Letter: Is LRAG Finding Less Opposition to the London Road Scheme Than It Was Expecting?

Published on: 17 Dec, 2023
Updated on: 17 Dec, 2023

Image of London Road taken in August 2022. Google Street View.

From: Roger Carnegie

See: Why Tamper with Survey Data Whilst it is Still Active?

The recent letters from Terry Newman (LRAG) on the London Road scheme consultation do need some counter points, he is tilting at windmills with many of his claims and conspiracy theories. I have been regularly skimming the submissions and haven’t seen any of the issue Mr Newman raises.

I expect some comments require moderation It is not unusual for non-social media sites  (for example, The Guildford Dragon NEWS, in line with many news publications), to require moderation of comments). Once the moderation has been completed I expect we will see a jump in the number of published comments.

The independent CommonPlace platform, used by SCC for the consultation, also has a rigorous terms of usage policy which may have made some submissions more dubious. It lists the following as reasons for moderation: ‘those making personal attacks, or an attempt to portray a legitimate interest and spread false information, or any attempt to portray multiple responses from a single person as being from different people’.

There will be checks on people making multiple submissions to try and game the results – something LRAG stated they were testing in a weekly update a while ago. Perhaps this caused the issue he observed?

The survey doesn’t look very biased to me, there are numerous forthright views and detailed reasons for both support and objection to the proposals, to suggest the public cannot make their views know is a mistruth, pure and simple.

I strongly suspect that Mr Newman saw there wasn’t the opposition he expected, indeed he bemoans the lack of objections in a recent “newsletter” and he is now trying to discredit this exercise in local democracy.

Interestingly, a week later the LRAG team then appeared to promote their own in-house survey that doesn’t appear to require any user verification so is open to “ballot stuffing” as it is not conducted by an independent third-party organisation, additionally, the survey authors choose to remain anonymous.

LRAG said they would be impartial and in letter to The Dragon have quoted the Nolan Principles for holders of public office. I feel it is about time they stand up and walk the walk, and not just talk the talk. If they want to come out and campaign against the scheme then do it, there is no shame in that.

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