Ceremony should be for everyone

I WRITE to express my disappointment and disgust, on realising at 6.15pm on Saturday July 12, that the annual sounding of the retreat on the Castle Green, Hereford, was cancelled, but an ongoing celebration would take place at the town hall.

At the town hall I was informed by Nigel Jones, organiser from the Copthorne Barracks in Shrewsbury, the celebration about to take place upstairs was strictly for invited guests.

I informed Mr Jones he had badly let down the people of Hereford who attend in their hundreds every year. He said rain was imminent, no notices or apologies were displayed.

This couldn’t have occurred at a worse time – when wars and the lives lost are remembered and included in curriculums, with youngsters swelling crowds at war memorials.

The command for the display to be abandoned came from Brigadier Martin Vine, County Colonel to the Rifles, from whom an apology is warranted.

Many disgruntled people arrived at the town hall to vent their disgust.

It would be of interest to know the cost incurred, when the man on the street could not listen to the band or partake in the drum head service.

PETER MAYNE Kings Acre, Hereford

You’ll pay to spend penny for the GP

FOLLOWING a visit to my GP in Kington I was asked to provide an early morning urine sample for testing. I was shocked when I asked at reception for a sterile urine sample pot, only to be told they were not provided and I would have to go to the chemist to purchase one myself.

I was told the reason for this long-standing policy was that they only had a limited number of sample bottles. I may not be a business manager but I would have thought that if you do not have enough specimen bottles to meet your need then surely you would order more.

Maybe the problem is the price of these bottles, but when priced up on the internet they were about 13p each (much more when purchased from the chemist), surely not too great an expense, especially compared to many health care products.

I was wondering if this is something restricted to Kington surgery, or if it is a more widespread indication of the NHS no longer being a free service and soon we will be required to pay for investigations too!

GEORGINA RUTHERFORD Lyonshall

Formidable list of threats

THE Campaign to Protect Rural England exists to protect our countryside.

Since 1948 our planning laws have supported this aim but we are beginning to wonder if this still holds true. In recent weeks your paper has reported on the increasing number of planning applications for large- scale housing developments in the open countryside, the expansion of broiler units (chicken sheds), wind turbines, and anaerobic digesters, using productive food land for growing maize to fuel them.

Add to this our own council’s plans for major road building around Hereford and it would be safe to conclude that our landscape is under threat as never before.

As volunteers we try to do what we can by objecting to applications that we feel pose a serious threat to Herefordshire’s landscapes.

We do not oppose all development but we oppose wrong development.

For example, we have long campaigned, sadly often unsuccessfully, against the spread of polytunnels, those ‘lakes’ of plastic that scar the landscape particularly in the Wye Valley AONB.

BOB WIDDOWSON Chairman, Herefordshire CPRE Victoria Road, Kington

State of town is real issue

I SHARE Alex Brodie’s delight at Leominster Council’s vote in favour of a new supermarket on Southern Avenue.

Projects such as this must come before the major housing developments that are proposed for the south of Leominster, just as a new road from that area to a point on the A44 west of the town must be built to eliminate the heavy pollution on Bargates.

As for the town centre, our county council in particular has failed Leominster badly over the years.

It has allowed roads and pavements in the central area to fall into decay, but rather than recognising its own failings, doggedly sticks to rules that require developments such as a new supermarket to prove that they won’t affect town centre trade.

I would suggest that shopkeepers who oppose the proposed development, and the Town Centre Action Group which speaks on their behalf, would be better served by putting massive pressure on the council to make Leominster more attractive to shoppers, before worrying too much about an out of town store.

GRAHAM CARPENTER Oldfields Close, Leominster

Big boys win

IT is the legal duty of Herefordshire Council to use planning policies to ensure developments do not jeopardise the amenity of nearby residents, businesses and countryside.

Recent decisions on applications for broiler units appear to have been taken without regard to the intentions of policies. The Mansel Lacy case is a good example.

There are at least 10 dwellings within the 400m distance that is required by the policy. A successful tourist business will be destroyed by the combined weights of a local landowner and multinational company.

Broiler houses are very large sheds.

Alongside them are the control plant, heating units, feed bins and other facilities.

These sit on large areas of hardstanding to enable big vehicles to bring and take away thousands of chickens, food, wood chippings, and many gallons of foul water produced when the sheds are washed down.

Why are these units not on industrial estates, and why are they categorised as agricultural enterprises and exempt from business rates and development fees?

RJ BRADBURY Bradnor Green, Kington

Chemicals a necessary evil

MANY people believe the world could be fed by using solar organic farming practices. It can’t!

If pesticides, fungicides, fertilisers, and herbicides were banned, as many wish, then whole populations would starve to death, as in 1840s Ireland, when the lack of a fungicide caused the potato crops to fail, due to blight and had DDT not been banned in the 1970s, malaria would now not exist, like smallpox. Farmers do not spray chemicals on crops for fun, but to ensure healthy plants. Modern sprays are formulated to affect bees as little as possible, because these insects are essential for pollination.

Campaigners don’t consider, when calling for a ban on GM crops, that researchers can develop plants, that do not need sprays, and thrive in droughts or frost, thus helping to feed the world without the need for chemicals, irrigation, or heated greenhouses but Luddite action prevent progress here.

Polytunnels, used for fruit growing, result in massive reduction in sprays, that would otherwise be required if crops were grown outside, when cold wet conditions cause Botrytis in strawberries.

Arsenic, strychnine, nicotine and lead, no longer used in the UK on crops, were the only available remedies in orchards, before less harmful man- made chemicals were developed by scientists.

W F KERSWELL Picklescott Church Stretton