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Letters to the Whistler

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Dear Editor

I have been reading the various suggestions for improvements to the Seven Dials junction and Brighton station with great interest. In the long term, the only solution to traffic congestion is to build an underground railway, such as that which exists in London. I am aware that in the current economic climate, this is about as likely as me winning the national lottery. In the meantime, the powers-that-be have to consider affordable measures. My suggestion for the rail station is to re-develop the existing multi-storey car park to the north east of the station and to turn this into a taxi and bus hub. There could be warm waiting rooms for passengers. All bus routes to the east and north-east of the area would start from this hub. The outside of the building could be designed with the main bus station in Nice, France as a template, i.e. covered with vegetation and flowers in the summer!
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Environment, Letters

Urgent action requested

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Dear Whistler Readers

We are writing to update you on recent developments and seek your help and assistance.

Residents and local groups have arranged for lawyers’ letters (see attachments below) to be sent to the council following the Council’s granting of planning permission for the tall 5/6 storey hotel on the site of the former ice rink in Queen Square, on the southern boundary of St Nicholas churchyard.

For those not already aware, the planning committee was branded by the press as a ‘shambles’ with members confused, the first vote to refuse permission being retaken once campaigners had left, officers misdirecting members during voting and underplaying important information in the officer report and presentation.

The officer report and presentation made no mention the of churchyard being an important local park and relied on the developer’s view that the need to chop back important ancient elms trees was of little significance. All of which sets a very dangerous planning precedent for both future Brighton applications and national planning policy.

This led locals to believe the process was seriously flawed. The council administration are so determined to railroad this development through in their hunger for the substantial sum of money they will get from selling the site with planning permission, serious local objections to the way the Committee handled the application would not be allowed to stand in their way.

Local residents and organisations engaged specialist lawyers who studied the podcast of the meeting and the accompanying minutes and officer reports. The residents’ lawyers concluded the decision was unlawful and detailed their findings in six pages of failures. They formally advised the Council that the first vote to refuse planning permission should be upheld as the only lawful decision the Committee took. Alternatively, the application should sent back to the Planning Committee to be dealt with properly. Their findings cited case law and other council examples.

Sadly, the Council’s officers refuse to accept the wrong-doing and their lawyer merely brushes over many of the failings and unlawful procedures set out in the residents’ lawyers’ letter.

Residents’ lawyers have demonstrated how the Council could and should lawfully refer the application back to the Planning Committee to consider it properly, in an open and transparent manner with all parties and interests being able to have their say.

Only a lack of political will amongst the Council’s Green administration prevents this – their protestations that they cannot intervene are wrong and disingenuous.

We therefore urge all residents to contact your local councillors and the Council Leader Jason Kitcat ( Jason.Kitcat@brighton-hove.gov.uk) to lobby for the return of the hotel application back to the Planning Committee so it can be determined properly as this would be the correct, legitimate, and only lawful and honourable thing to do.
Wykeham Terrace Residents’ Association, Montpelier and Clifton Hill Association and St Nicholas Green Spaces Association

Lawyers Letters
20120910 Letter from Acumen Business Law to the Council
20121005 Letter from Acumen Business Law to the Council, attention Hilary Woodward

Letters

Letters to The Whistler

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Dear Editor

Why not ask your local pub to put on some live music? The Live Music Act takes effect on the 1 October 2012, allowing many more pubs, restaurants, wine bars and workplaces to put on live or recorded music with Morris dancing or similar without much hassle. The Act exempts venues with a capacity of 200 persons or fewer from the need to obtain a local authority licence for the performance of live music between 8am and 11pm. That does include amplified music that might annoy the neighbours. There is no audience limit for performances of un-amplified acoustic music apart from limiting punter numbers for fire safety.
Andy McGuinness

Dear Whistler

Thought you may be interested to see what is going up in the local area! Wooden chimney pots lined with silver foil! Beware anyone who buys this cheap nonsense in Upper Gloucester Street / St Nicholas Road. Oh dear!
Lorraine Bowen

Letters

Letters

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Dear Whistler

Traditionalists may be pleased to hear that 20th Century service still exists at The Good Companions. There the days of good old fashioned suspicion of customers is alive and well. It can be a long wait buying a drink, and the amateurish cry of “who’s next?” is always heard. And if there’s a problem, like a cloudy pint, a ‘supervisor’ is called to pass judgement on your taste, in front of others waiting. The bar staff can’t do it on their own initiative. When I asked why this happens I was told that customers ask to change drinks that are perfectly OK. And it happens all the time. The supervisor was unable to suggest a reason why customers would want to do this. (My suggestion that it may be because the drink isn’t right baffled him). Do they taste meals that aren’t right before returning them to the kitchen?

Has anyone else experienced their premium prices and discount service?

Alastair Herbert, Terminus Street

[The manager of The Good Companions was given the opportunity to respond to this letter – Ed]

Letters

Letters to The Whistler

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Dear Editor

I enjoyed Phil Dange’s explanation in the Feb/March edition of why it isn’t necessary to include details of the type of grape on the label of a bottle of wine. For those who missed it, according to Phil, it’s because a wine is the product of so many things – what the French call ‘terroir’ – that it’s not just unnecessary but wrong to emphasis the type of grape and not describe the other things that make the wine from one area unique.

He is right, but only in part. This approach works for wines from areas that are ‘Appellation Contrôlée’. For instance white wines from Chablis and Puligny Montrachet are as different as it is possible to be. Both are made from the Chardonnay grape but the name of the wine, not the grape, is the best guide to how they taste. However, his approach does not work for the pioneering areas where wine makers are not bound by the same regulations as under the AC rules. Take the ‘Vin de Pays des Coteaux du Libron’ for instance, in the Languedoc, where the Domaine la Colombette make a fruity Sauvignon in the New Zealand style and a Chardonnay as buttery as a Montrachet. I can’t think of a better way to label those wines than after the grape variety whose character is revealed by the way the wines are made. To call both wines just “Coteaux du Libron” wouldn’t help the buyer at all.

So don’t be too disdainful, Phil, about us Anglo-Saxons who love and understand wines from the lesser known parts of France.
Andrew Polmear, Brighton and Bédarieux