Residents' Objection to Trolleybus Scheme (Headingley)

This is the text of the objection I made at the Leeds Planning Panel on Tuesday 25th June 2013.

I was allowed six minutes to speak so was unable to include every point I would have liked to.  At the end of this I have attached some of the points I had to trim due to constraint of time.

As a resident of Leeds who may be forced to pay for this project, I wish firstly to state the overwhelming opposition of the community to it and our belief that it is a waste of government and Council tax payers’ money at a time of austerity. 

My comment on this section is that while the aims of a trolleybus system may seem laudable, it would irrevocably damage Headingley. Our beautiful heritage area would be carved up for what has been acknowledged by Richard Lewis as being a Highways scheme more than one of public transport, and I believe, be held up as an example of short-sighted thinking in years to come once the damage was seen.

I understand that older residents of Bramley still mourn the loss of the original character of their area. I can only hope that Councillors will think again and not inflict a similar fate on Headingley.

Councillor Carter has stated that it is ‘not the preferred option’ and has referred to ‘NGT with its undoubted problems’ and Cllr Golton has said that there are ‘questions unanswered’.

Some of the problems and questions which have not been properly addressed at consultation concern the loss of heritage in what is largely a Conservation area, where there are many trees of mature years, some dating from Victorian times, and detriment to English Heritage listed structures.

There are more mature trees, stone walls, old Victorian buildings, communities and other things of value on this stretch which would be threatened with destruction and consequent loss of character to the area, and other issues, than I can itemise in the time allotted to me.

From Alma Road, where a 19^th century cottage with architectural character in good repair is in question behind the Arndale centre where stone walls would be lost and dozens of mature trees would have to be cut down.

On Wood Lane mature trees and a large late Victorian house which is occupied and in good repair would be lost, making homeless some seven people including two children who attend Shire Oak School very nearby and one adult who has lived there for 20 years.

Headingley Hall retirement home would have its buffer of beautiful mature trees stripped away and a swathe cut through those on Shire Oak Road, behind the Telephone Exchange, Ivy Lodge and the old gatehouse now of St Columba’s church, where a representative has told me his community supports this objection. St Columba’s and its caretaker's lodge would be on a traffic island effectively, sandwiched between roads.

Across the meadows of Headingley Moor, the last remnant of Kirkstall Abbey sheep grange, more Victorian planted trees would be taken down and partial loss of an old stone wall would occur. New plantings to replace the loss of century plus old trees is not acceptable.

Every inch of the proposed bypass route is already either usefully employed or beautified by nature and heritage. There is no brown field or derelict land.

On Headingley Lane the setback of walls required for the proposed road widening would be extensive, needing to build up several meters in places and Rose Court children’s playground would be severely reduced. From Ford House to the end of the former Leeds Girls’ High School there are at least four listed structures of which three would be affected or demolished. Under the 1990 Planning and Listed Buildings Act there should be no detriment to these or their curtilage.

Morley House Trust for the former Leeds Girls’ High, Ford House and Rose Court have expressed support for this objection.

All along this section of road are mature trees right up to the small businesses at the end which would be lost. 

The redesign of Victoria Road junction and Hyde Park would involve loss of green and buildings.

It is a plan which would spend 90% of its capital budget on the road building and only 10% on the transport itself.

Richard Lewis has told me in response to a direct question ‘Will it be stopped if the local people don’t like it?’ ~ ‘Absolutely’ he said.

All the local resident and community groups that I am aware on the route of are against it.

The sheer immensity of the destruction and upheaval in an area so rich in visually aesthetic heritage and environment would in my own view as a professionally qualified Art Therapist be detrimental to the wellbeing of local residents for the loss of aesthetic surroundings, especially to the old and vulnerable who would likely suffer a significant degree of culture shock due to the perceptual stress of seeing so much of their accustomed local world destroyed before their very eyes, in order to satisfy the travel needs of passers through.

On the principle of ‘make polluter pay’ it is these people who should be made to take some responsibility for the problems they cause with their traffic, and not make the local residents pay with the destruction of their heritage.

I would invite Councillors to walk this section of the route with me and witness firsthand the many beautiful mature trees which have intrinsic value in their own right and make the character of Headingley what it is before voting to destroy them, their surroundings and their contribution to air quality which would not be helped by the failure to reduce existing traffic.

You do not preserve the environment by destroying it.

It has come to my attention and I understand that at the city centre plans panel in 2005, Councillor Taggart said "Headingley is the jewel in the crown of Leeds and we should welcome anything that benefits Headingley". This would not benefit Headingley, and I should like to ask Councillor Taggart and all Councillors to benefit Headingley now, by rejecting these plans.

Additional comments:

Although concerns about local air quality were a significant driver to the project, air quality would actually be worse, since it has been acknowledged that with this scheme traffic on Headingley Lane is unlikely to become less, and cutting down so many trees would be to the detriment of air quality.  You clearly cannot improve air quality if you cut down a massive number of mature trees while at the same time allowing traffic to continue at the same levels or even increase.  

The Exchequer has actually estimated that something over a million pounds a year in increased revenue would accrue from traffic usage on Otley Road/ Headingley Lane and Woodhouse Lane.  This is an acknowledgement that the prioritisation of the trolleybus would cause increased congestion ~ part of the scheme involves deliberate stacking of traffic to allow trolleybus priority which is the only way it can achieve the paltry time savings which are claimed.  If this did not occur, it would not be able to achieve any improvement.  This also would penalise the buses which currently run on the route, which would probably lose customers as a result and so local residents would suffer a reduction in the service which suits their needs.

Something I feel strongly about is that the proposed trolleybus route behind the Arndale Centre would not only require the felling of some thirty or so mature trees (very conservative rough estimate, could well be much more) but it would allow the trolleybus route to pass over the spot where the Yorkshire Ripper’s final victim, Jacqueline Hill was murdered.  It is disquieting to many of religious belief and none that thousands of people are expected to pass daily over this unfortunate spot.

When I put this to my local Councillor John Illingworth (who actually mentioned the spot before I did as an opportunity for a bypass) he said that there can't be many spots where people have not died and so this is no reason to prevent such a route.  My own response to this is not just any death.  

This is the most infamous and tragic death within the living memory of those resident in Headingley, and probably way back for many generations.  I well recall shopping near here on the Saturday afternoon following the dreadful event and at a quarter past five people had all fled the streets, leaving them bare and deserted.  I too wanted to get home as quickly as possible, and simply passing near the end of Alma Road was bad enough.

The proposed route of the bypass and road widening on Headingley Lane reads as a one of ill repute.

Coming from the Hyde Park end, we would have: destruction of small businesses, demolition and detriment to several English Heritage listed buildings and structures, the loss of a children's playground, destruction of dozens of mature trees, many dating from the mid nineteenth century, and some from before, the felling of mature trees in front of Headingley Hall retirement home, stripping bare the buffer between the residents and the main road, the demolition of a perfectly good house and the making homeless of its seven occupants, of whom two are children and go to the nearest school, Shire Oak, the taking down of old Yorkshire style stone walls, and ending with the route passing over the tragic murder spot.

This is a path of ill omen, and is only a mile or so of the route which I am most concerned with, but the swathe of destruction would go for the entire eight or nine miles of the route.  In a world where human and spiritual values were not considered of lesser importance to economic 'development' it would be seen immediately that such a catalogue of mishap should be a clear indication that it is simply wrong to try and destroy these things for the benefit of those who wish to pass through our beautiful suburb.

Human rights, environmental heritage and ecology must be put before the ephemeral requirements of commuters.

I would urge all residents of Headingley and Leeds to write to their councillors and strongly urge them to abandon this folly.

These Councillors especially are responsible for attempting to inflict this on our communities and our environment.
 
keith.wakefield@leeds.gov.uk              Chief Executive Leeds City Council
richard.lewis@leeds.gov.uk                  Chief Officer for Development
james.lewis@leeds.gov.uk                     Head of Leeds Metro Transport

Leeds City Council Exec Board Meeting Video Blog 19 June 2013

Tonight I talk about today's Leeds City Council Exec Board meeting which I attended and deconstruct the tactics which they are taking to persuade, coax or perhaps gently coerce the people of Leeds that it is in their interests to have a trainwreck tsunami of road development sweep through their communities.

What with the Exec Board members talking about consultation as a means to the end of getting the people on board the truth is exposed that this is no more than a propaganda exercise, confirmed by the neuro-linguistic programming used by the NGT lobby.  And I forgot to mention that one of the Councillors actually said 'We have got to do a better selling job!'  Condemned out of their own mouths...

Occupy Reality!

It seems quite fortuitous that I have started posting my video blogs here on my blogspot page as I am currently having a problem adding text to my YouTube upload.

In support of the Occupy Monsanto demonstrations around the world today a I suggest we all occupy our own realities with autonomous thought and action rather than allow corporate entities to take over and monopolise our existences.

We need to regain a sense of our own agency which has been depleted by the social brainwashing of popular culture as well as sociological theories which try to persuade us that there is no ‘doer’, only an intersection of social variables, the ultimate argument of despair and nihilism.

It is a clash of worldviews as those who operate under a paradigm of hierarchical dominance continue to try and establish and maintain control of systems that had evolved with inner adaptive control measures that are flexible and resilient.  Each monad of consciousness acts autonomously and responds to the whole in order to remain in equilibrium rather than to always direct the responses of others.

We are Doers, and we are Agents, as each of us follows a unique path of experience which gives us the opportunity to grow.  We define ourselves by the choices we make.  The quality of the space we create, the reality we occupy is the manifestation of who we really are.  ‘Know thyself’.  ‘To thine own self be true’.  If we allow others to occupy that space with their domination then we are abdicating our sovereignty.  This has been going on for a very long time, we have sleepwalked into this for generations.

The answer lies within us as we become aware of ourselves and begin to take responsibility for how we deal with the challenges which face us, but the mettle of the inner person is only brought forth by the facing of the external events.  Those that deny the importance of what happens in the world are missing the point.  We cannot wholly control what arises from external situations, but we can control our own responses to them.  The hero need not be undefeated, only undaunted.  This is what the monopolists cannot abide.  Material domination is only the lesser half of what they seek ~ the greater half is the domination and subjugation of the will.  Occupy the space within yourself, within your consciousness and your heart and you will be part of that great wave which is spreading around the world and becoming ever stronger as we all reinforce its field.

Spirits In The Material World

Reflecting on things that I have experienced over the last week I am reminded of how things that come into our worlds change us.

If we have some spiritual practice then we aim to develop that core within us which is beyond the material conditioning we have all received through our incarnation and external life influences.

Finding a place within ourselves which seeks to balance and stabilise how we relate to the troubling events outside is the first step towards having a more benign effect in the world than if we simply respond from a level of information and material control based on desires and the effort to fulfill them.

Becoming more ourselves is to bring spirit into matter.  Matter is a good servant, but a tyrant of a master.  In Tolkien's 'The Children of Hurin' which I am currently reading it is stated that Melkor the Morgoth, the fallen angel to whom Sauron was merely a vassal in the First Age of Middle-Earth which is recounted in the Silmarillion, has become so attached to domination of the world that he has become trapped in incarnation.

To submit that spirit entirely to matter not only in the unavoidable reality of our own incarnation, but to seek to live only through that, and not in some higher meta level of reality that brings more to matter than its own substance is to lose oneself.  Although I do not mention it in the video blog, it is of course the case that consciousness actually creates reality, the appearance of matter and so on as demonstrated by quantum physics and the observer effect.  So for consciousness to seek a complete fulfillment in matter alone is to get trapped in the mirror rather than to see the meaning of the image.

Diverse forms of spiritual practice enable us to get beyond this limitation by allowing us to experience altered states of consciousness which can then lead us to understand that we are not the contents of our consciousness, but that we are some continuum beyond that which evolves through assimilating and interpreting what passes through it.  The discipline of practice, whether in ritual form or simple mindfulness leads us beyond slavery to the external world and leads us into service through a recognition that we are all eyes of the same consciousness ~ In Lak'ech

The transhumanist movement, which only sees humanity as something to be improved, made more efficient and productive fails to see that it would remove us from the very process of learning and evolution which informs our ascending metaview of reality and how it unifies all thing.  If all we were to become was a machine which could not help but to love its servitude, then we would have lost who we are and become more and more separated from the sea of universal consciousness and existence.

Better to evolve organically, spiritually and in our consciousness and this will allow us the perfect freedom of choice through discipline and respect for higher laws rather than slavery to lower ones.  The more we choose to do that which is good for all, then the greater freedom we create for all, contrasted with the agendas whereby all would serve the intent of a few in which even those who are served become ever more limited in their own slavery to self.  The sterility of the latter eventually limits itself out of existence while the former is the basis of life, ecology and limitless inner and outer growth.

The Nature of the Game

Tonight I try to address the accusations I have received that I am fear mongering.  Either I have need of refining what I am trying to say about dealing with the spiritual challenges we each face daily, or my critic has misunderstood me when I talk about the existence of the darker side of our world.

Or perhaps a bit of both.

To me the challenges are about accepting them without getting trapped in predetermined responses or apprehensions about the future based on past experience.  Consciousness is fluid and we can mold it into any shape.  We can face our difficulties with courage or we can face them with fear.  This is why I begin the talk with the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.

Like mediaeval alchemists transforming themselves we must look our demons in the eye, we must face them, not deny their existence and turn our backs on them because then they will haunt our footsteps and we will always have them at our heals.  They are only a denied and discarded part of us anyway.  This is the Trickster side of the Ego which plays tricks on us, confusing and puzzling us, to either trap us or encourage us to evolve and is at the core of the game of existence and consciousness that we are engaged in ~ it is the Nature of the Game, as Jagger and Richards put it so many years ago in the controversial 'Sympathy for the Devil'.

The spiritual warrior faces the responses in themselves evoked by external experiences and so grows.  It is not promoting fear to look at the evil about us, it takes courage to face these things rather than ignore them and deny them.  By seeing our own responses to facts and situations we can gain insight into our own natures.  This is the Jungian approach to uncovering the archetypes which hide within the unconscious, especially the Shadow ~ that part of ourselves that we are most ready to deny.

By this we learn to grow spiritually and become empowered.

When we have begun to transform our inner selves, then we are able to start effecting transformation in the outer world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_pf6MsQC-0

Disclosure is Happening, Gradually and Controlled