Can Merthyr get any worse?
Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Merthyr Tydfil was recently voted the third worst town in Britain. But the Welsh Assembly is doing its best to make sure Merthyr wins the honour next time around.

They've won an appeal court decision to inflict one of Europe's biggest opencast sites on the town.

The Environment minister, Carwyn Jones, was found by the high court to have been 'biased' in favour of the scheme by apparently pre-empting a planning decision on the project. But the appeal court has now reversed that decision and so the opencast will go ahead.

Residents are annoyed that the buffer zone between the site and houses will be lower than usual for a project of this scale. In Scotland, there must be a 500m buffer between the mine face and houses. In Merthyr, it'll be just 40m.

Statistics show that Merthyr's people are already among the unhealthiest in Britain. Thanks to the Assembly it looks like Merthyr will be moving up that ladder too.

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posted by Blamerbell @ 10:55 am,

2 Comments:

At 3:41 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I live in the third nicest town in Britain (according to the hilariously poncey Country Life magazine).

We still have quarries, council estates and industrial buildings all over the place.

 
At 4:07 pm, Blogger Blamerbell said...

Are 20% of people on incapacity benefit where you live?

Or 32% of them economically inactive?

That makes 20% who are both incapacitated and inactive, I suppose. Perhaps we should open a wheelchair factory to solve all our problems.

 

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