It would appear that history does repeat itself after all! Years ago Dick
Nutt attempted to hand over the baton of editorship but found that he
had to become 'Not-the-editor' for a significant period until, finally, a
willing and able volunteer turned up to run with the baton. It looks as if
the same thing has happened again, and the search for a successor rumbles
on without a would-be editor in sight. There must be someone out there who
harbours the ambition to run a newsletter which provides the parish with
a much needed source of information about all the varied activities going
on around here. Where are they? So this is a 'not-the-editor' editorial…
This issue of the newsletter seems to have a political theme but, as I once said in an earlier editorial, we are now functioning in a rather different environment where a significant shift to centralisation is seriously diminishing the local council’s ability to respond properly to our comments on planning applications. Also, your committee is expected
to comment on a huge raft of government papers which seem focussed on concreting over vast swathes of the South-East of England. We therefore need to be fully aware of the nature of the changes to the planning system under development, otherwise it difficult to see how we can sensibly function as an amenity society. It is for this reason that your Society
also has to look outside the parish for support, and our membership of ANTAS, the Civic Trust and the Chiltern Society provides us with that much needed support, particularly where we share common problems. Also, of course, we gain synergy from access to highly qualified people in these larger societies who have a wider knowledge and perspective than we can marshal in the 'shire'.
We have acquired a lot of new talent on our committee over the past year, which is most welcome and thankfully reduces the average age! A point made at the ANTAS meeting was that the room seemed full of grey heads and why didn’t younger people seem interested enough in what happens to where they live to stand up and be counted? Anyway, your committee now
sprouts fewer grey heads and we can look forward with more confidence than hitherto.
Fred Russell
