Imperial ‘Campus Vision’ website. I feel that a number of issues need to be raised so that any results from this consultation are clearly placed in context.

I should add that I am not a member of any of the lobbying groups. But given that this is an internal Imperial consultation, and given the nature of the questions, I do not intend to complete the questionnaire. Any answers given in good faith could later be used by Imperial to support large scale development within the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Consultation carried out if a planning application were to go ahead would be larger scale, more rigorous and with a longer period in which to respond.
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Sir Sandy Bruce Lockhart, the flowing-locked former Kent County Council leader who signed the first secret Concordat last April, will shortly be going to the House of Lords. Everyone knows that people in that ‘other place’ often speak in riddles. But does Sir Sandy really have to start now, before he’s even pulled on the ermine?

Consider these baffling comments from the Kent on Sunday…

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Rachael Moorhead has been in correspondence with Sir Sandy Bruce Lockhart about his pivotal position as a council leader in Wye Park. Here is her latest letter to him…

Unfortunately, your letter did not deal with the substantive points raised in mine. Therefore, I am raising these again.

It is felt that each of the officers at KCC (and at Ashford Borough Council “ABC”) who had been involved in the so-called Concordat should now be removed from all matters to do with the proposed Wye development on the basis that local government (government at any level) should be impartial when considering planning and development applications, especially ones of this size. Other than the impartiality issue, I understand that the KCC and ABC councillors who were signatories to the secret unpublished April’05 Concordat and the November’05 Concordat did not have the authority of the respective Councils as a whole and certainly not of the local communities. I understand you were a signatory to the spring 2005 secret Concordat with Imperial. The only way of restoring some integrity back into Kent’s local government is for each of the signatories to be publicly identified and officially taken off the Wye Science Park project.

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We’re not really the scientific sort around here, except in one significant way. We like to try to understand how things work. In particular, we’re interested in getting to grips with one significant mystery. The Wye Park project involves a disparate group of people, in different parts of the country, and different organisations. How on earth did they all get to know each other in the first place? Read the rest of this entry »

You can always tell when big organisations are having a problem selling something controversial. They start playing cunning little tricks, such as dropping sly subliminal advertising lines into discussions that have no apparent connection with the product they want to flog.

And yes, Imperial are up to that too. Nick Bosanquet, the college’s Professor of Health Policy, was at Kent County Council for a debate on health last month. You can read the report itself (summary: health is a good thing, and we should all have more of it, though quite how is another matter) here. Interestingly, right in the middle of banging on about NHS shortfalls and — my own mental health will surely go swiftly south if I read this cliched drivel one more time — ‘centres of excellence’, Professor Bosanquet dropped this little beauty…

Pfizer in Sandwich is a very positive force and if Imperial College comes to Wye, it could be expected to be an asset too.

Really? Read the rest of this entry »

Another fine mess: Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Wye Park’s mentor, the deputy PM and an expectant property man David Brooks Wilson. Is this really John Prescott’s show?

Here’s a genuine news item for your interest…

Rt. Hon John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State launches the new Kent Science Park as a driving force in the UK’s science economy. LaSalle Investment Management will expand the 125 acre site to provide crucial grow-on space and specialised premises for biotechnology and other science firms as the revival in the industry continues.

Plans include improvements to the transport infrastructure, connection to a high-speed broadband highway, the addition of quality housing in line with the UK’s Sustainable Communities Plan and… it will now be an important resource for biotechnology companies, providing grow-on space to allow them to build up critical mass and retaining skilled jobs in the area.

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His department is £9million in deficit, he wants to make 20 people redundant and he is seeking to ‘outsource’ much of the work traditionally done by members of estates staff. And, as our pictures show, David Brooks Wilson, Imperial College’s well-connected director of estates, also seems to have taken his eye off the ball when it comes to the day-to-day maintenance necessary for the upkeep of a historic set of buildings.

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Let’s say goodbye to local councils and authoritarian universities, judicial reviews and government acronyms. It’s spring, finally, in east Kent, after a long, cold, dry winter. And when the sun comes out over this bright green land no-one hereabouts needs to put together the argument for why we care about this place. It’s out there, all around us, in the burgeoning green fields, the leaping herds of stupid new-born lambs, the woodland flowers rising from the waking ground and the rebirth of the countryside everywhere. Including, of course, the verdant fields that Imperial will put to concrete if it gets its way.

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Three new chums from the Adriatic. Don’t expect to see them outside the Co-op soon

Right folks. I have spent a week enjoying the sun, rain and fish in Venice, a place that truly is dying on its feet, albeit in a wonderfully entertaining fashion. And what do I find you lot have done while I was away? Only written Wye off as a geriatric home that’s pegging it moment by moment too.

Paul Webster, in a contribution I thought brave, well considered and highly articulate, slipped in this warning, ‘The community begins to consist largely of retirees, commuters and second-homers, without local shops and without local work. We end up as a “museum’ village”.’

Then we get the eminently sensible Alan Paterson dusting off his Zimmer frame, at an extraordinarily early age it seems to me, to declare, ‘My own view is that we should be striving to rejuvenate the village which is in danger of becoming a geriatric and dormitory settlement.’

As a mere trainee geriatric may I ask a simple question: what the hell are you old guys on?

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The sun shines, the buildings are beautiful, there is not a speck of cement to be seen and the only new houses are the ones inhabited by beaming Nobel Laureates. Welcome to Wye at Imperial College. Welcome to www.wyecampusvision.org.uk

OK, so it’s only a website and it has more omissions in it than a dodgy dossier, but the picture that Tamesis PR’s online creation paints is an alluring one. There are no plans, it tells us, failing to mention the fact that a big fat report by planning consultants Gerald Eve sits in a locked drawer at County Hall or that Ernst & Young produced their first comments on this project for Imperial nearly three years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Webster, a resident of Little Chequers, in an open letter to the Parish Council chairman, John Hodder, argues that there is scope for some extension to the village and that a new road might bring some relief to the choked streets of Wye

Having been away for a week, I missed your meeting last Saturday. But as a resident of Wye for the last 42 years and, having seen many changes during that period, I would like to respond to your request for comment. Read the rest of this entry »

Morgan Clarke comes from the Wye area ‘on the hill on the way to the Kneading Trough in a SSSI. I’ve lived there on and off for 23 years, since I was 10′. He has just finished his doctorate in Social Anthropology at Oxford.

I am in favour of a thriving academic community at Wye, and the jobs in the village that it entails. However, ICL’s ‘vision’, as outlined in the Concordat and fleshed out by subsequent revelations which we owe to the outstanding work of save-wye.org and others, is of a huge development that will mean the end of Wye as a village and as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty: 300 acres of housing and a £300-400 million research centre with 100 principal scientists, employing a total of 1400 researchers, that will in its turn lead to the construction of a science park and manufacturing facilities. That is development on a colossal scale. This is not a question of bringing employment to the village: it is the end of the village, and the building of a new town with, one might note, thousands of new residents with their own employment needs. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kentish Express is on its usual amateur-hour mettle this week. The growing furore over the Wye Concordat merits just six paragraphs on page five, most of them devoted to a press release confirming the naming of the project’s architects, a story you first read here three weeks ago.

But fascinating tidbits do manage to work their way past the KE’s publc interest threshold filters all the same, even if, in this case, you must turn to Page 49 to locate one. Much of this page is devoted to one Paul Hudson, a man who just happens to be an associate of someone we are beginning to be very familiar with around here: the interesting Mr David Brooks Wilson.

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Print version of Ian Cooling’s open letter to Wye, March 2006

This letter is the on-line version of my open letter to the villagers of Wye (and beyond) that will be distibuted around the village over the coming weekend. I cover quite a lot of ground, but I hope you will bear with me to the end. Even with this length, I can only touch on the range and variety of issue that have been raised with me, so this letter will be the first of a number I shall be writing to everyone in the coming months. Between letters, I shall be happy to respond to queries on this web-site, by phone (812416), or just pop a note through my door at 154 Bridge Street.
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JOANNA WILLIAMS on why she’ll go down fighting for her dream of living in Wye

Let me first declare my interest in this shabby business — I am hoping to leave London and move to Wye this spring. I am concerned about the village’s future — and not just as a potential homeowner nimby. I did have a ‘wobble’ when I read about the Concordat, but in the end I have not been deterred. Maybe I’m just a bolshy red-head, but I decided I’d rather go down fighting than give up on a place that conjured so much of the magic of my otherwise London-based childhood.

I also knew of John Prescott’s grand plans for Ashford, so I was careful to do my research. I checked on the status of the land around Wye. I read Ashford’s development plans to see where the bulk of the new development would be — almost entirely to the west of the M20. I read the Wye Village Design Statement. I checked on-line for any planning applications in the Wye area.

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On the night of the infamous January 9th public meeting — when Imperial College gathered Wye together to tell it very little indeed — Professor Sir Leszek ‘Borys’ Borysiewicz made one good decision anyway. Beforehand he stopped for a drink in the New Flying Horse, a hostelry occasionally visited by save-wye cadres when we are not here flailing away at the keyboard for your illumination.

One of those partaking of a cocktail near Professor Borys continues to swear he overhead a very interesting snatch of conversation. Someone, our eavesdropper insists, asked what would happen if the whole Concordat scheme collapsed. ‘Then we’ll sue,’ the Prof, Imperial’s deputy rector, supposedly answered darkly.

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David Hewson, in his 2,000-word treatise on the plight of the local press, argues that laziness is behind the Kentish Express’s failure to cover the Wye Science park story adequately.

While I agree with much of his thesis, I’m going to have to differ from David on several important points when it comes to the Kent Messenger Group in general and the Kentish Express in particular. Read the rest of this entry »

Life is full of recurring mysteries, moments when the everyday world seems to go on hold and, for a few brief seconds, we think we just might get an insight into some fundamental truth about the meaning of existence. It happens to me every week when the Kentish Express lands on the table and I ask myself, ‘Why, oh why, do I keep buying this crap?’

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Later this week the national media will, apparently, unveil one of those surveys that tell us something that falls into the category once memorably described by Basil Fawlty as ‘the A-level bleeding obvious’. This time round it will be the amazing news that few people trust the political process — or, perhaps more pointedly, the politicians — any more.

Well, duh… as the Americans like to say. From Iraq to simple sleaze, we have all watched the rather ungratifying spectacle of a political class behaving as if it lives in a world governed by different rules and mores to the rest of us. A funny place it is too, one where the husband of a cabinet minister can trouser £350,000 tax free, while the average citizen struggles to keep up with tax and fuel rises that far outstrip inflation or increases in wages and pensions.

What has this to do with the sorry saga of the Wye Concordat? Everything. It is one more alarming symptom of a fundamental shift in the relationship between the public and those in power. Read the rest of this entry »

Is this what ‘the capital from Wye College’ will look like?

DETAILS ARE still hard to come by and the haste with which Imperial College is proceeding remains unseemly, but there are one or two things careful observers can deduce from what Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz told Wye Parish Council last night.

The most interesting of these is about housing or, as the deputy rector would put it, ‘the capital from Wye College’. Read the rest of this entry »

We have just experienced an extraordinary week in the extraordinary soap opera that the Wye Park saga is becoming. Thankfully my colleague Justin Williams has been finding the time to keep us all in touch with events as they unfold.

In case your head is still swimming a little from the tide of developments let me highlight just three of the items of news Justin has broken here over the past few days. Read the rest of this entry »

If there was any doubt about what the people of Wye faced if they chose to oppose Imperial’s plans to reorder their village and their lives, that doubt must have vanished now.

A shadowy alliance of interests has come together covertly over the last two or three years, seemingly intent on manipulating the planning system. Last year, while those we elect or employ to look after our interests were engaged in secret discussions with Imperial College, it would have been unthinkable that anybody could seriously consider the turning over of part of the Wye Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty for development. As Ian Cooling, Wye’s borough councillor, told the parish council this week, the elevation of AONBs to near-National Park status should have sealed its protection for generations.
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When we moved to east Kent from central London twenty years ago friends back in the smoke used to shake their heads and ask… where? There was a time when you said the name ‘Ashford’ and people immediately thought of Middlesex. Those distant years before the Channel Tunnel and the astonishing rapacious house-building boom that has gripped the area for the past ten years. It used to take me twenty minutes to get from my first house in Kennington to catch the 8.30 Charing Cross train to work (one that only stopped at Waterloo, and took just 55 minutes if I recall correctly).

One thing I can tell you about this area twenty years ago though. It was deprived. The unemployment level was among the highest in the south east. Wye was a nice middle class place to live, with a college that seemed thriving, socially and academically, compared with today. But Ashford itself was in a bad shape. Had someone come along then with a plan to pump the equivalent of £1 billion into the area, and with it thousands of jobs, it would have been a different question altogether. Who, in all honesty, could have objected?

But today? Things are very different indeed.
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Stalinist Russia may have been a place where some Moscow apparatchik could declare a distant city the home of the latest tractor factory then head off home for his borscht oblivious to any local heartache his decision may have caused. Most of us thought things were done differently in 21st century Britain.

Can any of the proponents of the Wye Concordat scheme be under a single illusion about the depth of opposition they now face? Do they honestly believe that the way this project was slipped onto the public agenda, with a bout of ham-fisted PR in the run-up to Christmas, has done their chances any good at all?

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Does Wye really need Imperial? One rather gets the impression this is a question that has never occurred to the hierarchy of Imperial College. They are, after all, a busy bunch of people. Introducing massive development to Wye is just one of the controversies Professor Richard Sykes and his team have taken upon themselves. Imperial’s decision to jump ship from the University of London — which will probably lead to the latter’s dissolution — is turning more than a few heads in town too.

Small wonder, then, that Imperial feels able to turn to a distant Kent village and say… take what’s on offer, good and bad, or we’ll abandon you too, with all the dire consequences that will follow. At least we can begin to appreciate their style now, and it’s not exactly cosy, is it? Read the rest of this entry »

A science park in the Ashford area providing hundreds, possibly thousands, of high-quality jobs and attracting leading research and development companies to East Kent? Forgive the cynicism, but haven’t we been here before?

Trinity College, Cambridge, promised much the same at the nascent Eureka Science Park on the outskirts of Ashford. World-class bio-tech, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and engineering companies would, we were told, set up in Ashford to take advantage of its low land costs, skilled labour market, fantastic communications and proximity to both London and continental Europe. But here we are, more than two decades on from such an extraordinary vision, and what do we have at the so-called science park by the M20? Just one manufacturing facility – a cosmetics company – surrounded by a sea of health clubs, burger bars, pizza outlets, fried chicken restaurants and an enormous nightclub. Oh, and several hundred new houses. Read the rest of this entry »

[image:3:r:s=1:l=x]Ashford MP Damian Green wrote this opinion article for save-wye.org after Monday night’s meeting.

As you would expect a large number of Wye residents have been contacting me about the Imperial College development proposals. The fact that something like 400 people turned up for the public meeting on Monday January 9th shows the degree of concern.

We need to know local consultation will have teeth

It was clear that a section of those attending was just straightforwardly in opposition to any large-scale development. Indeed the point was made that some people move to Wye specifically because its lack of easy road access leaves it relatively isolated. As an example of how difficult it is to please a majority when making public policy this is telling, as many people in the village have been complaining to me and others for years that they want better road links, and specifically that they want the level crossing to go.

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It is now three weeks since the residents of Wye and its surrounding area woke up to a bombshell. Without the slightest prior warning, two organisations supposed to represent their interests — Ashford Borough Council and Kent County Council — had secretly signed a ‘concordat’ with a third public body, Imperial College, London, to transform our charming rural area into a hotbed of futuristic research and development, or, as others might put it, home to a bunch of new and sprawling housing and industrial estates which will transform our lives and the heritage of this region forever.

Why is this happening? What exactly is happening? As I write this, it’s hard to say. The information released by ABC, KCC and Imperial is skimpy at best, though we are promised more at a public meeting on January 9th. But here are some facts that are known. Wye is an attractive and largely content rural community at the moment. No-one, prior to this announcement, was heard bemoaning the lack of industrial or housing development, let alone on a scale that will bring in thousands of new jobs and homes, with their associated traffic and impact on the environment.
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