Wye is Kent no longer the Garden of England

According to BBC News, Kent has lost its garden of England crown to Yorkshire as England's most beautiful county. This comes as no surprise, a while back I passed comment on how Kent Travel alliance, seemed to place more emphasis, than was reasonable on escaping to France* by any means possible, with the exception of swimming, than it did on staying in the eastern half of the county (if you don't believe me click here). As I said before, Kent has the best of the English countryside and some of the best towns and villages, so when 4000 people are asked to name their favourite counties why is Kent 5th, because promotion of our area has been ineffective.

Kent County Council, aware of the reduction in popularity of the Garden of England, have taken a bold and innovative step, and decided to plough it up. Plan A, is to take perhaps the most picturesque parts of Kent and build a bloody great big new science park around the village of Wye. It is inconceivable that the village of Wye and the magnificent scenery will not be completely destroyed by this appalling development, Imperial College plan a 1 billion pound university town with up to 4000 new homes (as with all these developments it will probably create more jobs then you can shake a stick at).

It's at this point you might well ask yourself, who does KCC support, this development is not in the interests of the villagers of Wye, or the thousands who living Kent who might like to visit this area of outstanding natural beauty. Clearly KCC support Imperial College, to the detriment of local community charge payers.

It is worth remembering that Kent County Council, receives 72 pence in every pound that we pay in council tax and what do we get in return, well in the case of Wye, we get a council leader, Paul Carter who is quoted as saying " we must make this a reality " when referring to this seemingly hideous act of vandalism.

I am sure that if Imperial College, needed to build a science park then there are probably plenty of brown field sites, that would accommodate in and around Kent. There is on the KCC website an interesting quote from a leader of Ashford Borough Council Paul Clokie " we are delighted to be associated with such an inspiring vision for the future of Wye " (I suppose coming from Ashford anything looks good). I personally think that Ashford, less than five miles away could not be spoilt by any development, so why not plonk this science park there?

* I checked with people at Kent Travel alliance last week, who assured me there was some sort of reciprocal arrangement with the pas de Calais tourist website in that it should suggest visiting the United Kingdom I spent several minutes checking this and feel that their faith in the French has been sadly misplaced.