At the beginning of this year, in a change of tack, Trustees submitted the first of two planning application attempts which sought to build two large glass penthouses on top of the historic Grade II listed Old Market building in Hove. Approval of this plan would have set a dangerous precedent giving carte blanche to anyone to make unusual changes to listed structures just on the basis of ‘needing the money’. The first application was refused and in September the revised application was also refused. Tellingly, planning committee Member, Cllr Paul Steedman, stated that he was not convinced by the claimed financial need.

In the wake of these refusals, a petition seeking grant support from the council is now being introduced before every event by Old Market manager and trustee Stephen Neiman. He explains that the Old Market does not receive any funding from the council, nor from the Arts Council. He readily admits the Trust covers the cost of its operations, but says it is unable to clear its “historic debt”. An electronic petition (lodged on the council’s website) states that the requests for funding “have been met continually by both organisations stating that although they are supportive of the arts and community use of the building, they cannot support a project with such a capital deficit.”

Superficially it appears to be a reasonable request for some financial assistance – but is it all it seems? Prospective signatories are given the impression that neither the Arts Council nor the council have ever donated a penny. Even Delia Forester, ex-Labour councillor and ex-deputy chair of planning, takes as read this supposed lack of public funding in her letter of support for the two glass penthouses.

It is in fact an ungrateful slur on both organisations. In 1999 The National Lottery (through the Arts Council) donated £1 million to the Old Market Trust – at the time, the largest donation to an arts project in the South East. Furthermore the only significant condition was that there would be a clawback should the Old Market be sold within a 10 year timeframe. Those 10 years expired on 11th March 2009 – around the time the Old Market Trustees registered the planning application for the glass penthouses.

In 1998 the Labour administration provided the Old Market Trust with a loan of £275,000, to be repaid in 10 equal instalments. In 2001 that debt was deferred to 2006. Further funding 

came in the form of a £585,000 grant from the 
Single Regeneration Partnership, administered through Brighton & Hove City Council.

The Labour-run administration, in which Delia Forester was a key player, went even further in 2004. Council finance officers Catherine Vaughan and Peter Sargent presented a report to councillors recommending that the loan should be converted to a grant. Their reasoning was that should the Old Market Trust become insolvent Brighton and Hove City Council would be unlikely to retrieve the £275,000, and as they had already distributed the money to the Trust it would “have no additional financial impact on the council”. The report concluded that “The council therefore has no financial gain from pursuing repayment of the loan”. Spurious logic, but the report was approved, and the unpaid debt wiped out.

These actions helped to significantly reduce the “historic debt” to just over £1 million. In 2007, local businessman, Jonathan Bigg, entered into an agreement with the Old Market Trust to take 250-year leases on areas within the Old Market building with the intention of sub-letting them as office space. For this he paid the Trust £1 million, a sum he maintains Stephen Neiman and the Trustees assured him would clear their debt. Having given the money, he then learned that the Trust intended to build two glass penthouses above the areas he had just leased. When he discovered that their motivation behind the glass penthouse plan was again to clear this debt, he was told that his £1 million had made no impact on the debt and that the Trust remained in exactly the same position as before. He asks – quite reasonably – “where has the money gone?”

With stories floating around about late payments to staff it seems at least one person is sitting pretty in all this and that is the Old Market’s artistic director, Ms. Caroline Brown. In 2005 Ms. Brown took home £32,500, and in the following year £35,000. In 2007, supposedly at a time of intense financial pressure due to the Old Market debts, her salary rose sharply to £60,535, coupled with expense claims of £17,500. In fact Ms. Brown’s salary makes up a large chunk of total outgoings on salaries. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that Ms. Caroline Brown is actually Mrs. Caroline Neiman, the wife of Old Market manager and trustee Stephen Neiman.

It seems a shame that the Old Market could close its doors soon – it is undoubtedly a superb and successful venue marred by the seemingly poor financial decisions of its trustees. We invite readers to form their own conclusions.

Related posts:

1. The Old Market: A Tangle of Conflicting Loyalties and Remits
2. Old Market Update
3. Royal Alex Update

The sight and smell of the overflowing bins is truly disgusting and a serious health hazard – some residents have already spotted rats amongst the torn sacks. Let us not forget that many communal bins are sited directly outside people’s homes. What I find truly amazing is the dire management decisions taken by CityClean. Whilst the filth has been piling up around the communal bins over the past few days CityClean caged trucks could been seen driving around the central area, but only collecting the waste from litter bins. Would it not be more intelligent to task these workers with collecting the hundreds of strewn sacks around the communal bins? One would have thought that would be common sense.

Perhaps it is time for CityClean and our council to follow the lead of Jersey Council who disposed of communal bins as a failed and costly experiment. Furthermore with the lower ranks of the CityClean workforce threatened with massive pay cuts it might be more appropriate for our city council to dock the over-inflated salaries of CityClean management, who have clearly demonstrated their hopeless lack of competence and propensity for creating city-wide problems.

Some good news is that the strike has been delayed by 28 days, apparently after the personal intervention of the new chief executive, John Barradell. We shall have to wait and see if they can hammer out a long-term solution.

Related posts:

1. Local History: Communal Bins Arrive
2. Letters: Communal Bins
3. Letters: Letter To Councillor Geoffrey Theobald (Council Cabinet Member For The Environment) Regarding Communal Bins

It’s amazing to me how popular homeopathy is — in the UK alone it is a multi-million pound industry. Remedies are stocked in many pharmacies and even high street chemists like Boots and Holland and Barrett. It has legions of loyal followers who will swear blind that homeopathy cured them of whatever ailment they happened to be suffering from. It is also popular in Brighton and Hove, where not only do we have homeopaths plying their trade, but also a registered charity called Dolphin House devoted exclusively to the treatment of children with alternative medicine.

Surely all these people can’t be wrong? Surely they wouldn’t spend large sums of money needlessly? Well, as a sceptic you very often find that just because quite a lot of people believe something it doesn’t make it true or right. I’m sure there are many absolutely sincere homeopaths — people who genuinely think they’re helping, and thus have no qualms taking money for, as they see it, a job well done. When you ask most advocates of homeopathy how it works it’s really quite remarkable how few know the procedures involved.

The first stage in creating a homeopathic treatment is to do what is called a “proving”. This involves taking a perfectly healthy person (if you can define what that is) and giving them a substance – we’ll pick dandelion leaves in this case. Homeopaths will give this to a healthy person and wait for symptoms to develop. Let’s say this person develops symptoms of nausea, a high temperature and dizziness. Of course there’s no real proof that eating dandelion leaves has caused this effect in the person, but we’ll play along. This gets noted down and then passed around to other homeopaths.

Now, a patient goes to visit their homeopath with symptoms of nausea, a high-temperature and the constant feeling of giddiness. “Ah”, says the homeopath, “The ideal treatment for you would be a preparation of dandelion leaves”. You see homeopaths believe that whatever caused the symptoms can also cure the symptoms, but only when ingested in small quantities. Up to now you’ve probably not read a thing in this article that made you exclaim to yourself “What?!”. In fact injecting people with a small quantity of a virus, thus helping with their body to produce immunity to a full onset of the disease, has a basis in modern medicine. There are just two little problems when dealing with homeopathy: firstly introducing a virus into someone already suffering from that virus would have absolutely no effect whatsoever, and secondly homeopathy demands that the active ingredient be diluted to such an extent that not even a single molecule of the original substance remains.

Ah … there’s the “What?!”. It’s true — homeopathic preparations contain none of the so-called “active” ingredient, due to the preparation methods they use. To make a homeopathic preparation you take one part of the active ingredient, put it into 10 parts of water and apply a process called “succussion” (that’s their fancy word for shaking it and whacking the container against something). You then take one part of that diluted solution and add it to another 10 parts of water, and then the shaking ritual begins again. But there is no way you would give that to a patient … it’s far, far, far too strong (or is it too weak? You see how confusing this all gets.) This process continues many times until there is not one single molecule left in the dilation, and homeopaths insist that at every stage the solution is getting stronger and more effective.

Physicist Robert L. Park, former executive director of the American Physical Society, has noted that “since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth”

Homeopaths make it clear that it’s very important that you also have consultations with the qualified homeopath (it’s rather difficult to define what that is as well), for just as the right homeopathic preparation is said to aid your recovery, the wrong one could make your symptoms worse. Now if we follow all this to its logical conclusion it would mean that no one who believes in homoeopathy could ever drink a glass of water, bottled or otherwise, as the number of substances those water molecules have come into contact with is so vast and varied. Proponents of homoeopathy should either be suffering from a vast myriad of symptoms or so dehydrated that they resemble human prunes.

Many might argue that there is nothing wrong with all this — if people want to spend large sums of money on something which demonstrates nothing beyond a placebo effect in certain people, then what is the harm? To an extent they have a point, but what concerns me, and this is the case with much of alternative medicine, is that people who have legitimate, and sometimes serious, medical conditions are avoiding going to a proper doctor. I’m sure most reputable homeopaths would send someone to a doctor if it was evident that they were suffering from something more than the minor ailments that plague us each and every day, but I also suspect that some wouldn’t: — for example, there are companies on the Internet which offer homeopathic anti-malarial tablets, treatments for exposure to anthrax and several serious cancer related conditions. And, sadly, it’s all too easy to do. There is very little legislation on homoeopathy as, superficially, it does very little, and it is that loophole that allows charlatans to exploit people.

So why do so many believe in it? It is because it exploits a human characteristic, and that is to constantly search for patterns and explanations. Our bodies are the most remarkable machines, evolved over millions of years, and most ailments our bodies can overcome with no help whatsoever. However they seem to disregard this fact, and search for a reason as to how they came to be better. Whatever activity they happen to be doing at the time will end up getting the credit: if they use a homoeopathic treatment they’ll sing its praises, if they’re rubbing themselves all over with magnets they’ll declare them to be the best thing since sliced bread. This is what’s known in science as anecdotal evidence, and it is the very thing that science has learnt that we cannot rely upon. That is why scientists set up test procedures to evaluate the authenticity of claims. Sadly for homoeopathy it falls very short in this regard. Just look at the image below, a photograph of the back of a homeopathic cure sold in Boots. “A homeopathic medicinal product without approved therapeutic indications”. If indeed it did work so spectacularly it would be comparatively easy to prove, and would be in the interests of any homeopathic companies to do so.
For several decades now James Randi of the James Randi Educational Foundation has been offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can demonstrate homeopathic treatments having an effect different from water. The foundation still has that money, and I don’t think they’ll be parting with it any time soon.

Bonus: Tony’s Homeopathic Hangover Remedy

(This would produce quite a weak homeopathic solution, but it’s really not practical to use a container the size of the solar system in order to make a stronger remedy)

Related posts:

1. Letters: Homeopaths Get Dose Of Real Medicine

Replacement vultures are circling, however, directly threatening the future of the last of the organised boating activities still allowed to occupy and use Brighton beach between the piers – sailing.

Over the summer The Argus splashed with news of a 60 metre, spoke-less steel ring with observation capsules which developers propose putting on the seafront, right alongside the Brighton Sailing Club & just below the boarded-up West Pier kiosks (24.7.09). This glorified Ferris wheel would, either on its own, or in tandem with the “i360”, create disturbing and surreal visual noise right in front of our prized Metropole and Grand hotels. Who in their right mind would still book expensive, prestige rooms in either hotel once sea views are blocked by vast airborne gewgaws, supported on the ground by bulky, noisy fairground mechanics?

The Argus also informed us that no further Party Conferences are expected to book the Brighton Centre after this year’s Labour Party Conference (with fringe meetings and lodgings booked into and around the Metropole and Grand hotels). And the Brighton Centre alone is blamed. The identified need is to have it demolished with a mega-treat, connected to Churchill Square at the back, put up in its place.

I don’t buy that the loss of the seafront conference trade is just about The Brighton Centre facilities. Brighton itself is a contributing factor.

Drugs, alcohol, clubs and an over-reliance on transient youth & student culture have all left their indelible mark on Brighton (less so on Hove). Brighton is the destination of choice for the human equivalent of graffiti & there is an obvious gearing of commercial activity and investment that caters to them (and, sadly, I include the annual Pride carnival in this category along with Fat Boy Slim on the beach). Gotta get the kids in, right? Gotta stay on message and keep selling “vibrant” & “diverse”, right? I could write a whole essay on the disvalued diversity now lost to Brighton & Hove forever.

The economy now seems locked into vulgar, chav and “vibrant” mode. How are the “i360” and proposed “Brighton O” better than that? What kind of moneyspinners can they realistically expect to be? Are the views over the city really so special? When the sea air causes it to rust or crust, the “Brighton O” can be moved off (transportable) but the “i360” is to be driven into the fissured chalk to quite a depth to accommodate the 4-metre diameter & extremely tall central pole above ground with its pod going up and down, up and down. Planning consent did not ask for, require, or get any information on how the devil you decommission the “i360” when the time comes …
If Brighton per se and the Brighton Centre can’t deliver class, gravitas, culture, ambience, or whatever political parties need to hold their annual conferences here, why would the kind of person with the kind of money to book a room at the Grand Hotel come here either? What is the city per se, doing to sell itself as a good host to the kind of person these hotels need to bring in if they are to survive?

Brighton & Hove were once the destination of choice for royalty & the wealthy, dignified high rollers? What is offered now for the kind of visitor who reveres and wants to wallow in the grand Regency seafront Brighton & Hove possesses? If I may borrow from The Doors’ Jim Morrison: “what have we done to our fair city”?

And how does it change tack?

Directly below the Grand and Metropole hotels, based in the seafront arches, are a kayak club and the Brighton Sailing Club. By the club entrances the wall-mounted remains of Royal National Life Boat signs remind us this was once an RNLI station. Not so long ago, fish were sold direct from catches on this section of beach where fishermen also kept their boats. Moved along. Gone to the Shoreham harbour area now. Some are moored at the Marina. Not sophisticated enough, perhaps, for the City-by-the-Sea craving urban bling.

Looking at what Brighton & Hove City Council have done with the seafront over recent years, it is clear that a march of facilities and space-gobbling public art has steadily made its way towards the Brighton Sailing Club from the Brighton Pier (still the Palace Pier to many of us), whilst making no concessions to the long-held boating traditions around this spot whatsover. I’m told the boats keep getting moved further up the beach. Pesky boats. Tsk. And I sense that the Sailing Club is being left behind, that it too is in real danger of being edged out and pushed off the beach altogether.

One can count 35 catamarans and 5 other small sailing craft in a line along the pebbles in front of the arches clubhouse and changing rooms. The passing public sit on the “cats”, use them for photos, vandalise them. Even so, the Brighton Sailing Club has a waiting list of another 20 people looking to be based there.

Sailing is a class act. The healthy world of sailing should be good for Brighton’s tarnished image but there isn’t enough of it to over-ride the bad stuff. It is a discipline that offers physical and mental development, year-round pleasure & activity on the water with enhanced sea views for the rest of us. When sailboats are on the water, crowds form to look at them. Club members don’t even need to own their own boat. It is a sport, with a clean, respectable image, practised by men & women from all walks of life. Brighton Sailing Club members John Davys & James Parrott worry deeply now about what impact the proposed developments (“i360” & “Brighton O”) could have on the future of their sailing club.

Two basketball courts (with smashed night lamps on poles), two different areas of “public art” and two inflatable soccer pitches now encroach from either side of the little patch of beach where boats and sailing are still tolerated. The glorified Ferris wheel proposed for the area where the cheap and nasty inflatable soccer pitches currently rest would overhang the sailing club’s space, squeezing them still further. Walking along this area, one feels hemmed in by a lot of different objects & activities, all there, jumbled up too closely. On a warm summer’s day it is heaving with visitors. But what about when it rains or in winter?

And what’s in it for the Metropole or Grand Hotel visitor just above them? People do not spend hundreds of pounds a night to stay in hotel rooms overlooking a basketball court with broken lighting round it, “Brighton O’s”, a viewing pod going up and down or feral night life. We need to raise our game to attract the serious leisure spenders to these wonderful hotels. Does Brighton & Hove City Council really care – or will we see those hotels fail and attract developers who will convert them into flats? Sailing, directly overlooked by The Grand Hotel and The Metropole, if promoted and expanded into the adjacent areas would surely also promote the long-term survival of our flagship hotels quid pro quo and generally raise the tone of the area.

I somehow don’t believe that Brighton & Hove City Council has a year-round beach strategy that involves the Brighton Sailing Club or that it is valued or particularly welcome to remain on the seafront any more than the fishermen were. Why is this? Eastbourne has an internationally famous tennis tournament. Classy. Cowes has an internationally famous sailing week. Classy. The Henley Regatta. Classy. Brighton has……what? A mania for encouraging developers to erect huge blocks of flats along the seafront “that will put Brighton & Hove on the map” are all I’ve seen so far this century along with a wannabe wish to be labelled a Capital of Culture. Development strategies that are about throwing up huge buildings and “attractions” all over the seafront betray a lack of confidence and a kind of egotistical bluffing about culture.

Where is sailing on Brighton & Hove’s calendar of feted events to put the City on some part of anyone’s map? Why do the surfers at the Marina have to compete with developers to retain their bit of sea activity? Why is the Marina being turned into a housing estate? The city has filled the beach with petanque rinks, basketball, volleyball, etc. – all of which are constrained in their use by the weather, all of which one would like to see inland in parks and open spaces dedicated to play and sport for people of all ages. None of what is on the beach (Sailing and Kayak clubs apart) is in any way connected with the sea itself – our unique selling point!

Why hasn’t the Council enlisted sailing as a way to help counter the drug-death capital of England tag and the view of Brighton & Hove that got us featured in a guidebook called “Crap Cities”?

Development should be about retaining and ‘bigging-up’ worthwhile, permanent community asset organisations like the Brighton Sailing Club. Clear the seafront, I say, and bring on the windsurfing, sail boats and regattas. Quid pro quo, the city, the sailing club membership, the Metropole and Grand Hotels could all be doing each other a few long-term image and economic favours. And it counts as culture, dont’cha know!

Related posts:

1. Letters: Feedback From Last Month’s Feature On Seafront Developments, Written By
 Valerie Paynter
2. Letters: Developments On The Marina
3. Ceremony Marks 25th Anniversary 
Of Brighton Hotel Bombing

This is an article which I wrote some months ago in another local magazine on the history of the communal bin scheme. I thought it might prove of interest for some residents in the area to reproduce it here. One thing I really hate is hypocrisy, and when dealing with certain local councillors from the main political parties, you are treated to it in abundance. Labour are currently running around trying to be all warm and fuzzy towards residents, claiming that the expansion of the communal bin scheme is ‘outrageous’. Now read on …

Incredibly, it seems that certain Conservative councillors seem to have forgotten the Conservative-led scrutiny panel into the events surrounding the introduction of the communal bin “trial” in Central Brighton a couple of years ago. That panel concluded, amongst other things, that residents should be properly consulted about communal bins before they were placed in streets. Now the Conservative administration seems intent on dumping these bins all over the centre of town, and all over Kemptown. Perhaps even more astounding than that, Labour councillors Gill Mitchell, Craig Turton and Warren Morgan are trying to make political capital out of this mess, and  are acting as if they were walking into the affair as wide-eyed innocents. Well … what a difference a couple of years makes … in fact all three were on the Environment Committee and all three forced these bins on residents in the centre of town with no consultation whatsoever, and continued to do so after the trial in other areas.

In late 2003 an envelope fell through my letterbox. It wasn’t addressed to me, just to “The Occupier”.  I was really getting fed up of endless non-descript junk mail dropping through my door, adding to a sense of irritation whilst doing nothing for our environment. This was the time, I thought, to make a stand. I, like so many, complained about all kinds of things around the city, but realised that I never did anything about it. Now though, I could open the junk mail in my hand, find out who it was from, and then start some action about it. Little did I know that opening that envelope would take me down a completely different path – a path that led me to uncover the staggering way in which our city is run, and the contempt with which residents are held by certain factions within our council.

What in fact was contained within the envelope was a document from CityClean – the cleaning department of the council which had been formed when the refuse collection had been taken in-house in October 2001, having formerly been run by the privately-owned company SITA. SITA had suffered significant problems, including rubbish piling up in areas for days and workforce strikes, and for many residents the view was that no one could do any worse. The missive in my hand told us that our rubbish collection was changing and we would soon be enjoying a 12 month trial of a wonderful new system known as communal bins. The pictures showed six foot high containers and a person using the bin whilst displaying a smile usually exhibited by the latest recruit of some whacky south Californian cult.

I soon learnt that many of my neighbours knew nothing of this scheme – probably because CityClean had only seen fit to deliver only one letter per building – even for the many  multiple occupancy properties. I also discovered that there was to be a community meeting in the local church hall a few days later. I produced a leaflet and delivered it to as many streets as I could, with several other residents. Local ward councillor Roy Pennington told the church warden that they’d only need “a few chairs” – in fact over 100 people turned out to pack the church hall. Also in attendance were Gill Mitchell, a councillor for East Brighton and the then chair of the Environment Committee, and Tim Moore from CityClean, whom I recognised as the joyous ‘resident’ using the bin in the CityClean flyer, and who was wearing the same fervent, toothy smile as previously.

Assembled residents were informed by Tim Moore that in fact they themselves had asked for these bins in a recent survey. Judging by the animosity in the room it would seem that those residents who had supposedly made such a request had given the meeting a miss. Residents argued that the bins were unsightly, unnecessary, inappropriate in a conservation area, and would also lead to a loss of parking spaces. Tim Moore told residents that there would be two exhibitions that they could attend which would tell them more about it, and that they would provide “photographic evidence” of the need for bins. At the conclusion of the meeting another resident asked if in the light of this overwhelming opposition they would cancel the trial. Gill Mitchell pursed her lips and announced the trial would continue as planned, and also commented to Regency councillor Roy Pennington, “I can’t be bothered to answer these questions”. This was the unfortunate tenet that would continue throughout the so-called trial of these containers. This was my first encounter with our elected representatives and council officers. I was amazed at the contempt with which they were treating residents, the very people who paid their salaries (many people are unaware that councillors are now paid out of local taxation on top of their expenses). However the best was yet to come.

At the two public exhibitions (attended by a scant 48 people due to the inconvenient times chosen) residents had the joy of meeting the metal beast in the ‘flesh’. But what of the “photographic evidence” Tim Moore had promised us? Well it would be unfair not to give the poor fellow points for trying – he had a picture of a single open black sack photographed in such a way that the location could have not only been anywhere in the city, but indeed anywhere in the world. However CityClean don’t just think big in terms of bins – they had paid, presumably at no small expense to the local taxpayer, to have the photo blown up and printed on card to form a handsome backdrop to their exhibition, which lasted a total of merely two hours.

But ultimately this was all based on the mysterious Best Value Review of Waste Management 2002 in which Tim Moore and Gillian Marston claimed that we had all asked for communal bins – right? Well actually, no. I obtained a copy … it certainly made interesting reading. It revealed that in fact 85% of residents had somewhere to store their rubbish prior to collection. It also showed something even more interesting: out of the choices offered to residents in the survey, communal bins were the least popular, not the most, as Tim Moore and Gillian Marston had claimed. I questioned them on this, to which they replied that it had been based on the Regency edition of the report. Fine, I said – they could give me a copy. I’m sure I do not need to tell readers that there never was any such report, and over the next few weeks I was treated by the pair to a series of reasons as to why I hadn’t received it, which were laughably pathetic and only stopped short of claiming Gillian Marston’s dog ate it. During the few meetings residents forced with Gillian Marston and Tim Moore, we were treated to some other gems by the pair: for example, did you know that people who care about conservation and heritage are “just living in the past”?!

I received a letter from the council’s head of law, Mr. Abraham Ghebre-Ghiorghis. I can only assume that Mr. Ghebre-Ghiorghis had previously provided legal services to some blood-thirsty Somalian warlord as his letter informed me that unless I stopped writing articles in local newsletters and removed everything from my website I would be subjected to “legal and/or other action”! I asked him to name the specific instances of supposed “defamation” and to elaborate on the “other action” but he failed to reply to my questioning. It was clear the council were just desperate to stifle any free speech. In fact they even started threatening local newsletters. All this coupled with Gill Mitchell telling us that we had been properly consulted, everyone wanted the bins, and those who opposed them were just a small “vociferous minority”.

Eventually the weight of opposition forced a council scrutiny panel to look into the bins which saw Gill Mitchell hauled over the coals and which concluded that people had not been properly informed and that any future placement of these bins should be carried out after proper consultation with the residents.

However that, and more besides, is history. What the “trial” has shown is that the bins that have been in place in the centre of town regularly overflow, and even need teams going around from CityClean every single day to collect all the fly tipping that occurs next to the bins. How can this possibly be saving money? It stands to reason that four people (that we know of) going around every day in two vehicles must cost as must as one crew collecting refuse once a week. These bins also discourage recycling  – but don’t just take my word for it – in fact Gill Mitchell even admitted to this at a public meeting in Preston Park in the early days of the trial. Hardly a suitable result for a council which wishes to pride itself on doing its best for the environment?

Related posts:

1. Communal Bins Overflow
2. Letters: Communal Bins
3. Letters: More On Communal Bins

Gliders on the Downs Photo: Corinne Attwood

The South Downs Way, stretching for a hundred miles from Winchester to Eastbourne, is one of Britain’s National Trails. Justifiably designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it offers stretches of peace and isolation almost unique in densely populated southern England.

It has been travelled for over 8,000 years, back into the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age – the high and drier chalk ridge offered much easier travelling than the wet and thickly wooded Weald below – but the greatest threats to it from human occupation came in the last century.

During WW2 large areas of the Downs were used for military training, however the biggest changes came after the war, when mechanised agriculture, heavy subsidies, and the extensive use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers allowed larger areas to be ploughed than ever before. Fortunately the decision to begin the designation of the South Downs was taken in April 2000, the Countryside Agency deciding that a National Park would be the best way to protect the Downs, build on the achievements of the past and conserve and enhance the area in its widest sense for future generations.

Local author and photographer Belinda Knox presents a guide to the Way, pointing out interesting and idiosyncratic sights along the route. The book also gives an outline of the history, geology, flora and fauna of the landscape, as well as some of the famous people associated with particular places along the Way, such as the writer Virginia Woolf, the painter Vanessa Bell the biographer Lytton Strachey, the painter Duncan Grant, novelist E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot and Maynard Keynes (Charleston farm house). It contains interesting snippets of information, such as the fact that until the 1930s, Alfriston still practised the old funerary custom of burying local shepherds holding a small piece of fleece, so that St. Peter would have compassion on them for their lack of attendance at church.

There are also some offbeat tips to enhance your experience of walking the Way; for example, if you encounter a sheep which is lying down and unable to stand up due to the weight of its coat, you can save its life by pushing it back up into an upright position, as they are vulnerable to predators when on the ground.

There is even a recipe for the famous Banoffi Pie, which was invented in 1972 in the Hungry Monk pub in Jevington. This beautiful book, lavishly illustrated with stunning photographs (including a couple of Brighton), will help readers to appreciate this wonderful landscape, which we are so fortunate to have right on our doorstep.

Some of the most beautiful areas and interesting sights on the Way are quite close to Brighton, such as the White Horse, between Seaford and Alfriston, the Long Man of Wilmington, and Chanctonbury Ring, 800 ft. (240m.), site of a temple used by ancient Romans as well as Britons. Legend has it that Chanctonbury Ring was created by the mounds of earth thrown up by Satan as he was digging Devil’s Dyke. Residents can get to the South Downs Way by bus from Brighton to Devil’s Dyke (no. 77), Stanmer Park (no. 78), and Ditchling Beacon (no. 79), the highest point along the Way at 813 ft. (248m.).

Nearby is the village of Clayton, which has a house with a railway line running through the middle of it, featured in the song from the late 1950s sung by Alma Cogan, which some residents may remember. Bus no. 77 runs hourly, from 10am to 8pm from the pier, twelve minutes later from the station, daily from 5th July to 31st August, weekends and Bank Holidays only, from 10am to 5.30pm, in April, May, June and September, no service October to March; bus no. 78 runs hourly from 10am to 5pm from the Steine, c.5 minutes later from the station, weekends and Bank Holidays from 6th April, Saturdays only from 27th September to next April; bus no. 79 runs hourly from 10.15 am to 5.15 pm from the Steine, c. 5 minutes later from the station, days of operation as no. 78.

The South Downs Way by Belinda Knox
Publisher: Frances Lincoln

ISBN: 9780711228535
Format: 267 mm x 250 mm (10.5 inches x 9.9 inches)

No related posts.