Patrick’s Musings

Would you like to live next door to fourteen storey tower blocks? A huge overdevelopment has been proposed for Lewisham, at the corner of Old Canterbury Rd and Longport St. See map.

The development includes 14, 12 and 6 storey towers and a large supermarket mall with basement car parking. The developer has bypassed council and the local community and gone straight to the state government for approval under the controversial Part 3A law.

* Overdevelopment
* Traffic congestion and pollution
* Community disruption
* New precedents for building size for the Inner West
* Local shopping strips hurt – Petersham, Dulwich Hill, Summer Hill
* Interferes with the Cooks River to Iron Cove Greenway project

The Greens are campaigning to stop such a massive overdevelopment. You can view our webpage on this issue: http://marrickvillegreens.wordpress.com/issue/lewisham-part-3a-development/

A public meeting has been called for 7pm, Wednesday 20 May at Summer Hill Community Centre, 131 Smith Street, Summer Hill. See map to venue. Come along to see the developers plans, express your opinion, and show your feelings on this development.

I personally am concerned about the precedent this could set for the Summer Hill Mill site, just across the train line from this site.

A lot of my friends pointed out this week that Ashfield Council, for which I am an elected representative, was in the news a lot because of some problems with fines of a local business. Now while I am not defending the Council for what happened, I don’t know all the details to pass judgment one way or another. What did interest me though was the fact that the article in the Daily Telegraph, a News Limited paper, claimed this was all over two pot plants. They featured this photo:

From Council

The General Manager of Council sent out an email later that had other photos of Ellen’s Interiors, like this one:

From Council

See a couple more at my Picasa Gallery

Who ever said you shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story obviously worked for News Limited.

As the T-shirts say, “Is that the truth, or is your News Limited?”