Bulldozer Howells Machiavellian gutter tactics

Here we have Cllr Howells blatantly lying in response to my points in email below! see attachment. I make no apology for belonging to the green paper and I hope you might use our press releases.

Cllr Howells lies and claims that they didn't clear that vast area to build a bridge ..it was just to remove a large Beech tree. We weren't born yesterday. It is an insult to out intelligence to claim that this was just to remove a tree. And the vehicles on site testing the ground in preparation for the bridge and the men doing that work is documented and witnessed and photographed before planning permission was given.

Please see the photos - Please publish them if you wish. Album of the destruction prior to planning and the vehicles and equipment and men working on the site.

If anyone is playing politics it is cllr Howells and company for using Charles Willey to lend credence to their phoney, woeful equlaity impact assessment which should be done at the policy stage and which like their consultation was incompetent and inadequate. 1,000 plus emails spoke to the contrary and 5,000 signatures on a petition recently.

The green party is against Bulldozer Howells policy of spending £1.4 million on a bridge for articulated lorries into A PARK - BUTE PARK!

Burte Park which will serve as a massive monument to the stupidity of Cllrs Berman, Howellsl and McEvoy Fib Dems/Plaid policy .

They will never be entitled to claim any green credentials from this moment on. They have made a laughing stock of themselves.

There is NO place for articulated lorries in a PARK and no rhyme nor reason for it!
The map was not doctored but used as a 'schematic'?? well.

Howells admits there was no sustainable assessment done as he refers just to meeting the requirement as in the policy

See the policy docs here

points sent toHowells, Berman and McEvoy

Latest dirty trick by Cllr Howells who has ignored 1,600 plus in facebook group plus thousands in a petition plus a 1,000 plus emails plus objections from FOE, Green party, living streets, BPA, historic garden society, civic society and the list goes on!!

Stop the new vehicular and pedestrian bridge/road **for articulated lorries into Bute Park, one of the largest city centre parks in the UK, providing the setting for Cardiff Castle, and listed on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales as grade I.

I wa
s forcibly ejected from the gallery during a full council meeting where FibDems/Plaid ditched a motion from Lab calling on a moratorium on the project to replace it totally which they laughingly called an 'amendment' to support the bridge/road project.

An executive member was saying it was too dangerous for pedestrians to share a path but better to make a new path elsewhere!

They just don't get it! I was thrown out for shouting 'take the lorries out of the park stupid!'

There have been Machiavellian gutter tactics here in the attempt to push this through such as

1. Work was started before planning permission, knocking down many trees and digging out undergrowth. Work then stopped after protest.


2. Head of Parks Cllr Nigel Howellls with his conflicting interest was permitted to intervene at the planning Cttee meeting contrary to Cardiff Councils code of conduct


3. The MAP of the road published alongside Coun Nigel Howells’ piece in the Capital Times had been DOCTORED to show the council’s proposed developments in a more favourable light.


4. Council officer admitted that the artists image was “ephemeral”, and that in reality the bridge would be larger, higher and more visible.


5.. Cardiff Council ‘information’ material does NOT clarify that the proposed access bridge is more than 28 feet wide, and will be raised on pillars
, and that sections of the current eight-foot path would be more than doubled in width and turned into a lorry roadway raised on an embankment. Nor does it say it would be still wider on curves to accommodate the largest lorries and that still more of the meadow would be converted to a lorry waiting bay.


6. Trying to ignore planning conditions - Public pressure forced them Cllr Berman and Cllr Howells Fin Dems and Neil McEvoy of Plaid Lies to pull back from their plans to start on the bridge. After bringing in heavy equipment and saying the start was imminent, the council contractors have been sent back to wait for nesting birds according to the planning conditions.


7. I am still calling for an EIA on this urban development of a sensitive area,


8. and a full sustainability assessment as in the Parks Strategy.


9. I did ask why there had been no Equality Impact assessment. Now they produce a phoney one which they composed this month, which can not be considered valid as this document purporting to be an EqIA is a travesty as the idea is to engage with the community before the policy is developed. Only a handful of organisations have been approached and many issues not addressed. Cllr Howells writes "The new access bridge will provide an alternative vehicular access for the park and will therefore there are no disability access implications which specif
ically relate to it" Doesn’t mention the raised road that pedestrians will share with articulated lorries and the risks that that poses.


The equality impact assessment does look at the huge articulated Lorries which will give rise to complaints made about noise and exhaust emissions. Pedestrians will feel their safety is compromised, especially on this unsuitable raised path/road. Also the noise and vibration will cause alarm and distress plus concerns about fumes.


* In a survey*:33% hearing lorries were bothered by them

* Heavy Lorries are 13 times more noisy than cars in congestion

* Vibration correlated best with lorry flows

* 37% consider lorries produce worse fumes


Other options were not consulted on, some of these should have been


- no articulated lorries in the park


- moving the nursery


- park and ride for articulated lorries


Decisions Planning committee

Park alliance playing politics, says Berman