Let's be clear on the A2-M2 link
11 Oct 2006
OVER the past few weeks you have published a series of letters which appear to be a well planned and co-ordinated attempt by our local MP and his Labour friends to discredit me. I shall leave your readers to make up their own minds about his motive. Meanwhile, I would like an opportunity to counter some of the propaganda he is peddling.Like the very best propagandists, New Labour politicians use the ploy that if they repeat a lie often enough people will believe it. So let me begin by making quite clear my stance on the Kent Science Park. It is a position that has not changed one iota over the past three years, despite any claim to the contrary by our MP and his friends.
I support any expansion of the park, within its existing boundary, that provides more jobs for local people.
I oppose any expansion outside the existing boundary, particularly when that expansion will draw in labour from outside the area.
I .oppose unequivocally any expansion, inside or outside the boundary, which includes any housing development.
I oppose the position of the A2-M2 link, as contained within the current proposal.
However, I have always supported — and will continue to support — an A2-M2 Link (the Southern Distributor Route), to the east of Bapchild, but. far enough away that it does not impact negatively on residents.
Our MP has set his face against the southern route and insists that it cannot be built without the money generated by a large housing estate at the Kent Science Park. He boasts that the Government has "delivered" the Northern Distributor Route but, at the same time, tells us that Labour will not fund the southern one. Quite frankly, that is a stupid attitude and does the people of Sittingbourne no favours.
Unlike our MP, I will continue to campaign for an A2-M2 Link because it is short-sighted in the extreme to build only half a ring road.
Finally, our MP boasts that he has "had three debates about the Kent Science Park in the House of Commons" and then goes on to have a sly little dig by
criticising me for limiting my involvement to writing letters to your newspaper.
Of course, your readers are pretty sharp and will already have worked out that Mr Wyatt is paid a very large salary to attend debates in Parliament, while I have to fit my campaign to protect our community into any free time I get after working hard to pay the mortgage.
As it happens, my involvement in this campaign has been greater than writing letters to newspapers. Not only did I run a petition (including a full-page
advertisement in the East Kent Gazette) against the imposition of thousands more houses on our area, including those at the Kent Science Park, but I also arranged for the chairman and deputy chairman of the Five Villages Campaign Group to meet the Shadow Secretary of State for Local Government Caroline Spelman MP to put their case, after which Andy Hudson (yes, the very same Andy Hudson who wrote such an insulting letter about me three weeks ago) said he was "pleased with our support".
Gordon Henderson,
The Crescent, Halfway.
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