from: Robert Bowcock
re: Twickenham Riverside - astonished 5 August 2002

Dear Sir,

Am I alone in being astonished by your article about the swimming pool site? No, it isn't that the Conservatives have lived up to an election pledge to scrutinize the "deal": it is the ensuing comments by the three LibDem Councillors that followed.

David Williams asserts that £½million pounds been "written off" in the process; surely he has a short memory when it comes to such sums being "written off" as he calls it. Several times in this paper and at public meetings, I have challenged him to reveal what happened to a previous £½million that was allocated to this site as part of the deal to allow the then Council of the mid-80's to fund the building of their Civic offices, and yet I am still waiting for the courtesy of an answer. Is it not time he spent more time with his family, like some of the former Councillors of his political persuasion? Before he does so, would he mind retracting his statements about the alleged community benefits he so outrageously detailed at the public meeting to discuss the Twickenham Riverside Terrace Group's scheme, as well as repeating the same tosh in print later?

Then, Serge Lourie opines that it was the Tories who closed the Baths in 1981, but fails to inform that it was his party that kept it that way for the following 21 years, with a veritable role call of failures: Mecca, Marks & Spencer, and now Dawnay Day.

However, the greatest astonishment must be reserved for the newly re-elected Denise Carr. Where has she been for the last two or three years for her not to be aware that what she is calling for -"working collaboratively with local residents and the business community in an open and transparent way" - is exactly what the community did do, only for the then Council's Steering Group and Resources Committee to ignore the majority of the three Working Parties' findings, as well as change the brief - designed to restrain the previous developer's wildest excesses - without any further reference to those community advisors who drafted the original. To quote Councillor Carr's own words "totally unacceptable". Is it any wonder they lost and we don't believe them any more?

Yours faithfully,

Robert Bowcock

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