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Letter: Mole Valley Leaflet Includes ‘Blue on Blue’ Criticism

Published on: 16 Mar, 2021
Updated on: 16 Mar, 2021

From: David Roberts

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. I am therefore amused to see the latest Mole Valley Conservative election leaflet stealing shamelessly from the Guildford Greenbelt Group’s past publicity about the Guildford Local Plan.

The leaflet has a picture of Mole Valley MP Sir Paul Beresford who, in a seemingly endless string of comments on the social media forum Nextdoor, has recently been likened to the Invisible Man because of complaints of failure to reply to letters and non-appearance in the media.

Inside is an article under the headline “Save Our Green Belt, Revitalise Our Towns”, a call GGG has been proclaiming for years, in precisely those terms, believing developers will never be persuaded to regenerate our shabby urban areas until the cheaper option of building on green fields is closed off.

In language almost identical to GGG criticism of Guildford’s Tory Local Plan, the article calls “the Mole Valley Lib Dem draft Local Plan” a devastating attack on the green belt and for doing nothing to revive our towns and villages.

This is a bit rich coming from a party responsible, according to government statistics, for ensuring 46% of the total green belt lost in 2019-20 in England, 1,470 hectares including many entire villages, was in Guildford.

This Tory leaflet correctly points out the Guildford Local Plan was “approved in a hurried and undemocratic manner just prior to the last elections”, failing to mention the then crushing Tory majority on Guildford council as the chief culprits.

It then complains that the present non-Tory council “have not delivered on their clear promise to residents to review and redraw the current flawed Plan”. This is both true and stunningly hypocritical.

Ironically, another article in the leaflet is headed “In Defence of Objective Truth”.

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