A Lament for Lancaster
SAVE Britain’s Heritage, the national group that campaigns to protect buildings at risk, have weighed in to the debate over the redevelopment of Lancasters Canal Corridor. They say “SAVE challenges Lancaster City Council not to put short-term economic gain ahead of long-term sustainability. If the city’s aspirations as the ‘Bath of the north’ are to be met then a sensitive, conservation led approach to new development must be adopted. This insensitive scheme would blight the city, damage its special character and endanger its long-term economic future. It must be abandoned.”
The group have created a slideshow - A Lament for Lancaster.
That can be viewed on the SAVE Britain’s Heritage website.
SAVE have put in an official objection to the scheme which will be heard by the local planning committee at a special two day hearing on the 13th & 14th of October.
Plans for a huge 2500 inmate ‘Titan’ prison in Lancaster look to have come to nothing. The Green Party withdrew a motion at last weeks meeting of the City Council which would have opposed the siting of a new mega prison in the Distirct because it was revealed that the consultants looking for a site had written to the council and told them that there wasn’t a site big enough in Lancaster. 
Lancaster City Council has placed an ‘Article 4 Directive’ on the canal basin at Glasson Dock. This will protect the basin from being developed peicemeal by British Waterways and require that all works on the Marina will have to submit a planning application. Green County Cllr Chris Coates said “This is what local people have been calling for all along. Its not that everyone is opposed to the basin being redeveloped, it was just the way that BWB Marinas had gone about it without wanting to apply for planning permission that angered everyone.”
Local Green Party members were part of the 500 strong attendance at this years conference held in London. The conference saw the election of Caroline Lucas MEP as the first ever party leader. Caroline said “I am deeply honoured to have been elected as the first leader of the Green Party. Britain needs Green leadership now. None of the other parties has the vision or the courage to tackle the real challenges we face today - the accelerating climate crisis, and Victorian levels of inequality.” 
Public Meeting
PUPILS returning to school today across Lancashire will find only free range eggs on the dinner time menu. From the start of the school year, Lancashire’s catering staff will be cooking up their usual treats using only free range eggs. The decision will affect more than half a million eggs each year.
A leaflet entitled – The Heroin Trade; A crime against humanity has been pushed through doors around Halton. The leaflet purports to be from a group called the Preston Pals, but it is believed that members of the far-right British National Party (the BNP) have taken over the veteran’s organisation. In it Muslims are blamed for the heroin trade, and it talks of an ‘Islamic invasion’ and claims that heroin was ‘almost impossible to find’ in Britain before Muslims arrived here. 
Over the bank holiday weekend, John O’Gaunt suffered a couple of incidents which have left the Malvern Rd bus shelter on Bowerham Rd and the telephone box at the top end of Coulston Rd, opposite the Newsagents, with smashed panels and surrounding pavements strewn with broken glass.
As thousands of commuters have been left fuming in traffic with the closure of Back Caton Road as part of the work on the Kingsway development, local residents haven’t had it easy, either. To solve the traffic problem, traffic has been routed through Bulk Road, pushing thousands of extra vehicles past people’s homes at all hours of day and night.