Letter: Dongying Link? What About Public Consultation?

Published on: 29 Sep, 2017
Updated on: 29 Sep, 2017

Dongying and Guildford

From Bernard Parke

Hon Alderman and former Mayor of Guildford

We are told that Guildford Borough Council aims to strengthen international relationships.

It cannot be denied that this is a worthy cause and in this case, it is apparently to be achieved by connections with towns in China and France.

However, it is customary to seek feedback from the public, as was the case for our partnership with Freiburg.

It was then thought necessary to invite comment from parish councils and by holding public meetings: the findings were put to the full council.

This seems not to be the case for the current proposal. We learn that a delegation is to visit China as early as next month to sign a partnership agreement.

Bearing in mind the importance of this project and its effect on the people of Guildford, stretching into the future, it would seem desirable to get the full endorsement from as many of our people as possible before further steps are taken.

Responses to Letter: Dongying Link? What About Public Consultation?

John Robson Reply

September 29, 2017 at 7:31 pm

I think we need to accentuate the positive.

The Conservatives, nationally and locally, (aside from the £5k for flights and a bit of dinner money) are broke, having failed to stimulate the economy sufficiently to generate enough growth we need to ask the nice Chinese people, who we barely know, but have a money tree, for help.

This is a well-trodden path. The Conservative government have helped secure our energy needs for the future, saddling our children with tens of billions of pounds of debt by paying far in excess of the market rate to the Chinese to build us a prototype nuclear power station, it might take 15-20 years to build and still might not work, but the opening ceremony was quite good and it’s helped us deepen our cultural understanding of signing bad PFI contracts with foreign entities.

Our local Conservatives are thus just following the leader, as they do, with the objective of securing at least £1 billion to build us a tunnel for the A3. This is a commendable and selfless act and given the size of Dongying and its vast oil wealth this will surely just be a drop in the ocean for our Chinese partners, I’m sure Cllr Spooner will seal the deal.

The sky’s the limit for this fledgeling relationship. If Cllr Spooner can secure this on the first trip who knows what could happen next? Maybe the Chinese will build us our own oil refinery on the green belt?
John Lomas Reply

September 30, 2017 at 9:54 am

What fantastic forward thinking from John Robson.

The Chinese could also build an all weather 3rd London Airport with two runways; one on top of the Hog’s Back, for when there is low level fog, and the other along the lower terrain of the Wanborough/Flexford stretch paralleling the railway which would still be open under low cloud.

The railway would provide easy access from the national rail system and a simple travellator could be built to transfer the aircraft between the high and low level runways.
Gordon Bridger Reply

October 2, 2017 at 12:20 am

What really worries me about this link is that it will encourage many wealthy Chinese who are desperate for a safe haven for investment to think that buying into a housing market with a linked city is likely to be welcome.

Have our councillors really thought through the consequences?

I hope it will be clearly set out to the Chinese that we have a very serious housing problem and foreign investment in housing is not something we need in Guildford.

One could visualise that a relatively small number of purchases could have far reaching consequences. Other types of technical investment could be helpful, provided there is housing for newly created employees