Your letters
To the EditorHere is a little story about my grandfather, William Ashley Cummins, known to most as ‘Budgie’, who died in 1972.
Recently we went to Cork to talk with Nicholas Cummins, a nephew of Budgie. Nicholas stayed at The Lee with the Cummins on 3rd June 1961*. He was taken that evening to the Cock and Rabbit and drink was taken. Sometime after closing time, Budgie was standing on a table giving a recital of a poem entitled The Eternal Prostitute. The performance was interrupted by the arrival of the police. The policeman recognised the Chairman of the Magistrates and said “Mr Cummins, it is time you went to your bed.” Nicholas recalled that everyone left quickly.
Can someone who was there that night please let me have the words to the poem?
Simon Moffett
Crundale, Pembrokeshire
* I have the visitor’s book used by the Cummins throughout their married life, from 1921 to mid 1949 at Pipers and then to 1975 at Rushmere. Nicholas only stayed one night.
To the Editor
I wonder, should the efforts to prevent the threatened low flight paths tragically fail, will the Council send out their trigger-happy signwriters to paint Boeing 747s on those superfluous Chilterns signs we have dotted around us?
Mike Senior
The Lee
To the EditorHello, Mr Grumpy here! I’m not much of a correspondent (as you are about to read!) but this last month I have, like many of you, had to put pen to paper in a serious way as a result of the threat of the ‘Luton Luftwaffe’. I can’t remember when, if ever, I last wrote such a letter, but the NATS proposals will, if approved and implemented, have a dramatic effect on our beautiful village with regular low flights blighting our lives and the Chiltern Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The details and issues involved have been well aired both in previous editions of the Newsletter and also on The Lee website so I will not repeat them here. If, like me, you knew nothing about air traffic, the last three months have been a steep learning curve trying to get to grips with the regulations and NATS’s own language – they don’t want to have to deal with the general public! That may have been acceptable 50 years ago, but since then air traffic has grown substantially. Alas, NATS’s attitude appears not to have moved with the times – it rules the airways, with little or no regard for the consequences of its actions on the ground. Hopefully all our letters of objection might make them think a little bit more.
Frustrated that NATS was keeping a low profile, that the proposals were not getting much publicity and that local authorities did not appear to understand the full consequences of the proposals, a small group of us decided to raise awareness of this issue in the local communities. First off The Lee website was kicked into action with its own section on the proposals, your comments and how to object. From the feedback that I have had, the information on it has been well-used. Then working with a team from St Leonards we produced and distributed a leaflet to every household in The Lee, St Leonards, Cholesbury and Hawridge and put up notices round all the villages so that everyone would know about the proposals.
In our research we found that a couple of years ago there had been a legal case in which the plaintiff was an AONB and the defendants were NATS, CAA and The Department of Transport; also that the leading QC for the plaintiff was advising some land owners in East Anglia on the current proposals. So a lawyer in our group rang the QC’s chambers and arranged a meeting for an hour (funded by ourselves). Representatives of The Lee, St Leonards, Dunsmore and Wigginton went to London and had a four-hour meeting – fortunately Counsel agreed to maintain a fixed fee! We were given a broad-ranging explanation of the consultation process, told there were no ‘golden bullets’ to head it off and shown how to object and by whom. In summary, individuals don’t have the legal standing for this but stakeholders like parish councils and Chiltern Conservation (responsible for the AONB) do. At that time virtually all the local parish councils had responded to NATS, but Chiltern Conservation had not. So we shared our new-found knowledge with them and their letter to NATS dated 3rd June (see comments page of The Lee website) reflects the input from Counsel. If you look at it, it is very different from other letters in that it asks precise questions of NATS, which is legally obliged to answer them in a professional manner and if it fails to do so, it could lay itself open to legal challenge.
We await NATS’s response and it is likely that we will have to retain an air traffic consultant to interpret it and generate the follow up response. This advice will require funding so if you would like to contribute, please let contact me on 837328.
Well I’m going to enjoy summer now, but scratching my head about the anomalies of planning law in the UK. If a neighbour wants to put in, say, a new window in his house, I am informed of this in writing whether or not it affects me – I am given that choice. If I decide to object I can do so; I can review all the papers; I can attend and speak at planning meetings. The NATS process is different. If for sake of argument I did not read the papers would I have known about the consultation – probably not? A window or the equivalent of a heavy diesel lorry at 40 mph 23 feet away (NATS definition of the noise of a typical aircraft at 3,000 ft asl) every six minutes? I know which I would object to first. Then there is the other main issue in our village in the last six months – planning permission for practice nets at the cricket club which was rejected on the grounds that they “would result in an unreasonable level of noise and disturbance” for the neighbours. So am I now to understand that after a detailed process of dialogue regarding willow and leather, they cause more disturbance than a commercial aircraft at 3,000 ft? Happy holidays.
Tim Hart
Swan Bottom