Amber Valley Borough Council - Green Belt Plunderers

To continue with my 'lets have a go at the council' theme:

I mentioned in my last post about 'Aldercar and Langley Mill' and the border between the two - once upon a time, separate hamlet and village [in that order] - is now somewhat fuzzy. But now I have to say that by the time Amber Valley Borough Council have finished with their big push to build on green belt land - that all the greedy, grasping developers have been buying up in readiness - the borders between most of our villages will be non-existent and instead of being individual communities, we'll just be part of a large town that may as well be called 'RIPNOR' or 'HEAPLY'

There have been protests, meetings, facebook groups and petitions all against AVBC selling off land at Ripley to accommodate a new Morrisons supermarket plus housing etc. The council are elected representatives to do our bidding but it seems that they're hand in glove with developers all the way. They even held this part of the - often postponed - planning board meeting in private, where the public was asked to leave. We know who voted to pass the proposals, we'll remember their names when they want electing again.

AVBC's best friends - the philanthropic developers - tell us ... and we're meant to be grateful by the way:

"We'll build a nice supermarket for you, create jobs for you, and we'll provide you with some lovely little boxes for you to live in and then we'll landscape a 10" wide strip of land with - exciting new idea - some indigenous plants ... Instead of keeping all these fields of unsightly green and woody stuff that just sits there growing. And did you know that it's full of pesky vermin living in it?"

"What? no, you're wrong, it's a completely absurd idea that all this greenery is meant to be enjoyed by everyone, because it's ours, we've bought it now. It needs building on so that it doesn't keep sucking up all the excess water or continue making the air too oxygen rich, thus giving you daft ideas about saving the green belt or the planet [whichever soap-box you're all on this week]"

And back to me in the real world:
All the - up to now, relatively clear - boundaries between ... Aldercar/Woodlinkin, Aldercar/Heanor, Aldercar/Loscoe, Langley/Marlpool/Shipley, Heanor/Crosshill, Woodlinkin/Loscoe, Codnor/Waingroves, Waingroves/Ripley, Alfreton/Swanwick/Leabrooks/Riddings/Butterley, Marehay/Codnor/Ripley, Belper/Heage ... Will be as blurred as Langley mill/Aldercar - I've no doubt missed a few proposed builds and made some huge mistakes, please feel free to correct me and I'll amend accordingly.

All these unique places with their precious green bits and individual identities will be lost forever as they merge into one vast sprawl ... Sad isn't it?

But I can't help feeling that it's all a smokescreen ... throw all the suggested builds in the pot at roughly the same time - so that we're up in arms about it - then they'll come back with maybe just one or two ideas that we'll have to accept and make it look like they've listened to us - and we'll think we've won ... cunning.

Hmmm, Amber Valley Borough Council have the audacity to tell us that they've got to build houses on green belt land - and accept s106 bribes so that they can afford to tart up their preferred areas - because people want to live here as it's lovely and rural ... Hellooo, you're busy urbanising our rural bits, you morons.

Rant over ...