Julian Sturdy

City of York Council’s East Area Planning Committee last Wednesday (17th December) turned down the planning application submitted by a mobile phone company to construct a 21 metre high telecommunication mast, along with three antennas and two transmission dishes on Green Belt land at the bottom of Church Lane Huntington. The site which is located on farm land just south of Hall Farm is on the edge of Huntington Village’s Conservation area and close to the popular public footpaths that run alongside the river Foss.

At the planning meeting which I attended with local residents, the Planning Officer reported the 82 objections I had received from residents of Huntington as well as the local Parish Council’s objection. Thankfully the committee listened to all the arguments made against the application and refused it on the grounds that the mast would be harmful to the character, appearance and visual amenity of the area, a victory for common sense. Thank you to everyone who took the time to return objections to me.     

I listened with intent to yesterday’s Pre Budget Report delivered by Alistair Darling, probably the most important and defining PBR ever given. After 50 minutes, I came to the same conclusion as many papers have done today, Labour has done it again mortgaged our Country to the hilt, used the credit card to the max and we the hard working British public will be left to pick up the pieces for years to come.

The Chancellor in one move has doubled the national debt to more than £1 trillion, and borrowed more than at any time in our history. We now know that Britain will be paying off Gordon Brown’s debt for decades to come. With this Budget Gordon Brown has mortgaged the country’s future to try and safeguard his own.

What a selection of the papers are saying today about Browns big gamble.

“Yesterday, the battle lines were drawn. The 18 months to polling day now have their theme. A tax and spend Labour government which has trashed the public finances is trying to defy the lessons of history by spending its way out of a recession, in the process saddling future taxpayers with a crippling bill. And a Tory opposition will seek to reclaim the badge of economic prudence through sound money, a smaller state and tax cuts that last. Now that is a fight worth waging.” - Daily Telegraph

George Osborne condemned Alistair Darling for producing “a precision-guided missile aimed at the heart of a recovery”, as he tore into the Government for planning tax rises to pay for billions in borrowing to help the economy out of recession. The shadow Chancellor delighted the Conservative benches as laid into what he called an “unexploded tax bombshell” which he said would explode when the economy started to recover after the next election.” - Independent

Gordon Brown says it is not his fault that we are worst placed in the Western world to weather this storm. We must blame America’s chaotic mortgage crisis — not our own overblown housing bubble or badly-run banks. And it will take seven bitter years before we get our heads above water again. But the Prime Minister cannot wash his hands of responsibility like that. Yes, the whole world is suffering. But Britain’s special weakness is, at least in part, down to Labour’s reckless 12-year spending spree on bloated and inefficient public services.” - The Sun