Saved - new book on the campaign to save an AONB in Wye, Kent

[Mark]

taken from: http://www.save-wye.org/

article about the forthcoming Launch in Wye of the book "Saved" - the
battle to save an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty & community in Kent
by Imperial College
March 12, 2007
by David Hewson

With less than a month to go before Saved, the book of the Wye campaign,
hits the shelves, the first responses are coming in from some of those
who’ve seen the early proof copies.

Professor Roy Greenslade, former editor of the Daily Mirror, and now
Professor of Journalism at City University, London, and one of the
country’s leading media commentators, has kindly contributed the foreword
to the book. In it he writes, ‘
this is not a story about Nimbyism. It is
about right versus wrong; about transparency versus secrecy; about truth
versus lies; about democracy versus authoritarianism.’

Robin Page, the countryside writer and broadcaster who was for many years
the host of One Man and his Dog, has also been very supportive of the
project since the outset. He says of the book, ‘David Hewson writes
thrillers. “Saved” is a real life thriller, exposing the sham of “local
democracy”. A must for all those wanting to save their countryside and
communities from the concrete mixers and the planning fixers.”‘

Finally, Jonathon Porritt, the well-known environmentalist who is now
Founder Director of Forum for the Future, writes, ‘This is a fascinating
book, full of insights into the workings of local politics, new, web-based
ways of campaigning, different environmental tactics, and institutions as
powerful as they are unaccountable. As a result of a wonderfully effective
campaign, this little corner of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in
Kent is safe for now. But as the author himself points out, the agents of
the kind of wholly unsustainable development that is still eroding our
countryside will never give up and never go away. With local democracy in
such a state of disrepair, in so many parts of the land, many more battles
of this kind will still need to be fought.’

The book will be launched in Wye on Easter Saturday, April 7th, in the New
Flying Horse Inn between 10 am and 2pm. This will be very much an open
house so feel free to turn up for a chat at any time. From launch on
signed copies of the book will be available at the New Flying Horse and at
Wye News, both organisations which supported save-wye from the outset, for
which we’re very grateful.


Project Alchemy 
 the legacy

February 23, 2007 in News by Justin Williams |

The smoke has finally cleared after the battle of Wye Park but the fallout
from Imperial’s shattered vision litters the field. It’s almost six months
since Prof Sir Leszek Borysiewicz announced that the college was scrapping
its plan to destroy a large part of Kent’s most beautiful environment and
that it would not look for an alternative.

If anybody hasn’t yet noticed, Wye College is gone. Its departments are
closed or moved to South Kensington, its professors redundant or
relocated, its happy and noisy population of red-faced agriculture
undergrads a distant memory. For the people of Wye, this is the real
legacy of Project Alchemy: the wanton destruction of an ancient
institution [what was an agriculture college, with specialisms in
horticulture, plant sciences and environmental science and rural
studies/rural sociology courses) by a small group of academics and
businessmen located in a steel and glass building 60 miles away.

But the Wye Park scandal has also hurt those most closely associated with
it, too, and some of them very badly indeed. The time for recrimination
is, we hope, past and we don’t take any pleasure in the effect this
disaster has had on the careers of its promoters. Yet, just one year ago
none of us — least of all David and me, back then still trying to find out
how to be journalists again — could have forseen how things would turn
out.
Read the whole article at:
http://save-wye.org/2007/02/23/project-alchemy-the-legacy/#more-694


Further info about the battle to save Kent's countryside from unscrupulous
property developers can be found at: http://www.wattyler.com/


http://www.save-wye.org/
(the tag cloud for the website is: planning secrecy, conspiracy management
representation background spin consultation opposition scale funding
failed ventures environment)