Forum topic: Whitewebbs campaigners raising funds to mount legal challenge

So much to unpack in your post so let's work our way through...

1. Aarhus - you don't know about it or its implications but seek to dismiss it anyway based on little more than rumour. SOGL had full costs awarded against them and I know the woman behind that campaign (who was also involved in OC) has said she paid some of them but it is unclear whether the Council ever recovered its costs in full. There is also no evidence the Council recovered it's costs on OC either despite them losing on every argument. So it is a legitimate concern until proven otherwise (NB: none of the fundraising campaigns have ever gone back asking for more money to repay a costs bill....)

2. Minority's vanity project - minority is indisputable. There are circa 350,000 people living in this Borough. Neither SOGL, nor OC nor FoWW have ever shown more than 1% support for their campaigns.

3. People always THINK they know what they are talking about but it simply isn't true. And no amount of feelings changes that. OC were CERTAIN they were in the right. SOGL were CERTAIN (despite their lawyers telling them not). FoWW are CERTAIN.... yet they still need to propagate myths about the scale of disposal, the performance of the golf centre and whether land is being "sold" in order to stoke fear to garner support for their cause.

4. Secret deals. Your claim you prove it. You can't and the claim remains absurd given there was plenty of transparency over the process.

5. We had 6 public golf courses in the Borough from memory. Now 5. So why £100k best spent subsidising a minority participation event? It is not a robust argument whatsoever.

6. Access. What you could access before you can access now. If you've only been since the golf course was closed then that is misrepresentative of what's being done. If on the other hand you are saying you were happy ambling a round a golf course in the middle of the day risking your skull being cracked open by an errant ball then I'd challenge the truth in that statement. The rest is going to remain just as accessible. More so in fact given only 50% of the golf course is having access removed.

7. Plans are all available on line.

It’s interesting to have a name (Aarhus Convention) for positions I had heard about, so thanks for that, as for the rest I’ll be leaving it, but will hang on to the “reeking of nothing but bitterness”, for many a reason. I’d suggest you read the postings with a little more care and perhaps reflect on the legal system as a core strand of our democracy.

And now we can add the ULEZ legal challenge to the list of ignorant vanity projects that cost the tax payer 10s of 1000s to follow through with.......