This is what Democracy Looks like...

Campaigners arrived at West Somerset District Council offices on the 28th July to try & get their three minutes of Democracy. Having registered to speak at the meeting as per the councils rules, speakers were then given several layers of Beauracracy to deal with, these included a confirmation letter, a password and to top it all off photographic ID, measures unprecedented at a planning meeting and certainly unwarranted.

It was a proper Circus there and all at the expense of the taxpayer, there was a significant police presence not just at the council offices but also there were riot vans all over the surrounding area of Williton & Watchet, this caused a great deal of anxiety in what are usually sleepy rural villages." Perhaps more interesting than the police presence at this event was the rather more unusal & certainly unexpected presence of black-shirted security firm that was more reminiscent of Mussolinis Italy than West Somerset backwater. Who were these people? and why were they there?

These tactics were very intimidating not just to people speaking at the meeting but also to the local population using the council offices. Whilst having a conversation with these security about their tactics and how intimidating they were, which the security person in question denied, a local man in the offices paying his council tax intervened to set the security person straight, pointing out that he found their presence extremely intimidating, he was just paying his council tax and was certainly not accustomed to these kind of measures at his local council offices.

I myself experienced a threatening invasion of my privacy as one of these ogres placed their hand on my shoulder very firmly in a move designed to intimidate me when they were attempting to deny me entry into the meeting. I shook him off telling him quite clearly to keep his hands off me.

Having arrived for the meeting on time I'd gone to use the public toilets and then hadnt spotted everyone going into the meeting as there were a lot of people outside the buildings still for the vigil for Fukushima. When I went to go in, the security and a member of staff for WSDC tried to tell me that I couldnt go in because the meeting had already started. I scanned both my confirmation letter and also my printout of the aganda for the day for some indication that the meeting would be closed after 10am but could find none. They had already prevented another speaker from taking their seat for the same reason. The WSDC man claimed that the only way into the room would take us straight past the person/s speaking and that any entry would therefore be disruptive to the meeting, and that I would have to wait until the first break, not one for being fed a pile of rubbish it seemed to me that this was a very unlikely set up for a room, I pressed the issue with them pointing out that I'd travelled a long way for the meeting and that if their intention was to prevent entry after 10am that either the agenda or the confirmation letter should have made this clear, the horrible weasely little man went off again muttering something about seeing if he coul get us in through a fire escape, next thing I knew, he was back saying that he was going to find the other person he'd denied entry too and take us both in together. Some minutes later he returned with a lady I know is an immediate neighbour of the powerstation, it was she that had been denied entry! They took us both in via...an ordinary door not a fire escape, that brought us into the chamber behind the seated members of the public who were registered to speak and NOT in front of the person who had the floor as had been claimed would be the case by the

WSDC man!

When the meeting had its first break I like everyone else was shown the kitchen were I got myself a coffee then went outside, when the meeting broke for Lunch I then also went to the kitchen & got myself a coffee, this time I saw the Environment Agency's head of nuclear new build Brian Payne whom I'd met previously, this time I stood to speak with him, before I knew it the horrible little WSDC man was on my case telling me that I had to leave the building, I asked him why to which he replied that this is WSDC property, I was left baffled but with no choice but to leave, the man that I was speaking with was at least kind enough to accompany me outside in order that we could finish our conversation, he was then given quite a hard time about getting back in from what I could see of his conversation with the men in black on the door. 

 

Just before lunch the speakers had begun kicking off with the speakers in favour of the application. It hadn't gone unnoticed that for an application where you weren't supposed to be able to discuss the nuclear aspect of the application, supposedly because it wasnt part of the application, there was an awful lot of talk about why we need a nuclear powerstation!

After lunch the statutory consultees spoke, it was at this point that Hergen Hayes spoke - dont know why the OND certainly weren't statutory consultees - and why did he speak? Not to speak against the project 9(unsurprisingly), nor for it (allegedly) no he spoke to tell the planning committee how there are no lessons to be learned from Fukushima!!! Can you believe it?

Finally the speakers against the project spoke, many were very eloquent and spoke well, however I couldnt help but feel saddened that several of the speakers against who weren't essentially anti-nuclear are so cowed by the governments propoganda & agenda, apologising for the fact that they've bought the bull***t about the need for nuclear.

I spoke about the fact that the floodrisk assessments that have been undertaken for the preliminary works which have determined the height of the reactor platforms for the main application are inappropriate, (I will elaborate further here by putting my 3 min speech on here very soon.)

In fact my submission was the only thing that was mentioned from Stop Hinkley by the lawyer in the so-called deliberations, this despite the fact that there was a huge amount of significant issues raised such as the prematurity of the application, the improper assessment of the ecology, the salami-slicing of the planning process.

I will probably revisit this meeting and elaborate further, but for now it has taken me a month to get this written, not least because the meeting itself I found to be a very traumatic experience and because I went straight to the Green Gathering afterwards to mobilise people for the blockade.

It is summer holidays and at the moment I'm away visiting my family and having a bit of arest before my return to the fray this weekend...