Croydon, Sutton and Surrey Greens: Private Eye and other articles about the incinerator.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Private Eye and other articles about the incinerator.

Its a weird time for us anti-incinerator campaigners. Despite losing the judicial review and seeing first hand the commencement of the construction of the incinerator, it feels like the negative publicity of the whole scheme has never been so high. Ever since Sian Berry and a small group of us ventured on to the Viridor site by accident, I've been struggling to keep a note of all the articles over the last 8 weeks..

I haven't had a chance to report on Sian's December visit on this blog, but the photograph below shows just how jittery the authorities and Viridor are. You can just make out Andrew Turner, the key man for communications at Viridor, lurking behind the fence. A better picture of Spin Merchant Turner is on the Inside Croydon site. Why is he there? Answer: THERE IS ENOUGH SH!T FLYING AROUND TO STILL HAVE AN IMPACT ON THIS SCHEME AND EVERYONE ON THE DARKSIDE IS FEARFUL.

However the precise answer is here:

A handful of anti-incinerator campaigners met at Beddington Lane tram stop and walked along Beddington Lane to the Viridor site. Maeve Tomlinson suggested that we could head towards the site office. Whilst wandering down the access road, we were approached by a couple of Viridor employees wearing hi-viz. At first we thought they were construction workers but one of them turned out to be Andrew Turner! After chatting and answering questions, in what was a very cagey exchange, we wanted to take a photo to record Sian's visit. Mr Turner explained that this was Viridor's property, as was the access road and so no photos were permitted. This meant we had to cross the road to the other side of Beddington Lane (same side as ASDA). So we did. To our amazement, Mr Turner shepherded us off site, across the road and then stood behind the fence observing us as we took photographs!

Beddington, Pyongyang, N Korea - Andrew Turner on his mobile

The incinerator site is behind us. I guess Sian and I are seeing the funny side of being spied on!

I am struggling to find the article, but recently John and Elaine Drage have resigned as Secretary and Chair of the Sutton Lib Dems and moved up north! John Drage is up to his neck in controversy over the whole scheme.

Apart from two stories in Private Eye (below), one on Virdor's failure to comply with conservation on Beddington Farmlands, and Councillor Nick Mattey's explulsion from the Lib Dems, for daring to oppose the incinerator, there's an article on burning rubbish meant for recycling, the non-use of the waste heat, and Councillor Nick Mattey's appeal.