Author: Sonja Francis

Dear Editor, I am writing to respond to the letter from Raymond W l Powell concerning ?the last nail in the town councils coffin.?
As you know I am a great admirer of your website and the service you provide to the residents of Thame but I do have to take issue on this point.
How does a letter from a resident constitute headline news?
I look at your website most days and never have I seen a letter to the editor under any other heading than ?letters to the editor?. I know from your facebook postings you are heavily in favour of option D (Which of course you are entitled to your opinion) but I feel your personal views are creeping into your independent reporting.
Although I am not in the habit of conducting an argument through the press I do need to respond to Mr. Powell?s claims, so can I make the following points.
.In the first consultation carried out by SODC the most favoured site was site F and the least favoured was site D. FACT
.I didn?t have the casting vote in the Council meeting on Tuesday 26th of November. Out of 16 Councillors, 1 was on holiday, 2 SODC councilors had to abstain ( Otherwise they wouldn?t be able to vote in the SODC vote in November) and then it was 7 in favour of site F and 6 for site D. It just so happened that I was last to vote as chairman so all eyes were on me. It was not a casting vote it was what we call democracy! FACT
. Mr. Powell mentions in his letter a couple of times that it was a ?Questionable straw poll? then highlights the fact that he thought that significant evidence of preference for site D.
I would hardly call 225 for D and 205 for F as Significant difference in opinion and I would question the fact that he thought the majority of residents opinions were more in favour of site D at the public meeting.
But as I said at the start of the public meeting (If Mr. Powell had been listening) we all have opinions on which site would be best, if indeed we DO have to accept 530 houses in Thame, but we need to accept that we all have opinions and we need to ?agree to disagree? and respect each other?s views
I also take issue with Mr. Powells point that there was no Town Council Officer to record the minutes, there was and the minutes will be available to the public from Tuesday 2nd November. FACT
At the End of the Public meeting I announced that all comments and emails that the Town Council had received would be forwarded to SODC as part of the consultation and indeed the 2 SODC representatives along side me were busy taking notes as the public meeting went on. How do you sum up a public meeting when so many different views were expressed? Maybe Mr. Powell can advise an amateur.
Maybe Mr. Powell will be heartened if SODC decide to build on Site D. ?Out of ?Site?, Out of Mind?
Lastly I come to the subject that has hurt me most.
I live at 33 Morton Lane. If houses were built on option D it would have no affect on my life.
I wouldn?t be able to see the houses, I wouldn?t suffer from traffic, I wouldn?t suffer from flooding, I wouldn?t lose my view, and I wouldn?t lie awake at night worrying that the ?new? residents would cause a problem! So how Mr. Powell can accuse me of ?a whiff of self interest? is (to put it in his own word?s) beyond belief! As a long standing resident of Thame, when I consider what is in the best interests of ALL the inhabitants of this beautiful town I think of the big picture NOT MY BACKYARD.
I hope Mr. Raymond W L Powell from Union Way (Next to site F) can say the same thing!
P.S Mr. Powell, instead of mudslinging from the sidelines is very welcome to stand in the local elections next May so he can ?influence? the Future of Thame.
Good Luck
Adam Buckland ( Mayor of Thame)

EDITOR’S REPLY

I think I have answered your query about why I have started to put the letters on the front page

HERE

I DO think this issue has now become the main news subject and I will continue to publish the responses on the front page for the reasons stated.

Dear Editor, We are very lucky to have our Town Council. I moved here from London nine years ago, where I had witnessed in my area how sorely that truly local representation was missed, following the amalgamation of my urban district council, together with many neighbouring councils, into a Greater London Borough.

Norman Brand
Fanshawe Road

Dear Editor, The controversy over future housing for Thame is distressing for everyone. I find it difficult to offer an opinion on the alternative sites currently being discussed. I?m also aware, for example, that the house I live in (at Fanshawe Road) was built on what was once someone else?s view.

However, as your site states: ?TNN aims to create and sustain a genuinely Thame- focused news website which all users can truly be a part of …?

On October 29 you headlined a story: 29/10/10……’Last nail in the town council’s coffin’ says Thame resident – 29 October 2010 .

In this case the resident who criticised the council was not (repeat not) Robin Gibb (see the current Thame Gazette front page headline) but Mr Raymond Powell of Union Way, who, like Mr Gibb, of the Prebendal, opposes the building of housing on the pig farm.

There is some controversy, it seems, as to whether a letter to the editor can be regarded as news. I write as a retired Press Association hack – and debate as to what is and what is not news has gone on as long as I can remember.

However, your mission statement (if I may call it that) declares that your service is for all its users. It is your judgment alone as to what is news. Mr Powell?s comments were relevant, interesting and probably representative of his neighbourhood – and your headline served to convey the fact that you were introducing the piece as a news item.

To be strictly objective, in a newspaper format there would probably have been a paragraph or two about Mr Powell on the front page, with a reference to the Letters page. In your format, and according to its own constraints, you compressed the process into one. But the headline was clear. You dealt with the piece as news. As indeed it was.

Without entering into the planning controversy I would say that I sympathise with the mayor in his rebuttal of the tone of some of Mr Powell?s remarks ? and also with Councillor Buckland?s tribute to the service your site does to our town.

Norman Brand

Dear Editor, What a shame that Mr Raymond Powell felt it necessary to lower the whole tone of the debate to the lowest common denominator by casting wild, unsubstantiated and defamatory accusations at those who happen to disagree with his viewpoint.

He has claimed that the split vote in Council this week contradicts the earlier position of the Council in favouring site F, instead of recognising that the consultation process had mellowed the views of some Councillors in the meantime. He has impugned the professional neutrality of the Town Clerk. He accuses the Mayor of ?hammering the last nail in the credibility of the Town Council? and of acting out of self interest, and he calls the Town Council a ?cosy cartel? employing ?pseudo officials?. I seem to remember an old saying that ?name calling is the last refuge of someone who has run out of arguments? !

Of course there are a wide range of different opinions on such an emotive subject, and Mr Powell is entitled to his, so why does he seek to undermine all those who happen to disagree with him and indulge in taking cheap shots at those who work hard, day in day out, for the community in which they live. To question the personal integrity of Councillors and the Mayor, most of whom I am sure he has never met and knows little about, is beyond contempt, and to suggest that the Council is somehow biased, incompetent or derelict in its duty by not supporting his views simply demonstrates that he has run out of intelligent points to contribute to the debate.

Despite the fact that he clearly has no respect for local democracy Thame Town Council will continue to represent the interests of Mr Powell, and indeed everyone else in Thame, in robustly challenging SODC on their methodology, the numbers, the short consultation period, and the one site allocation. If, and only if, we lose all of those arguments and it comes down to a case of site D ?vs- F, the Council has indicated its marginal preference (7-6 vote) for site F, which ultimately will be decided by SODC anyway.

I guess I am stating the obvious in pointing out that Mr Powell himself lives at the edge of site F and, in fact, in one of the houses built during the most recent new development in Thame, so it is no great feat to understand where his interest lies.

I would challenge Mr Powell to put in his own nomination to stand for the Town Council elections next May, and play an active part in determining the future of Thame, but I doubt that he would relish the time and commitment required, nor engage with matters that don?t affect him directly. I doubt that I will win his vote, but neither do I want it.

Mike Dyer (Town Councillor)

DEAR EDITOR, I would like to address Raymond Powell?s completely unfounded allegations against the Town Council and the Mayor.

Firstly, Thame Town Council has not voted to ?support? development on site F. The District Council have taken the view that Thame should have a large new housing estate on the outskirts of town ? the Town Council strongly disagrees with this view. However, if the District Council decides, against all the evidence and weight of public opinion, to go ahead with a new housing estate, then the Town Council vote was that site F would be marginally less awful than Site D, but that the original site C favoured by the public consultation two years ago is still the ?least-worst? option. To twist this into an allegation that the Mayor or the Town Council support site F is playing with words.

Secondly, Mr Powell?s allegation that the Town Council is a cosy cartel. Any member of the public can attend the Town Council meetings and speak at the meetings. All meeting dates are announced publicly in advance. The agenda of each meeting is published in advance and Councillors cannot add items to the agenda after publication. The minutes of each meeting are made available publicly. The sixteen Councillors are from all parts of Thame and there are Conservative, Lib Dem, Independent and Labour Councillors.

Thirdly, Mr Powell?s statement that the public meeting was more opposed to site F than other sites. I was at the meeting, which was organised by the Town Council, and listened to every contribution. None of the independent news reports on the public meeting agree with Mr Powell?s statement. Opinion was pretty evenly balanced, as is the feedback given following the meeting.

Finally, I accept and support that people will have very strong opinions However, that is not an excuse to make unfounded allegations against Town Councillors or any resident of Thame. Town Councillors should represent the views and interests of the whole town, not just those who hold a specific point of view or shout the loudest.

Cllr Pieter-Paul Barker
North Ward, Thame Town Council

DEAR EDITOR, It seems the Mayor of Thame has hammered in the last nail in the Thame Town Council’s coffin of credibility in regard to his deciding vote, taken in respect to the Council’s claim to support a major housing development at the Pig Farm location bounded by the Oxford Road and the A418 by-pass (known as Site F).

Throughout the whole of October the Town Council has been represented by certain Councillors and the Town Clerk as favouring Site F for development, as against the earlier accepted site known a Site D, on the other side of the Phoenix Trail. Apparently, this earlier claim was far from the truth, as at a special meeting on Tuesday of this week, the attending Town Councillors were evenly split over the matter and the Mayor cast his deciding vote in favour of recommending Site F to the South Oxfordshire District Council, where the real decision making authority lays.

How the Mayor can justify his position on making his vote in favour of Site F defies belief. During the month prior to the meeting, the Town Council launched a consultation process including a market stall a week last Tuesday, an exhibition within the Town Hall, a special cover edition of the Thame Gazette and a Public Meeting at St Mary?s Church last Monday evening to explain and gather resident opinion, plus a rather questionable “Straw Poll” ballot in which residents could volunteer to participate and show a preference for either Site D or site F.

All of this consultation process has been heavily propagandised by various ?pseudo? council officials as already being a “Done Deal” in favour of Site F and the consultation was used as a way of gaining further consolidation of their views from the public.

In the event, it was quite plain at the very well attended public meeting held in St Mary’s Church (the place was packed to the rafters) that residential opinion erred well on the side of opposition to Site F. Of course the Mayor and members of the platform chose not to make a summary of the audience input, nor give the attendees any indication of the influence they might have gained by attending the meeting. There was absolutely no summing up at the end of the meeting and no Town Council officer recorded any minutes of the meeting. Meanwhile, the public audience was banned from recording the meeting themselves.

The, questionable, “Straw Poll ballot” has also revealed a significant vote in favour of recommending Site D, rather than the pig farm Site F. I understand that the votes favouring Site D amounted to 225, whereas the votes cast for Site F only reached 205 at the time of the Council meeting on Tuesday evening.

I now question how the Mayor and leader of this cosy cartel of Councillors, given this significant evidence of preference from those residents sufficiently moved to make the effort of voting and/or attending public meetings, can go against them and cast a deciding vote in Council against them and in favour of Site F. One might be inclined to suspect a strong whiff of self-interest when one realises that the Mayor?s own home lays very close to the, otherwise, preferred site D.

I am sure that the South Oxfordshire District Council are aware of the shenanigans perpetrated by members of the Thame Town Council over the past month or two and will take due account of their discredited presentation.

Raymond W L Powell
Union Way
Thame

PHOTO: A packed St Mary’s church at the recent Core Strategy public meeting.