Your letters - May 28

Normandy veterans

FROM East Sussex Normandy Veterans, No. 86 Branch: thank you for the support that you have given the veterans in your report of their last Parade at the Little Common Royal British Legion on Wednesday May 19.

It is our intention to be able to reprint the whole of your report and present it in a souvenir form to each veteran, veteran's widow, carer and supporter who attended the celebration carvery lunch.

The event would not have been possible if we had not had the magnificent help that we received from the Little Common Royal British Legion and their chef, Steve Adams, and his staff. We cannot thank them enough.

The Normandy Veterans' Association will stand down at the end of this year and we did not want to wait until our members found it too difficult to travel from all over the county.

We appreciate still being around, especially when we reflect on D-Day June 6, 1944, when the Allies had more than 10,000 casualties. With the battle for Normandy lasting 77 days, by the time Paris had been liberated and we had reached the River Seine, the number of Allied casualties was in the region of 250,000.

Amongst our last parade were veterans who were also Dunkirk, 8th Army and Italy veterans, and some who were just 18 years of age when they landed in Normandy.

Your help has been invaluable to us and has been much appreciated. Thank you,

Eric Levy, welfare officer

East Sussex Normandy Veterans.

A charming book

ON your article Eco-campaigner tackles global warming and God (Bexhill Observer, April 30) Bexhill author Dr Edward Echlin hopes that his new book Climate and Christ will appeal to atheists and sceptics as much as Christians. As it happens, I am an atheist who has just read the book and I think that it is really good.

As an atheist, it is interesting to read how Dr Echlin makes the Christian case for working towards sustainability, and makes it so compellingly. But, really, the appeal of the book should be very wide. When Dr Echlin writes about an alternative economy "which will include other soil creatures, including even those invisible mites in a handful of garden soil" he could be speaking as a Buddhist!

Climate and Christ is a scholarly book, very well-researched and up to date with the science of climate change, and manages to make some difficult scientific concepts accessible to the general reader. But the book is grounded, quite literally, in Dr Echlin's experience of living and gardening here in Bexhill, so that the appeal of his book for us, in Bexhill, is especially real and immediate.

And it is a funny thing to say, perhaps, because however you look at it man-made climate change is pretty sad, not to say tragic, but Climate and Christ is a very charming book, with many interesting personal stories, and really it is hard, even for an atheist, not to identify with a point of view which is so deeply heartfelt and expressed with such sincerity.

Michael Bernard

Hamilton Terrace

Bexhill-on-Sea

Parking problems

I had always been under the impression that pavements were for pedestrians but it would appear that I am mistaken. Looking at my photo (attached with letter, and taken on May 13, showing a car parked on De La Warr Road pavement) I cannot see where a pedestrian might go apart from into the road.

I had also thought that this was illegal, especially after the report in your paper last year (20/11/2009) but it would appear that I am mistaken in this as well. I feel justified in making this assertion by the behaviour of the fully marked up Sussex Police vehicle with the two fully uniformed Sussex Police officers inside who drove straight past this vehicle, making no attempt to talk to the driver or to get the vehicle to move.

So there you have it. Next time you are in Western Road, Bexhill and cannot find a place to park on the road, just put your vehicle on the pavement. Sussex Police have no problem with you doing this.

Graham Martin-Royle

Dalehurst Road

Bexhill

Parking in De la Warr Road, Bexhill, has always been a problem for both residents and the relevant authorities. Vehicles that park on a pavement commit an offence under both the Highways Act and the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986.

Sussex Police, after discussion with East Sussex County Council's highways department, have decided to enforce these offences as from Saturday May 22 2010 and any vehicle parked on the pavement from that date will receive either a fixed penalty notice or reported for the offence and summonsed to court.

The white lines on the road are carriage markers and therefore vehicles can park on the solid white lines on the road without committing an offence. Dropped kerbs identify where the resident has a right to drive over the pavement to gain access to their property and are marked on De La Warr Road by broken white lines. Parking across these driveways constitute an offence of unnecessary obstruction.

Sergeant Tricia Reeve-Fowkes

Bexhill Police Station

Whatever next?

I WAS interested to read the article by Ben Higgins about the noise limits and licence restrictions being imposed on the EdgyFest this year.

Whatever next? Perhaps the Rother District Council licensing team, wishing to act in an even-handed manner, will impose similar restrictions on the loud noise from

rock bands, the firework display during

carnival week and the funfair on carnival day itself!

Surely we should take into account the vast majority of Bexhill residents who are willing to tolerate very occasional outdoor music events during the summer months.

A few people will always protest against anything. If necessary, they should close their double-glazed windows and turn up the television sound for a few hours.

PETER WATSON

Cooden Sea Road

Bexhill

Thanks from mayor

MAY I say through your letters page a big thank you to all the residents of Bexhill for their support of me as Mayor over the last year.

Everyone that I have met at events has been kind, courteous and considerate.

Each event has given me treasured memories of those that I have met and the importance

to the town and the participants of that

event.

In attending all these functions as the representative of the town, it has made me realise just how much charity work and volunteering is undertaken on behalf of the rest of us.

Much of this is unsung.

It has been a privilege to share celebrations and all manner of events that are held within the community for us all to enjoy.

I also extend this thank you to the press for their courtesy and consideration shown to me over this last year.

Bridget George

Retiring Town Mayor of Bexhill

Duke Street

Bexhill-on-Sea

Shelter countdown

I understand that the council's seafront shelter steering group meets this week to consider the final design of four seafront shelters on West Parade.

This marks the end of almost a year-long, costly and bureaucratic process in which only those with profligate access to taxpayers' money can indulge.

The proposed final design has yet to be seen but it is likely to be a much-tweaked version of the model so completely rejected by residents when it was exhibited last year. (The same model had also been rejected earlier by the council's own Jury Panel as "unsuitable for its proposed site". It was nevertheless called into service as an emergency Plan B when the original winner of the design competition, imposed on the council by the much-vaunted CABE grant, mysteriously withdrew his entry.)

Correspondence in the Bexhill Observer, formal resolutions passed at public meetings of the Town Forum and the Bexhill Alliance and other interventions have all urged the need for utility and fitness for purpose. In that context it is hard to see how the basic functional design principles inherent in the current shelters can be bettered albeit with much-needed aesthetic improvement. Artful "design statements" are not supported.

The steering group therefore has two choices:

(1) It can recognise what the residents and taxpayers who are paying for this scheme actually value and want.

(2) It can ignore residents' wishes and continue to impose a wilful and unrepresentative minority decision.

The outcome will be for residents to judge when the design is revealed. If their clearly demonstrated preferences are seen to be ignored this will no doubt be remembered when local councillors come knocking on their doors for votes next May when they have to stand for re-election.

John Lee

Chairman, Bexhill Alliance

Defeat landfill first

AS BALI chair, I'm always pleased to read constructive letters as that of Dave Walsh regarding the proposed Ashdown landfill site.

However, when we "follow the money", it inescapably leads us to conclude that waste landfill in one of the Ashdown pits, combined with continued clay extraction in the other, as is proposed, is at present probably the most beneficial option for the site-owner, Ibstock. This isn't to say we shouldn't try to develop other options for the site, which Ibstock will surely consider on a commercial basis. BALI itself currently hasn't the expertise or time to develop a 'major bid' an 'Eden Project', but would be pleased to assist anyone wishing to do so.

Our feeling is, however, that we must defeat the landfill proposal first and then approach the site owners regarding alternative uses. Their options are more restricted if the proposal is rejected by East Sussex County Council and they'd likely be more 'open to offers' depending on the viability of the site for brickmaking alone. Currently there must be some doubt over that viability due to the severe downturn in the housing market .If it picks up, however, they have enough clay there for the next 30-40 years.

In any case, under its extraction license, Ibstock must eventually restore the site after excavation at its own expense. This is another reason why a waste landfill is beneficial for them: they'd actually get paid for doing it! If not, they need to shape a 'bowl' in the landscape using the soil and overburden they have stored on-site. (It is quite wrong to suggest, as some have, that they would be allowed to import waste into the site anyway)

Thus ,for the long-term future, BALI has made a registered suggestion to the Rother Local Development Framework of a 'West Bexhill Country Park' incorporating the Highwoods, the quarries, and surrounding farmland and countryside. We are also applying to English Nature for the quarries themselves, with their important dinosaur remains, to be a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest. So Dave, please don't imagine BALI has a closed and uncreative mindset re: the future of the quarries .We do believe, however, we have to first 'stop the dump', once and for all.

Nick Hollington

Chairman, BALI