I FAIL to see why the three Kearsley councillors find it necessary to comment on a meeting held by the Kearsley Environmental Action Group which they did not attend (BEN, March 2).

It was not a public meeting in the formal sense. I, too, was not at that meeting and so do not presume to comment on it. Any information received subsequently through a third party is inevitably coloured by their opinion and is therefore not FACT but HEARSAY.

It is FACT that the Kearsley councillors have consistently supported the supermarket plans for Old Hall Street. It is FACT that Dr Iddon MP has refused to become involved. It is a FACT that local residents have had to form an action group as the only way of expressing legitimate concerns about the implications of this scheme.

In a democratic society, elected representatives ought to represent and further the reasonable legitimate concerns of the people who vote them into office. How else can individuals make known what they consider to be valid causes of concern? Local government should be for the good of local people, not for the good of big business as manifested in supermarket competition.

It is a FACT that certain aspects of the plans allow options to be kept open. I suspect this will undoubtedly benefit the developer rather than the public. Specific detailed plans are necessary to prevent all kinds of visual and spatial abuses. Words such as COULD and POSSIBLE are often precursors to CAN, WILL and IS.

Mrs P A Grimshaw

Church Street, Kearsley

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.