WHEN you write to the Press, it’s always wise to have your facts right; that way it doesn’t give people the chance to take a pot-shot at you later.
Poor old Councillor Bob Matthews slipped up badly a few weeks ago and promptly – and quite rightly – had the wrath of IOC’s secretary Charles Nicholls to contend with (see Journal Letters in Hereford Journal for Dec 15). Now Its Our County has uncovered another chink in the armour of the leader of the policy-lite Herefordshire Independents.
The member for Credenhill had written to the Hereford Journal back in December, calling for the administration’s growth agenda to carpet bomb Herefordshire countryside with 18,000 new houses, to be deferred until after the local government elections next May.
But the only people who, up to that point, had raised their voices in opposition to the manic acceleration of the council’s housing programme were the five Its Our County councillors who sit on Herefordshire Council. And IOC Secretary Charles Nicholls said as much.
Undeterred, Cllr Matthews was back on the attack after the Christmas break, telling Hereford Journal readers that it was he and his fellow indies who “…first proposed that…a final decision (on housing targets) should be deferred until after the May 2011 elections.”
Really? IOC has checked the records of an emergency Council debate held in the Shire Hall in November 2009. The voting record clearly shows that Cllr Matthews – and the eight other members of his Herefordshire Independents who were present – all voted in favour of the council’s portmanteau motion to support the housing growth agenda, a new river crossing and ‘relief roads’.
Some are suggesting that the Leader of the Herefordshire Independents has ‘gone native’ in an effort to win support before the crucial local government elections, which are now only 17 weeks away. Others are saying that the indies’ housing policy is now in tatters.