A conspiracy of incompetence?

I've had a nice snooze (for about 7 months) and it's about time I posted something. Here's a fictional story . It's fictional, remember? Really, truly it is. Nothing like this could happen in reality - whatever that is.



There once was a nice supermarket company called Tesco. In its drive for total domination of all levels of the food supply in this country, it decided to set up shop in the small town of Avalon, and submitted a planning application. It chose a plot at the other end of the Morlands site. The plot belongs to Avalon Plastics. The good bit about this (depending on your point of view) is that Avalon Plastics had already received planning permission (with conditions) for something like a supermarket on that very site. I suppose that was a major contributor to the economics of their planned move onto the Morlands site.

Anyway, word got out and people - including myself - started writing letters to the local rag, mostly against the proposed development. If you want to know why I'm against supermarkets, read Shopped by Joanna Blythman. The few 'pro' people kept going on about jobs: but Martin Caraher held a lecture recently in which he pointed out that for every 20 jobs Tesco 'creates', 30 disappear in the local area. So much for creating jobs.




Anyway, if you check out the Mendip planning website above, you can submit your comments to a planning application there...in theory. For some strange reason, it didn't work. Maybe they've fixed it now, but it didn't work then. It's also very hard to find the application itself unless you know exactly what you're looking for.

(Here's a link that will show you what the store might look like: http://tinyurl.com/l3y2m4. Be patient, it takes a while.)

Mendip District Council were shamed in the Central Somerset Gazette into admitting their incompetence and allowed people to submit comments via email - and extended the timeframe by a week or so.

My friend Jane submitted a comment or two and asked to be kept up to date with any public meetings etc and received a letter on 31st July. It invited her to a meeting which took place on the 29th of July.

OK, so maybe they're incompetent and 'forgot' to send it in time? Maybe so: but the funny thing is that they actually dated the letter 31st July. To add insult to injury, the letter states that you have to submit your comment the day before the meeting. Here it is:



So there we have it. Mendip Council could be accused of using incompetence as a tool for getting around difficult issues. You couldn't submit comments. You get invited to a meeting two days too late - and you haven't even taken the trouble to backdate the letter so it looks like it's been lost in the post. I'm not accusing them of overt dodgy dealing but it does seem rather convenient. Hanlon's Razor applies.