Greenbelt must have priority

Oct 17 2007 by Sue McCann, Birkenhead News

WIRRAL Council’s Planning Committee is to be congratulated for rejecting outline plans for a super surgery at The Warrens within Arrowe Park at Thingwall.

However desirable a new one-stop primary care centre might be, the failure of the Primary Care Trust to find another affordable site of sufficient size should not be regarded as sufficient very special circumstances to over-ride green belt policy.

Wirral’s green open spaces are precious and must be protected from both private and public encroachment.

GEOFFREY WATT

CONSERVATIVE COUNCILLOR, WEST KIRBY & THURSTASTON

The ball is rolling

NESTON may soon have its own town council, Neston Civic Society starting the ball rolling in September 2005, with a public meeting.

After this, more than 2,500 people signed a petition. Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council then surveyed all households in Neston, Parkgate, Little Neston and Ness – 58.5% of those who voted were in favour.

In 2006 the borough council sent the petition to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the successor Department of Communities and Local Government has been slowly processing the petition.

Then in September this year Parmjit Dhanda, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State wrote that he had “decided in principle to give effect to the petition to create a new parish of Neston”.

When a parish council is established, one of its first actions will probably be to turn itself into a town council.

The new town council will probably be established just in time to work with the new unitary authority established by the government, which is likely to be West Cheshire, replacing the borough council and Cheshire

ROB WARD,

LITTLE NESTON

Twitchers to blame

FURTHER to the article about dog walkers and birds on Hoylake Beach, I walk my dog every day on the beach and he has never, ever chased the birds or disturbed them, neither have my friends dogs, who also go on the beach.

May I suggest it is the “twitchers” who disturb the birds more, with their cameras and their manic running along the beach towards people with, or without dogs, warning them to stay away from the birds.

This has happened to me several times and my friends also.

These birds are a long way from the beach where we walk and our dogs totally ignore them

I have never seen any dogs chasing birds on the beach. I do understand that these birds need to rest and feel if they were really being disturbed on our beach, would they really keep coming here?

On Friday last I was on the beach with my dog, the birds were about 100 yards out, as the tide was on its way in. I walked up to Kings Gap and got dirty looks off the twitchers, all there with cameras, hanging over the railings.

I was walking near the wall and my dog was with me, causing no trouble whatsoever. The birds were all roosting out opposite the lifeboat station, so a long way from us.

I turned to walk back to Trinity Road and some idiot with a camera and tripod was walking along the beach toward the lifeboat station.

He turned towards the sea and started to walk toward the birds. As he got a bit closer, he started to tip-toe, set his tripod and camera up and proceeded to photograph the birds.

Not content with being that close, he tip-toed closer, twice, and repeated the exercise.

I stood just before the slipway watching this silly man, when all of a sudden one or two birds flew up and then they all took off and flew towards Kings Gap.

This fool had disturbed all the birds, and there were hundreds of them.

Just then a woman popped her head over the railings and told me that I should not be disturbing the birds. I was gobsmacked.

He caused more disturbance to those birds in five seconds than I have ever seen any dog walkers cause, and where are the Rangers when people like him are on the beach?

DOG WALKER,

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED