Write to us at the Malvern Observer, Webb House, Church Green East, Redditch, B98 8BP or email [email protected]
Letters are welcome on most subjects but please do try to keep them brief and preferably no more than 350 words. Letters may be cut for reasons of space, decency and the law.
Editor’s Comment
RELATIONSHIPS between the employees of any company are crucial to ensure its smooth running.
Therefore it would be worrying to hear of a breakdown between two teams within any business – but even more so when it is a council which runs solely for the purpose of benefiting the residents.
No one knows without being a fly on the wall what exactly is and has been going on within the Malverns Hill District Council buildings but one thing’s for sure – it is imperative both councillors and officers feel comfortable and are able to work together to provide the best possible services for everyone in the area.
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I HAD not intended to write again on the ludicrous proposal to run cable cars up our beautiful Malvern Hills but Mr Young (Observer last week) made several infantile and personal remarks accusing me, among other things, of being a ‘killjoy’ so I must respond.
I have had many happy hours on the Malvern Hills and have taken much joy from them with children and now grandchildren over the last 40 years or so. I have also enjoyed visiting Alton Towers and Bewdley Safari Park. However, I do not wish to confuse these very different experiences.
Our forebearers had the good sense to stop the quarrying and establish our hills as an oasis of tranquillity in a mechanised and stressful world. The Conservators are there to conserve their vision. Joy comes in many forms including the joy of appreciating the natural world without intrusions from the fairground.
Perhaps Mr Young could make clear to your readership if he and the group he represents stand to make material gain from the absurd project they are attempting to foist on us – or is he concerned only with spreading joy in the world?
Martin Reed
West Malvern
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I WRITE to register my disapproval of High Street Malvern’s proposal for the cable car project, which aims to build a cable car system from the town to Worcester Beacon on the Malvern Hills, together with associated cafés and toilets.
I found Mark Young’s letter to your paper this week, in which he supports the proposal and in which he rebuffed Martin Read’s letter of the previous week, unnecessarily offensive. I agree with Martin Read that a cable car to the Beacon would be a scar on the landscape. If, in opposing the cable car proposal I am considered by Mr Young (as he considers Martin Read) to be a killjoy, have few friends, belong to a different stratum of society to him, have a lofty intellectual position of hubris and hauteur, then so be it.
I do not wish to see a proposal which will have a deleterious impact on Malvern’s main asset, the Malvern Hills. The beauty and peace of the hills should not be sacrificed in order to rejuvenate Malvern’s business opportunities, which is, perhaps, the main reason for the cable car proposal.
Furthermore, the proposers of the scheme do not appear to have read Section 10 of the 1884 Malvern Hills Act or listened to the views of Stephen Bound, the Director of the Malvern Hills Conservators when he spoke to the Town Council. The Act clearly states that the act and consequence of building on Conservators’ land are prohibited and Stephen Bound has said that the building of a cable car system on the hills would require changes in the Malvern Hills Acts (in other words a new, sixth, Act). A new Act of Parliament would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and, if promoted, might not even achieve what HSM wishes. The last Act (1995) failed to change the Acts in such a way that the Conservators could rebuild the café on the Beacon, as they wished. What chance a cable car, cafés and toilets?
Do we really want a cable car system which would have an adverse impact on views to and from the hills, destroy their rural feel and have an impact on the tranquillity that exists there at the present time? Do we want the built environment extended up the slopes of the hills from Malvern and do we want mechanised transport to change the nature of our experiences on the hills? Along with Martin Read, I emphatically do not.
Dr Peter Alma
Malvern
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THE CAMPAIGN to Protect Rural England has estimated that there is brownfield land for at least one million homes so why has the Government encouraged developers to target greenfield sites?
The Government has estimated that about 230,000 new homes are needed each year due to our rising population, and so there is enough brownfield land to meet our housing needs for the next four years without touching any of our beautiful countryside. Perhaps our MP would like to explain?
Richard Chamings
PPC UKIP
Castlemorton Common
Malvern
