owch

The Merseyside Pathfinder, New Heartlands, was in the spotlight again yesterday, for all the wrong reasons.
The Telegraph's environment editor, Charles Clover, didn't mince his words when he wrote about the latest development in the council's campaign to bulldoze 400 perfectly good homes in the Edge Lane neighbourhood of Liverpool.

"So prepare to be disgusted. Today, English Partnerships and Liverpool Land began the process of persuading a new public inquiry inspector that a compulsory purchase order - seemingly identical to the one that was rejected - should now be approved....
"The streets where Ms Pascoe lives have been kept deliberately by the council in a boarded up state which gives the impression of dereliction and decay. Meanwhile the faceless bureaucrats who laid the order draw their salaries and sleep soundly at night. This is a national disgrace....
"Ms Pascoe's solicitor has already called English Partnerships' determination to persist in the teeth of an adverse High Court judgement 'oppressive and reckless.'
"MPs might care to ask why another £2 million of public money is to be poured away cynically on such poor legal grounds, clearly in the hope that the protracted struggle now begun either kills its opponents or by reducing them to penury forces them to sell up...."

It often seems to me that about the only people who agree with this so-called development project are politicians and housing developers. Few academics seem to be on its side and residents most certainly aren't. I bet Pauline Davis isn't happy.