Peterborough riverside green space threatened by development plan
Thulbourn said: "We understand proposals for growth can be challenging for communities."At this stage, the plan is still in draft form, so the public's feedback is essential."The site near Stanground, known locally as Drysides, has been earmarked for a mixture of industrial, storage and distribution units, and offices.It would be visible from a shared path on the south side of the old River Nene that links Stanground Lock with Park Farm Pond.In the local plan, Peterborough City Council said permission would only be granted under certain circumstances.That included considering the impact on countryside views, biodiversity and local heritage.
Olly, 11, regularly goes walking in the area with his mum, Mandy, 50.He said the view from the path was "majestic", adding: "Having concrete all along here... traffic and pollution noise, it's just going to disrupt us."It's just a load of nonsense really, it shouldn't be allowed."Mandy said: "Why would you want to build on this, it's beautiful."
Jackie Bodimead, 62, said development "should not happen" in the area, which she described as a wildlife corridor with "massive historical significance".She said: "What it does for wildlife is fantastic, you get bats flying along here in summer evenings."Ms Bodimead said anything that disrupted wildlife "surely is important and shouldn't be happening".
Ron and Sue Gockel, both 78, said the area was a means for people to "get away from everything".Mr Gockel said: "We used to come down here when the lockdown was on and I think it saved a few people's sanity coming down here."They have both objected to the proposals in the local plan."They don't need to build a huge great industrial park... we'd never have believed they would build on here," said Mr Gockel.Chris Harper, a Stanground South councillor and leader of Peterborough First, has been campaigning for residents to send comments to the council.He said: "I've gone to the people, social media, 1,100 leaflets have gone out, signs everywhere."This is in danger and [people] must have their say."
Follow Peterborough news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
12 minutes ago
- BBC News
Memorial to Roma Holocaust victims unveiled in Newcastle
England's first permanent public memorial dedicated to Roma victims of the Holocaust has been memorial has been erected outside Newcastle City Council's headquarters to remember the victims of the genocide and honour soldiers from the region who helped liberate concentration camps in is estimated up to 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were murdered by the Nazis during World War Two and the memorial was funded by the Tyneside Roma Karchnakova, of the Roma Right Path Project, said her great-grandfather Jan was murdered at Auschwitz and the statue "means a lot" to her family. She said she was "very proud" of the local Roma community for creating the Ion, of the Roma Access Association, said the monument was a "powerful statement that history needs to be remembered, commemorated, and that we need to educate younger generations about the atrocities of the past so that those mistakes won't happen again".The former city councillor led the efforts to establish monument and told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he hoped it would help tackle hate crime and racism experienced by his community. "Prejudice against the Roma community is increasing and we need to do a lot of education and outreach so people can understand how hatred and extremism can lead to devastating our communities and people's lives," he said. Dalibar Ferenc, 18, hoped the memorial would spread awareness of the impact of Nazi persecution on Roma people."I never actually learned much about it, especially at school," he Lenga, associate professor at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, praised the city's efforts campaigning for the monument. "I think it will help to challenge anti-Roma discrimination."We need to know these things. We live in such a fragile world where genocide can happen again, is happening again," she said. The memorial was unveiled the day before European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place on the ceremony traditional Roma songs were sung and wreathes laid. Council leader Karen Kilgour said there were about 4,000 Roma people in Newcastle and they had "enriched our city for the better".She said: "This monument is a long overdue tribute to the men, women and children whose lives were stolen by hatred and persecution. "It is also a tribute to those from our own region, soldiers from the North East who bore witness to the horrors of the camps and played a vital role in their liberation. "Their bravery and the lessons history learned must never be forgotten."Local political and religious leaders and members of the Roma community were joined at Friday's event by representatives of the Romanian Embassy and the International Holocaust Remembrance embassy delegate Mariam El-Hek said the memorial was a "long overdue act of justice and act of remembrance". Follow BBC Newcastle on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
The Sun
12 minutes ago
- The Sun
Labour's taken state spying of social media to whole new level – leaked emails read like their from dictatorship not UK
THE Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok has often aroused fears that personal data collected on its users could end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. What fewer people imagined was that our own Government would try to use TikTok in order to police speech in Britain. Yet that is exactly what has happened. 7 7 7 Leaked emails show that a shady branch of government known as the National Security Online Information Team has been leaning on TikTok to suppress content that is critical of official migration and criminal justice policy. On several occasions during the riots which followed the Southport murders a year ago, the unit approached TikTok requesting that it 'assess' some posts made by its users — effectively a crude instruction to suppress what they were saying. Legitimate debate Britain, like every other country, operates security services that spy on terrorists who are plotting atrocities as well as organisations involved in propagating serious public disorder. Were a government organisation to prevent a bomb attack which could have killed dozens of people, no one would be too bothered about how it had obtained the vital information. But the emails show activity which goes far beyond the demands of national security. In one case, officials drew TikTok's attention to a post that suggested a large number of migrants were 'undocumented fighting age males'. Another suggested that TikTok take a look at users who spread 'concerning narratives about the police and a two-tier system [of justice] '. I am sure the police and courts will defend themselves robustly against a charge of operating two-tier justice, but whether or not you think they are doing this, it is a perfectly legitimate area for public debate, just as is the question of whether ethnic minorities suffer disadvantage in the workplace, schools, hospitals and so on. Those who made online accusations of a disproportionate response by the police towards protesters, and who dubbed our Prime Minister 'two-tier Keir', had good reason for raising their concerns. Ten days before the Southport murders, the Harehills area of Leeds erupted into rioting after children from a Roma family were taken into care. Protesters descend on Canary Wharf migrant hotel as police surround building amid fears over 'summer of riots' Days later there was a machete fight on Southend seafront. Keir Starmer had little to say about those grim developments, yet went into overdrive when protesters took to the streets following the Southport riots. True, there were plenty of thugs among them, but to insinuate that all protesters were driven by nothing more than 'far-right hatred' was outrageous. I am not going to defend Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months for remarks she made in the wake of the Southport killings — her words read like a pretty clear incitement to violence even if she did not intend them to. But it is perfectly reasonable to question whether her punishment was consistent with the treatment handed out to extreme Islamist preachers and Irish Republican sympathisers. Take the Prevent programme, which was set up by the Blair government specifically to deal with the threat of Islamist terrorism in the wake of the 2005 Tube bombings. 7 7 7 Over time it seems to have become more concerned with the far right. Nineteen per cent of those reported to the programme in the year ending March 2024 were recorded as supporting a far right ideology, against only 13 per cent with Islamist ideology — in spite of the latter being responsible for far more terror attacks and killings than the former over the past two decades. For Government officials to try to stop us discussing these matters is something you might associate more with a dictatorship than with British democracy. We have a human rights lawyer as PM, but where is he when it comes to defending our long-held right to free expression? Labour, however, has taken state surveillance of social media to a new level To be fair to Starmer, it is not just his government that has been trying to silence its critics. The National Security Online Information Team was derived from a body set up during Covid to try to gag critics of vaccines and lockdown. The Online Safety Act, which places obligations on social media companies to police content — and which the Government has used to put pressure on TikTok and other companies — was the brainchild of the last Conservative government. Deep concerns Labour, however, has taken state surveillance of social media to a new level. Particularly disgraceful was Technology Secretary Peter Kyle's attempt this week to claim that Nigel Farage was on the side of Jimmy Savile for daring to criticise the Online Safety Act. To listen to Kyle you would think the act was about nothing other than age verification for users of online pornography (not that Savile used the internet to abuse his victims). There are many people, myself included, who support the age verification measures but who have deep concerns about the act's other provisions, in particular its demand that technologies companies act against anything that could fall under the vague definition of being 'harmful to children'. Even the day's news could be deemed harmful to children if it upsets their immature sensibilities. The trouble is that the Online Safety Act was pushed through on the back of emotional propaganda, with few people realising the dark and disturbing ways in which it could be used to silence any of us. We are belatedly realising that now. 7
Daily Mail
12 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Anti-migrant protesters face off with counter demonstrators in Southsea as disquiet grows over asylum seeker hotels across the UK
Anti-migrant demonstrators faced off against counter-protesters from Stand Up to Racism this evening outside a hotel on the south coast used to house asylum seekers. Protesters gathered outside the Royal Beach Hotel in Southsea, Hampshire, on August 1. Anti-migrant demonstrations have taken place across the South of England today, with locations including Portsmouth, Southampton and Bournemouth. More are expected across the UK this weekend as the topic of migrants continues to prove inflammatory.
